Medic continues to cause ranking ripples

Google’s new Medic update has been causing ranking ripples all over Australia, and Gary Illyes from Google has asked for specifics from anyone who claims to have had their rank affected poorly by the algorithm change.

It seems they’re having a hard time narrowing down the problem from the general outcry of ‘this update sucks!’

So, I’ve sent him a few examples showing how Google has been getting confused.

I met with a couple of people last week, and many of the problems seem to be restricted to Australia. Google basically said this update would focus on both medical and financial sites.

So far, it’s affected two clients that we’ve found: one in the medical field and one in construction, which adds validity to their prediction.

Illyes has been getting a little grumpy from all the general complaints without details. After all, he can’t really give his search team any direction if he doesn’t have any details. 

So I’ve given him some. In the first example, we did a search for custom homes in Melbourne. I’m seeing a lot of exact matches come in, but halfway down the first page, we find a site in Cairns. In case you don’t know, that’s about 3,000 kilometres away. That makes no sense in a search for a local builder.

The other example I gave is for the phrase ‘facelift’. We’re getting medical sites, but also those promoting kitchen updates using the word ‘facelift’ in their advertising. Google seems to be getting confused about just what a facelift is.

So, we continue to search for this problem in the hopes that Google can fix it. If you’ve experienced any movement in ranking because of the update, drop us a line and we’ll be happy to check it out.

This article originally published on stewartmedia.com.au.

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