Google has unleashed its medic: Are you injured?

It’s been a week since the rollout of Google’s new core update ‘Medic’ and we’re just now beginning to see movement on any of our clients’ sites, mostly in the construction and medical industries. We’ve heard from many people that these are the type of sites that are being affected.

I’m really looking at these types of sites and checking out the winners and the losers. Maybe looking at a keyword I know has dropped and checking out the new entries, which are now in the top ten. What you’re trying to work out here is why Google is suddenly favouring one site over another. On the medical side of things, we’re seeing more informational sites rising to the top of the rankings — authority university stuff, well-known clinics, things like that. In one particular search, I’m seeing the Mayo Clinic show up in Australia where it never did before.

We’re also seeing some odd results, such as one builder who’s 3,000 miles away from where I was searching. Now, I’m never going to use his services, they’re too far away. But Google is still highlighting them right now. It looks like Google is trying to further refine their search results. We’re not black hat, so we don’t have to worry about having done anything wrong, but we need to find out why the results are showing like they are. Well-known brands don’t seem to have been affected, so Google may be looking for more authority this go-round. 

I’ll report more about this next week. If you’ve been hit or if you’ve seen changes, drop me a line and I’ll take a look at your site to see if we can establish any patterns.