Don’t Be Scared of Google’s August 1, 2018 Algorithm Update Nicknamed Medic

So as almost everyone knows, Google has rolled out a core search algorithm update August 1st of this month nicknamed “Medic”. The Medic core algorithm update Google rolled out has seen more search engine volatility than previous updates. Updates are done many times to the core algorithm, but rarely are even announced or cause the kind of volatility that we’ve seen with this one. Google never really specifies the details of core updates.  But one thing that is certain is that it is not a penalization event where negative tactics are devalued.  Sites that are doing the right things move up furthers and those that may be manipulating their efforts move down not by penalization, but a reshuffle where newly rewarded sites move up in rankings. Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan also confirmed this is a “global” roll-out and impacts all Google search results, no matter what language or region.  Google would not say how much of the search results were impacted by this update, as Google has done in the past with Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird.  No specific one industry was announced to be targeted, but this update has affected both organic and local search results.  It has been documented that Your Money Your life category pages. As part of the update, pages in this specific category became to be looked at by stricter standards than other types of content. The types of pages that are in this category are news articles, medical information pages, financial information pages, shopping pages, pages with legal advice and financial transaction pages.

One of the functions of the update has been to demote advice pages with questionable expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) in rankings.  Coming from Google, “As with any update, some sites may note drops or gains. There’s nothing wrong with pages that may now perform less well. Instead, it’s that changes to our systems are benefiting pages that were previously under-rewarded.” Danny Sullivan who is Google public search liaison has said, “Want to do better with a broad change? Have great content. Yeah, the same boring answer. But if you want a better idea of what we consider great content, read our raters guidelines.” This answer or something close to it is given after every notable update.

Google has advised that webmasters not make any technical changes in response to the update.  Google has mentioned that no fixes are needed for this update. This update focused on promoting sites that were undervalued.  But if you did move down in value by other undervalued sites moving up, a good start is looking at the Google Quality Rater Guidelines.  The quality rater guidelines have been updated somewhat as well. This is what is used for manual website checks, and if want to get a baseline framework for your website, this is one of the best places to start.