Google rolled out a core algorithm update on March 12, which they have since named the March 2019 Core Update.
Before this, the last update had been in August 2018. That update was dubbed “Medic” update, as it seemed to affect primarily health and medical related sites, though many industries were impacted. At the time, it appeared that Google was attempting to target YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) sites. These are sites that present information that might affect the ways users make decisions that directly impact their finances or their livelihood.
Many believe that the March 2019 update was an adjustment of the August update, though nothing has been confirmed. Some losers of the August update saw recovery with March, and vice versa, while other August losers saw greater loss and some August winners experienced even greater lift.
Many of the factors believed to play a role in the August 2018 update were around EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) – factors that help both engines and users gauge the overall reliability of information presented on the site.
Some of these factors may include:
- Organization, Corporation or Entity Information
- Schema markup (including organization info, contact information, product schema, service area, article schema, authorship, etc).
- Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright
- Deceptive advertising or information
- Online Reputation
Through our research into how some of Elevated’s client sites have been affected by the March 2019 Core Update, as well as information reported by other SEOs and marketers, it does appear that links and anchor text are more heavily weighted now than were before. Utilization of targeted keywords within on-page text, particularly within body content (as opposed to solely appearing in header and link elements) also seems to be a strong factor.
Elevated is continuing our research to better understand how Google’s algorithm has changed. We have been actively conducting audits and making recommendations to try to minimize the impact, return to baseline, and continually improve the organic performance for our clients.
If you are a business owner, website manager, or marketer and were impacted by the update, we’d love to hear your thoughts.
What are you experiences and thoughts of the March 2019 Core Update?
