Jun 6, 2021
Our medicine website is constantly getting hammered by google updates
Our website was hit by the notorious medic update, ever since then, its as if google now has a permanent restriction against our website. After years of work, successful PR campaigns, content plans written by a team of medical experts, a completely new website build and fixes, our website has had absolutely zero change in traffic and continues to get slammed by every single google update.
We have given it everything and have followed googles QRG to the absolute book, to no avail what so ever.
In fact, things are so bad, that we are consistently seeing newly launched medical websites outrank us that display very little E-A-T, especially in the field we are in.
Our website has links from pretty much every major national news platform in the UK and has multiple links from very relevant industry authorities such as netdoctor, healthline, patient.info and more.
Over the past years, we have turned our Clinical Director and Superintendent Pharmacist into an authority in his field, he has run multiple national campaigns that have generated widespread coverage and has been featured and referenced on a lot of websites. Google his name and have a look at just how many.
Take a look at his latest campaigns featured in google news.
Our website is entirely written and reviewed by our medical professionals, our website itself is one of the most content heavy websites in our field, we include so much detail on all of our product pages and category pages.
Since the medic update, a number of years ago now, our traffic has hovered at a very similar level. Despite making significant changes to content, the website build, performance, product offering, and all whilst running a number of successful PR campaigns, we have not even been given a glimmer of hope by google.
Our websites traffic displays all the signs of an algorithmic restriction as it has never increased since the medic update despite hundreds of thousands of pounds being invested into it.
We have not experienced any sort of ranking increase for years, despite all of the work, all of the work that google recommends, nothing. Instead we are consistently battered by algorithm updates time and time again.
When i compare our website against high performing competitors, i can see no difference as to why they are rewarded with thousands of users per month, and yet we are not.
The only difference between our website and our competitors is that we do not run Google Ads, which is interesting and why i believe we would be well within our rights to challenge this from a legal perspective.
From my perspective (and many UK seo experts and agencies that we have worked with over the last 18 months) we tick all of the boxes that should enable us to compete with our competitors.
Instead we are fighting a losing battle against a temperamental robot that for some reason holds a restriction against us and has done for years.
Whilst I appreciate the invaluable feedback and recommendations from the experts in this forum over the last few years, implementing those restrictions has had no affect.
I have also tried reaching out to John Muller on twitter and in a number of forums, however I am still yet to hear back from him.
As always, I'd welcome any feedback, in particularly when it comes to looking at our traffic when compared against some of our competitors.
I believe our website is being unfairly restricted, all i ask is that we are given a level playing field.
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Last edited Jun 7, 2021
All Replies (35)
Jun 12, 2021
What the original poster is saying here appears to be true.
Many companies and sites are still listed and linked but there are enough top results unlisted that it's probably safe to assume that this is not a primary factor.
Additionally, that register is not great at producing the correct company by name. It works better by domain name or registration number. Looks like people were linking directly to their listing and when you get a blank search page, it's likely that the listing is no longer active.
Using a few generic search terms, I couldn't get this site to come up anywhere in the first 10 pages. The results are THICK with ads, sometimes 8 or more per page.
Google user
Jun 13, 2021
@Rase One With regards to your search terms test: I can confirm seeing the same issue like the OP with two of our medical sites. I have opened pretty much the same question here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/113052146/ymyl-site-help-required-from-product-specialists too.
Jun 13, 2021
Many webmasters when reporting similar issues in the forum do not necessarily share the sensitive data with regards to their website statistics, as they may not have authority to do so. However, I am in a position to share this, as it is my business, and I, like many others in different industries; am not given a competitive level playing field when it comes to the google algorithm.
In the below chart you will see statistics on clicks and impressions from the last 16 months (that's all google search console allows) that our website has generated in the UK. The only country we can legally operate in.
From the chart, you can see the declines in clicks and impressions that correlate with previous google updates. You will also see that impressions, in recent weeks have been the highest they have ever been for our website since we launched. So it looks like things are heading in the right direction? Wrong, clicks are at their lowest point for 2 years and are still decreasing daily, with impressions falling closely behind them.
With impressions increasing massively on around April 15th, and staying consistent for a number of weeks, we put this down to us finally starting to turn the tide of whatever algorithm restriction was on us. Or was it just Google dangling another carrot in front of us similar to how they boosted our clicks at the start of 2020 before nailing us again shortly after?
Heading into the 2021 June core update, we were confident that our site would begin to grow once more.
What added to that confidence was a very successful 6 months of PR campaigns that generated well over 100+ natural and very highly authoritative backlinks, from pretty much every single major news publisher in the UK, and the top healthcare authorities in the game, NetDoctor, HealthLine, Patient.
Instead, the June 2021 core update has been and (nearly) gone, and yet we have seemingly been hit again with clicks at their lowest in 2 years, and impressions dipping back down.
So far, I have had John Mueller, Google's senior webmaster analyst tell me that it "doesn't mean that i am doing something wrong" but he did not expand.. And I completely agree with him, because we are not doing anything wrong, but what is google seeing that is wrong? Why is google nailing my website time and time again after every single update and if i am "not doing anything wrong" why is nothing disclosed to me as to why i am not allowed to compete with my competitors?
This is a one way relationship, with our team putting everything into lifting this website and getting nothing back and for John Mueller to say "its not you it's us... but we're not going to tell you why" is surely a breach of anti-competition laws.
The above chart shows that we have had a restriction put on us that has prevented us from fairly competing and breaking through in this market. With no explanation as to why that is. How on earth can you be refused entry to compete fairly in an open market?
There are competitors doing things better than us, and likewise, however we are bottom of the pack. We are not asking for a 1 way ticket to the top, just a level competitive playing field.
If there is some sort of automatic restriction that sets a time period before a website can successfully recover from an algorithmic penalty, it is laughable that google even thinks a small business can hold on for this period of time to recover, especially considering the investment it needs to recover, and whilst not being allowed to make any money from google organically.
June and July are already due to be very turbulent months from an organic perspective, with the June core update, the page experience update due to be released imminently and with the already confirmed July core update incoming next month.
I'll be sharing details on how these updates affect us and would encourage anyone else that has had an algorithmic restriction placed upon them for no reason to do the same. Many people are in the same position here, and are not allowed to compete fairly, without being told why.
It will be interesting to hear from any one else who is experiencing or has previously experienced the same restrictions.
Last edited Jun 13, 2021
Jun 14, 2021
Excellent. Well stated. You may well already know all of this and more but I wanted to suggest that you read the wikipedia page for Google PANDA:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Panda
Focus on the short section entitled "Ranking Factors" and the concept of the "modification factor"
Imagine the myriad excuses that Google could come up with to apply this invisibly to any given site. This "modification factor" is the foreign presence that people are sensing in the search results. It's the source of the various theories described with terms like "shadow-banning", "algorithmic penalty", "De-Boosting", "Unbiasing" etc... It's the mechanical means by which those things are achieved and it basically started with Google PANDA about a decade ago.
"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
