You may have been noticing a patterns from Google more recently. Where Googlers seem more comfortable talking about YMYL, E-A-T, and health related queries. We have even reported it at the highest level of Google executives where Google Fellow, Pandu Nayak, said recently Google detects YMYL categories and treats those search results with more caution by showing the most authoritative sites in those cases.
John Mueller from Google discussed it again the 5:45 mark into a recently released video hangout. He said "So it's definitely possible that this is the kind of thing that is happening here, especially when it comes to, I think, medical kind of queries, it is something where our algorithms try to be a little bit more-- I don't know, more critical, with regards to the site and the information that we find there." He added "one thing I would recommend, though, is to look at what some of the other people around in the SEO area around EAT have been writing about."
Here is how Glenn summed up what he said on Twitter:
More from @johnmu: Look at what SEOs are explaining about E-A-T. Understand how to best present your content, author profiles, & more. John can't guarantee that will improve rankings, but make sure you have all of those signals for users. Google can pick those up too: https://t.co/IPg9MI5r08
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) October 16, 2020
Here is the video embed:
Here is part of it transcribed:
So it's definitely possible that this is the kind of thing that is happening here, especially when it comes to, I think, medical kind of queries, it is something where our algorithms try to be a little bit more-- I don't know, more critical, with regards to the site and the information that we find there.The other idea might be really to find a way to really highlight why your site is really the one that should be shown for some of these queries. And I realize that's kind of tricky in the sense that my usual advice is to say, well, you should make sure that your site should be ranked number one by far. And it sounds like, in your position, you're saying, well, the number one rankings are kind of OK, and we agree with those. We would just like to be kind of on the first page as well. And I think that's kind of a tricky balance.
So one thing I would recommend, though, is to look at what some of the other people around in the SEO area around EAT have been writing about. There are lots of really good, I think, case studies or examples of sites that worked hard to improve their expertise, authority, and trust in terms of how they present their content and in terms of how they create the content, how they have things like author profiles, all of this. That might be something where you could look into it. So I don't know all of the names offhand, and I feel if I mentioned some of them, then the other ones that I forget would be upset. But there is some really good SEOs that have been working in this area, have been working with medical sites on this topic, and I would try to search out their content and look at some of those examples. I can't guarantee that if you improve your site in that regard, that, suddenly, our algorithms will say, oh, this is really a fantastic site. But it sounds like you're touching on the medical area there, and it definitely makes sense, at least for users, to make sure that you have all of those signals as well, that you're really saying, well, this is not something that, I don't know, some kid dreamt up in his basement, but, rather, we spent a long time researching this, and here is like the research, and here are the behind it and kind of presenting it in a way that is trustworthy for users as well. And then sometimes we can pick that up for searches as well.
So yea, if you are in the YMYL and health space, your site needs to be more EAT. Whereas sites that are basic e-commerce sites need to worry less about EAT.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
