As you know, Google confirmed the Google update that touched base on August 1st - early yesterday morning. We have a lot of people claiming to see both massive declines in Google ranking and traffic, as well as people claiming to see massive increases in rankings and traffic. That being said, Google will not tell us what changed outside of saying their typical "broad core update" and there is nothing you can do to "fix" your site if it saw a decline.
Trust me, I tried to get that information from Google but they gave me the same line they gave us with the March core update and April core update. I covered what these core updates mean previously, so read about that there. We cover many Google updates - most go unconfirmed - so I am happy Google confirms some of them. I do wish they gave webmasters and SEOs actionable advice outside of just "make your site better."
That being said, I want to collect winners and losers, anonymously (if you prefer) and then eye ball and analyze them manually to see if I can find any patterns. It might be a wasted exercise, but heck, I will give it a try. I won't share your details with Google, unless you are willing to tick off the box that you want to share your data. But if I can review enough sites, analyze them, maybe I can find some patterns - since Google won't tell us anything.
Please complete this form below or on this page and I will review the data and get back to you with what I find:
This week we released a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. Our guidance about such updates remains the same as in March, as we covered here: https://t.co/uPlEdSLHoX
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) August 1, 2018
Please tell your colleagues to fill out this survey too - for each and every site impacted.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Update: Just a quick update, I reviewed a ton of sites and I am naming it the Google Medic Update - it had a huge impact on the health/medical space - more at this page.
