Is "Author Rank," User Comments Driving Losses for YMYL Sites?
-
Hi, folks!
So, our company publishes 50+ active, disease-specific news and perspectives websites -- mostly for rare diseases. We are also tenacious content creators: between news, columns, resource pages, and other content, we produce 1K+ pieces of original content across our network. Authors are either PhD scientists or patients/caregivers. All of our sites use the same design.
We were big winners with the August Medic update in 2018 and subsequent update in September/October. However, the Medic update in March and de-indexing bug in April were huge losers for us across our monetized sites (about 10 in total). We've seen some recovery with this early June update, but also some further losses. It's a mixed bag.
Take a look at this attached MOZ chart, which shows the jumps and falls around the various Medic updates. The pattern is very similar on many of our sites.
As per JT Williamson's stellar article on EAT, I feel like we've done a good job in meeting those criteria, which has left we wondering what isn't jiving with the new core updates. I have two theories I wanted to run past you all:
1. Are user comments on YMYL sites problematic for Google now?
I was thinking that maybe user comments underneath health news and perspectives articles might be concerning on YMYL sites now. On one hand, a healthy commenting community indicates an engaged user base and speaks to the trust and authority of the content. On the other hand, while the AUTHOR of the article might be a PhD researcher or a patient advocate, the people commenting -- how qualified are they? What if they are spouting off crazy ideas? Could Google's new update see user comments such as these as degrading the trust/authority/expertise of the page? The examples I linked to above have a good number of user comments. Could these now be problematic?
2. Is Google "Author Rank" finally happening, sort of?
From what I've read about EAT -- particularly for YMYL sites -- it's important that authors have “formal expertise” and, according to Williamson, "an expert in the field or topic." He continues that the author's expertise and authority, "is informed by relevant credentials, reviews, testimonials, etc. " Well -- how is Google substantiating this? We no longer have the authorship markup, but is the algorithm doing its due diligence on authors in some more sophisticated way?
It makes me wonder if we're doing enough to present our author's credentials on our articles, for example. Take a look -- Magdalena is a PhD researcher, but her user profile doesn't appear at the bottom of the article, and if you click on her name, it just takes you to her author category page (how WordPress'ish).
Even worse -- our resource pages don't even list the author.
Anyhow, I'd love to get some feedback from the community on these ideas. I know that Google has said there's nothing to do to "fix" these downturns, but it'd sure be nice to get some of this traffic back!
Thanks!
-
We have informational and retail websites where we put a LOT of effort into our content. We are trying to produce the best-on-the-web. All of this content is created and edited by people who have both formal education and deep experience in the content area.
There is no way that we would allow user-generated content on these websites - even though we are not in a YMYL (your money, your life) type of industry. User-generated content can be excellent, but a high percentage of it is deeply flawed and far, far below our editorial standards. We have experience people in our own industry who want to submit content but we reject it because it is below our quality standards.
The above is why we don't allow user-generated content based upon editorial standards.
I have read information published by Google where they say that a vigorous comment section can be a sign of a quality website. But, I believe that applies to content types where opinion, kibitzing and prattle are acceptable. However, medical sites (and other types of websites) are an entirely different matter. Low quality content can result in problems for the reader - even if it is in a comments section. Nobody knows exactly how Google views this, but I am going to protect my visitors from BS and poor-quality information.
-
Many thanks, EGOL. I agree that the author profiles need to be improved for sure.
What do you think about the possibility that user-generated comments on a health news site are a concern for Google, re: readers reading comments that are not created by established experts? Could user comments now be a negative ranking factor for health sites?
-
Magdalena's example shows that you understand the problem. Implementation might significantly improve your situation. And just as important... implementation will enable your visitors to see Magdalena's credentials. Do it for your visitors even if Google is not a concern. Your authors also deserve to have this work done.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
New Google Update - weird ranking
Hi I wanted to get your thoughts on this keyword ranking. This page - https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/albatross-heavy-duty-office-chairs-24-stone is now ranking for heavy duty office chair 30 stone We don't mention 30 in the content anywhere, apart from the USPs at the top of the page - could this be it?! I don't know how to change this, or I guess Google is still figuring things out and maybe this will drop off? Love to get some thoughts on this! Becky
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Dramatic drop in SEO rankings after recovering from hacking
A few months ago my client's website was hacked which created over 20,000+ spammy links on the site. I dealt with removing the malware and got google to remove the malware warning shortly within a week of the hacking. Then started the long process to do 301 redirects and disavowing links under Webmaster tools over these few months. The hacking only caused a slight drop in rankings at the time. Now just as of last week the site had a dramatic drop in rankings. When doing a keyword search I noticed the homepage doesn't even get listed on Google Maps and for Google Search instead the inner pages like the Contact Us page show up instead of the homepage. Does anyone have any insight to the sudden drop happening now and why the inner pages are ranking higher than the homepage now?
Algorithm Updates | | FPK0 -
SEO Value for Visitor Comments on WordPress Blog
Hi all, I was wondering what SEO value, if any, there is from user comments on my WordPress blog. A lot of them seem to be from bots or incredibly generic. So I guess, aside from possibly adding to the 'trust' factor and the possibility of facilitating a potential relationship with another relevant website, is there any value here? I can't wait to hear from you all!
Algorithm Updates | | maxcarnage0 -
How seasonal would you expect organic on a b2b site to be?
I have a client who has a b2b site catering to a white collar information market. Looking back in G/A, it appears that they've never had a good organic search Summer, but have made plenty of YOY gains.This Summer is a little better than past Summers. Personally, I have read about people who take Summer vacations. Mostly in France. This is a U.S. site and U.S. traffic catering to business executives. I can see it in the parking lot of the downtown office building I work in... fewer cars after Memorial Day and more cars after Labor Day. How seasonal would you expect that kind of organic search traffic to be, say from April vs July? Would prefer answers from direct B2B experience, rather than guesses. But, if a guess is all you have, I will gladly accept that! Thanks... Darcy
Algorithm Updates | | 945010 -
Why Google loves MOZ for "Directory Submmission Service" ?
I have just for "directory submission service" in Google.com ( Geo Location USA ). I got two results from moz community for same thread. Does Google don't understand 301 redirect from seomoz.org to moz.com ? What about Domain Clustering ? PFA: SERP Screenshot kn8evtt.png
Algorithm Updates | | SanketPatel0 -
Sudden Page Rank Drop for Weight Loss Camp
My site BalanceME.com has been performing really well and continually climbs more and more but in the last 7 days we have had a drop this last week. We went from #2 for weight loss camp to #6, and even further on other terms. It is mid May and I cannot find any other explanation for the sudden drop. I am hoping someone could give me some sort if idea what could possibly be the answer. Recently we have had two press releases go out, target for keywords, and also installed images that navigate to new pages on the site. There have been few additions to the site, and nothing can explain the drop. Other companies in our group have not had issues with recent drops, and we use the same practices with the other organizations. Thank you for your time
Algorithm Updates | | FVdBeuken0 -
Microsites for Local Search / Location Based sites?
Referring to the webinar on SEOMoz about Local Search that was presented by Nifty Marketing (http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/be-where-local-is-going). I have a question my client asked us regarding why we broke out their locations into microsites, and not just used subfolders. So here are the details: The client has one main website in real estate. They have 5 branches. Each branch covers about a 50 mile radius. Each branch also covers a specialized niche in their areas. When we created the main site we incorporated the full list of listings on the main site; We then created a microsite for each branch, who has a page of listings (same as the main site) but included the canonical link back to the main site. The reason we created a microsite for each branch is that the searches for each branch are very specific to their location and we felt that having only a subfolder would take away from the relevancy of the site and it's location. Now, the location sites rank on the first page for their very competitive, location based searches. The client, as we encourage, has had recommendations from others saying this is hurting them, not helping them. My question is this... How can this hurt them when the microsites include a home page specific to the location, a contact page that is optimized with location specific information (maps, text, directions, NAP, call to action, etc.), a page listing area information about communities/events/etc., a page of the location's agents, and of course real estate listings (with canonical back to the main site)? Am I misunderstanding? I understood that if the main site could support the separation of a section into a microsite, this would help local search. Local search is the bread and butter of this client's conversions. AND if you tell me we should go back to having subfolders for each location, won't that seriously hurt our already excellent rankings? The client sees significant visitors from their placement of the location URLs. THANKS!
Algorithm Updates | | gXeSEO
Darlene1 -
Another Domain ranking instead of my Domain
Hi My Domain name is Replicahause.net, 2 weeks ago my server had an outage for 3 days and my rankings dissappeared in google entirely, however i also noticed that when i typed in my domain name "replicahause" or "replicahause.net" , i would see abhishekyadav.com appearing on #1 in google which does a 301 into Replicahause.net I was able to convince the owner of Abhishekyadav to remove the 301 but my site Replicahause.net's Rankings still does not appear to have come back to google, is there something i'm missing here ? We were ranked #1 to #10 for at least 40 keywords, they've just seemed to dissappeard after the server downtime we had and the 301 from AbhishekYadav.com Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | jansimon0