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On June 23rd we reported about a big Google algorithm update. It seemed pretty big based on the chatter and the tracking tools. But it was not as big as a core update. After about a week, we are now seeing reports from folks in the SEO community that this update may have had a stronger influence on governmental web sites.
Should we name it the Google Federal Update or something like that? Probably not, it was not the only category impacted. But a lot of SEOs and tools are showing governmental web sites impacted by this update.
Here are tweets from Lily Ray, Glenn Gabe, MJ Cachón, Juan Gonzalez, Mordy Obserstein and others showing the impact this update had on some sites in the governmental sector:
Some huge spikes in SEO visibility among government websites, health organizations, etc. in the past couple of days, according to @sistrix.
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) June 29, 2020
I'll have to dig into the data more, but curious if others are seeing something similar. pic.twitter.com/9IHmhhCtrM
Interesting - Spain also saw big increases in visibility among Government sites and similar high-authority organizations in the past week.
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) June 30, 2020
(See my post from yesterday for the U.S. index) https://t.co/DYjsoPnOUE
Curious if last week's update was tied at all to what's happening in the U.S. with coronavirus.
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) June 30, 2020
Among the sites seeing increases:
- CDC, FDA, DEA, Dept. of Health
- official government sites in cities/states where cases are climbing (FL, Broward, Austin)
- renowned hospitals pic.twitter.com/e3j5QrgxqX
The same in Germany: pic.twitter.com/EcfM9MnlFh
— Juan González (@JuanGonzalez_JP) June 30, 2020
And just to clarify, many different types of sites were impacted last week, not just government sites. But it does seem like whatever Google rolled out impacted some government sites heavily. The gains in visibility were big (across tools). E.g. cdc, fda, ftc, and many more. https://t.co/GQincBwCZB
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) June 30, 2020
Here are some examples of changes on government sites. First up, https://t.co/YVm2KkPWNU surged in visibility starting on 6/23 (when I noticed other sites I'm helping seeing movement starting around 6/22). Here is the before and after for two queries. FDA shot up to #1 for both: pic.twitter.com/P6xLXdCeCu
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) June 30, 2020
And just to show a site that's not a government site, here is a company I've been helping that has done a ton of work over the past 4-6 months. They were hit hard by a previous update. Just jumped by 42% starting on 6/22. So something relatively big rolled out last week. pic.twitter.com/vqaBtpLSUT
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) June 30, 2020
It's def a real boost.... it's also very surprising that for a lot of queries it hasn't even put them on page one (talking queries like "weight loss drugs"_ pic.twitter.com/RyYeccNd8q
— Mordy Oberstein (@MordyOberstein) June 30, 2020
Side note, https://t.co/9LW8TZk34A was also one of the sites seeing a huge surge starting on 6/22. Here's a before and after for a query where the white house site now ranks #1 with the featured snippet. There are some crazy jumps (and queries) in the data... https://t.co/bAz2Cv8fbR pic.twitter.com/0DNbos5WAC
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) July 1, 2020
If you look at the SEMRush sensor and filter by the sector of government, watch how the spike increases a bit more compared to all categories:
Again, governmental web sites were not the only sites impacted by the June 23rd unconfirmed update. But maybe Google pushed something to give a bit more of a boost for governmental web sites during the pandemic?
Forum discussion at Twitter.
