Google Search More Critical Of E-Commerce Sites That Sell Medical Equipment

Google's John Mueller said in the Friday webmaster hangout said that "especially for medical topics, anything that's a little bit more critical" Google is more selective and critical over. He said he would see an "medical e-commerce site kind of falling into that category."

In short, Google will apply a higher level of scrutiny on sites with medical information, including e-commerce sites that sell medical equipment, when deciding where to rank that site. You need more signals of E-A-T (whatever that might mean) when trying to rank for medical queries - be it informational or transactional.

John said this at the 20:47 mark into the video, he said:

Especially for medical topics, anything that's a little bit more critical. I would also keep in mind everything around the so-called EAT, so the expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness. And to kind of make sure that the site that you're providing represents like a really high standard and that the content is of really high quality that it's put together by really people who understand what they're doing. That it's not something kind of like run out of a garage kind of a site. And that's something that I think especially for for the medical area is super critical. We we have a blog post that goes into some of that specific for the core algorithm updates that we did I think last year at some point. Where it goes through a bunch of questions that you can ask yourself and it also links to the raters guidelines that talk a little bit about the these kind of sites.

So we call them YMYL, your money your life, sites and I would see kind of a medical e-commerce site kind of falling into that category as well. And there are various things that you can think about there. And I don't think there's like one simple trick to make it look official you really have to make sure that you actually do have kind of that official touch.

I like how Glenn Gabe summed it up on Twitter:

Run a health/medical e-commerce site? Via @johnmu: Our algorithms are more critical for health/medical topics, so def. keep E-A-T in mind. Make sure the site represents a very high standard. i.e. High-quality content created by actual medical professionals https://t.co/aiMrdN9Hl7 pic.twitter.com/Nuz3K7Pi6o

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) March 27, 2021

Also read the QRG & think about how your site would be perceived by quality raters. Make sure the site is backed up by trustworthy sources. It's NOT just about high-quality content. Make sure it's written by doctors, created by medical professionals, etc. https://t.co/aiMrdN9Hl7 pic.twitter.com/3iOjy949wB

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) March 27, 2021

I remember when I kind of labeled one of these updates the medic update and I got a lot of heat around it but as we continue to learn more, I think I was pretty close on that...

Anyway, here is the video embed at the start time:

Forum discussion at Twitter.