Google Medic Update (August 2018 Core Update): What Changed and How to Recover

The Google Medic update is the nickname for the August 2018 core update, a broad core algorithm update confirmed by Google’s Search Liaison account on 1 August 2018. It earned the name because health and medical sites were heavily represented among the sites affected, although Google never said it targeted health sites. Google published no completion date, and its advice was the same as for every core update: there is no quick fix, only better content.

For the updates before and after it, see my full list of Google algorithm updates.

What the Medic update changed

Google’s announcement was brief: "This week we released a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year." It repeated its standard advice: "There’s no ‘fix’ for pages that may perform less well other than to remain focused on building great content."

The reason this update is remembered differently from March and April 2018 is who it hit. When Barry Schwartz surveyed more than 325 affected domains, nearly half were health and medical sites. Other "Your Money or Your Life" (YMYL) sites, covering topics such as finance and safety where poor information can harm people, were also heavily represented. That pattern gave the update its nickname, widely attributed to Barry Schwartz.

The update is often discussed alongside E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness), the concept from Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines. Google did not describe the update in those terms. The connection comes from the SEO community, which saw that YMYL sites with weak evidence of expertise and trust seemed to lose most. I think the link is reasonable to explore, but it is an interpretation, not a Google statement.

Timeline

Who was affected

By the survey figures, nearly half of more than 325 affected domains were health or medical sites, and other YMYL sites were heavily represented. The kinds of sites that, as reported by SEOs, tended to struggle included:

• Health content sites publishing medical advice without named, qualified authors.
• Supplement and alternative health stores whose product pages made health claims without support.
• Finance and legal information sites with anonymous or generic content.
• Sites with little information about who ran them or how to contact them.

Remember that not every affected site was in health. Google described a broad core update, and it said such updates also lift pages that were previously under-rewarded.

How to tell if the Medic update hit your site

For this update, the useful diagnostic angle is topic sensitivity: did the losses concentrate on pages where accuracy and trust matter most?

1. Compare 18 to 31 July 2018 with 8 to 21 August 2018. Then check late September and early October, because some sites saw further movement in the unconfirmed aftershocks.
2. Tag pages by risk. Label each page as YMYL (health, money, legal, safety) or non-YMYL. If YMYL pages lost far more, the Medic pattern fits.
3. Check who wrote the losing pages. Are they credited to a named person with relevant qualifications or experience? Or to "admin" or nobody?
4. Look at what replaced you. Check who now ranks for your lost queries and how they show expertise and trust. That tells you the bar on those queries.
5. Rule out technical causes such as indexing errors or tracking changes around 1 August.

How to recover from the Medic update

Google’s guidance was its standard core update advice: focus on overall content quality, and audit pages that lost visibility against its quality questions on originality, expertise, trustworthiness and presentation. On top of that, many SEOs focused on demonstrating expertise and trust for YMYL topics. That is industry practice rather than specific guidance from Google, but it follows naturally from the pattern of who was affected.

Do this in order: fix site-wide trust signals first (about page, authorship, policies), then rework the YMYL pages that lost the most valuable traffic, then the rest. Recovery, when it happens, typically shows up at a later core update after the improvements are recognised. My on-page optimisation services cover authorship, sourcing and content rework, and reputation building sits in off-page SEO.

Is it still relevant today?

Yes. The August 2018 update is part of the ongoing series of broad core updates, and Google’s later guidance on helpful, reliable content reflects the same concerns that the Medic pattern exposed. If you publish health, finance or legal content, the bar for showing who you are and why readers should trust you has only risen since 2018.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Search Engine Land: Google confirms broad search algorithm update
• Keywords Everywhere: Medic update
• Amsive: timeline of Google updates in late 2018
• Sistrix: Google updates and algorithm changes

If you run a health, finance or legal site and your traffic fell after a core update, request a free audit. My SEO audit reviews authorship, sourcing and trust signals on your most important pages and gives you a clear order of work.