Do you eat what you eat?

[kexej28769@nongnue]

Comparing the first two columns, Verywell Health immediately stands out. While the site ended the 7-day period down 52.3%, it was only 200% higher than its July low. It turns out that the site was sitting pretty low during the first week of July and then saw a jump in SERP share. Interestingly, Verywell Family and Verywell Fit also appear on our list of top 30 losers, suggesting there’s a deeper story here.

In short, it’s easy to spot a sampling of health and turkey number data sites on this list, including big players like Prevention and LIVESTRONG. Whether this list represents the entire world of sites hit by the algorithm update is impossible to say, but our data certainly seems to echo what others are seeing.

There is some speculation that this update is tied to recent changes made to Google's Quality Rater Guidelines. While it is highly unlikely that manual grading based on the new guidelines will lead to major changes in rankings (especially so quickly), it is entirely plausible that the guideline updates and this algorithm update share a common philosophical view on quality and Google's latest thinking on the subject.

Mary Haynes’ post, which theorizes the YMYL connection, also raises the idea that Google may be looking more closely at EAT signals (Experience, Authority, and Trust). While certainly an interesting theory, I can’t adequately address this question with this data set. The decline in sites like Fortune, IGN, and Android Central raises some interesting questions about authenticity and trust outside of the health and wellness vertical, but I’m hesitant to speculate based on just a handful of outliers.