Is "Author Rank," User Comments Driving Losses for YMYL Sites?

[Michael_Nace]

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!

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[EGOL]

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.

[Michael_Nace]

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?

[EGOL]

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.