Google Update March 2019 – Florida 2

In the rollercoaster world of search marketing, we’ve had news of a new update labelled “Florida 2.” This new update, which has been called a big and important broad core update has caused quite the shake-up from reports so far, so what do we know?

Well, so far… That it’s official, as announced by Google Search Liaison.

Like with any update, we’ve seen normal fluctuations where there have been positional gains and losses.

However, initial signs here at Bronco HQ are telling us that this is likely related to the flurry of updates that occurred in early August, those including the so-called E-A-T update and Medic (YMYL) update, which Digital Media Marketing Manager Hannah covered here, back in late August.

To note, the first core update related to this saga took place back in March 2018, which was confirmed by Google Search Liaison and took place to improve search quality.

When the August updates took place, Google’s Search Liaison then followed up with a new tweet, announcing another core update that was taking place. This referenced the March update that took place earlier in the year, continuing the chain of larger “core” updates.

This flurry of updates back in August, as noted by many, shook up the health, eCommerce and business sectors; primarily those in the medical niche, where the likes of references and trust are key. To give some idea of how big this update was, here’s a snapshot of the MyProtein (a leading sports supplement company) SearchMetrics graph:

Graph taken from https://www.searchmetrics.com/

Obviously SearchMetrics is yet to update post-Florida 2, which may show a different story, but for now, we can see that they saw a huge 80% drop in visibility in August last year, which is quite significant.

So just how big, is big?

BIG.

Roger Montti mentioned in his post on Search Engine Journal that “this is one of the biggest updates in years.” Which can be expected given the impact we’ve seen here at Bronco.

Having worked tirelessly to make sure all clients websites are clean, structured and trusted over the past few months, we’ve seen some seriously vast improvements which are superb, especially with those that were heavily impacted with the initial updates back in August.

Take the following, for example. This is an eCommerce client of ours who works in the health and fitness niche. This is how things look positionally for them as of this morning:

Taken from Rankactive

Additionally, here’s someone in the travel industry, a highly competitive niche. Here, we can see some superb growth in top 5 and top 3 positions over the last 1-2 days:

Taken from Rankactive

What’s the talk in the industry so far?

Well, as usual, there’s a lot of chatter within The Webmaster World (discussion here – https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4938447.htm), but here are a few snapshots. Credit to Danbob and Sofie.

Many users have started to see movements in websites that were previously hit back in August by the notorious E.A.T update:

This has been confirmed again by another user here:

We’d love to hear about your experience with this recent update so be sure to leave a comment below.

If you’ve been badly affected by the recent update, be sure to give us a shout, we’d be happy to take a look and give a quick assessment.

Here are all the references used (plus a couple more to keep an eye on):

https://www.seroundtable.com/march-12-13-google-search-ranking-algorithm-update-27249.html
https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1105842166788587520
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-update-florida-2/297973/#close
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4938447.htm
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/google-update-florida-2-broad-core-update.1103342/
https://www.bronco.co.uk/our-ideas/content-what-can-we-take-from-the-google-medic-update/

Be sure to check out:

Rankactive – Keyword Tracking
https://rankactive.com/

Searchmetrics SEO and Content Marketing Platform
https://www.searchmetrics.com/