A analysis from Amsive found that user-generated content aggregators and platforms were losing search visibility in the United States after Google March Core Updatewhile proprietary brand sites, government domains, and content creators won.
Amsive’s Lily Ray examined over 2,000 domains using SISTRIX Visibility Index data and ranked them with Google Product Taxonomy tags via the DataForSEO API. The analysis compared visibility from March 27 (deployment start) to April 8 (completion).
Amsive sees this trend as a correction of overindexed UGC and aggregator content, favoring “the company that owns the thing” rather than “the platform people use to talk about the thing.”
For the sake of transparency, SISTRIX measures keyword visibility rather than organic traffic. Other factors can also influence visibility.
YouTube’s decline led to all the losers
YouTube lost 567 viewability points, the largest drop of a single domain in Amsive’s dataset. Ray notes that this is about 30% larger than the 435 point drop Wikipedia recorded over the December Main Update.
She adds that YouTube’s visibility has returned to its level before the sharp rise in early March, and not to a new low.
Reddit lost 64 points, Instagram 48 and X 46.
Category templates: travel, jobs and health
In the travel sector, OTAs and aggregators have lost ground while hotel chains have gained. TripAdvisor fell 45 points, Yelp 33, Expedia 33. Hilton rose 4, Hotels.com 3.6, Trivago 3.2. NPS.gov gained 9.9, airport websites saw significant gains.
In employment and education, job site aggregators have declined while employer career pages and government sites have increased. Indeed, it lost 18, ZipRecruiter 13. BLS.gov gained 5.4, USAJobs.gov 16%, Disney Careers 59%, CVS Health Careers 45%.
Healthcare showed division, with GoodRx up 55% (9.5 points), NIH.gov +9.3, but Cleveland Clinic down 12, WebMD 9, Mayo Clinic 6.
Google appears to favor authoritative sources over consumer health publishers, although this is interpretative.
Rebounds Complicate Loser Data
Ray notes that some big losers recovered shortly after the update. Reddit and Indeed have seen a rebound in visibility, indicating that the losers list shows the update window but not where the domains have settled.
Link to previous research
The results are consistent with a zyppy analysis of more than 400 sites, released earlier this month. Cyrus Shepard’s analysis showed that sites offering products or services that get things done tend to generate organic traffic.
Ray cites Shepard’s data as supporting this, despite differing methodologies: Shepard measured correlations with third-party traffic estimates, while Amsive tracked SISTRIX visibility during an update window.
A SISTRIX analysis German data shows similar results: online stores and public service sites lost ground, while official websites and brands held up better.
Why it matters
The data does not confirm what Google changed or why. This shows that the same pattern emerged in the areas of travel, employment, health, finance and entertainment.
Platforms that aggregate, list, or comment on other people’s content have lost visibility, while sites that created or own the content have gained visibility. This is a model worth checking against your own data from the same window.
Looking to the future
Google didn’t detail what changed in the March core update. The deployment window was March 27 to April 8and Amsive’s data should be read as a visibility snapshot of this period.
Featured Image: Romain Samborskyi/Shutterstock
