An analysis from Amsive found that aggregators and user-generated content platforms lost US search visibility after Google’s March major update, while first-party product sites, government domains, and content creators gained.
Lily Ray from Amsive tested over 2,000 domains using SISTRIX Visibility Index data and categorized them by Google Product Taxonomy tags with the DataForSEO API. The analysis compared visibility on March 27 (start of rollout) versus April 8 (completion).
Amsive sees this pattern as a fix for over-indexed UGC content and an aggregator, favoring “the company that owns the thing” instead of “the platform that people use to talk about that thing.”
To be clear, SISTRIX measures keyword visibility rather than organic traffic. Other factors can affect visibility.
YouTube’s Decline Leads to All Losers
YouTube lost 567 view points, the biggest single site drop in Amsive’s dataset. Ray notes that this is about 30% greater than Wikipedia’s 435 point drop during the December baseline update.
He added context that YouTube visibility has fallen back to its level before the outbreak in early March, not to new lows.
Reddit lost 64 points, Instagram lost 48, and X dropped 46.
Class Patterns: Travel, Activities, and Health
In travel, OTAs and aggregators have lost ground while hotel chains have gained. TripAdvisor dropped 45 points, Yelp 33, Expedia 33. Hilton rose 4, Hotels.com 3.6, Trivago 3.2. NPS.gov scored a 9.9, with airport websites seeing significant gains.
In jobs and education, job board aggregators declined while employer job pages and government websites increased. Indeed lost 18, ZipRecruiter 13. BLS.gov gained 5.4, USAJobs.gov 16%, Disney Careers 59%, CVS Health Careers 45%.
Health showed a split, with GoodRx up 55% (9.5 points), NIH.gov +9.3, but Cleveland Clinic down 12, WebMD 9, Mayo Clinic 6.
Google seems to favor authoritative sources over consumer health publishers, although this is interpretable.
Bounce-Backs Are Complex for Loser Data
Ray notes that some of the great losers recovered shortly after the revival. Reddit and Indeed saw the visibility back, indicating that the missing list shows the update window but not when the domains are stable.
Correspondence to Previous Research
The findings are consistent with Zyppy’s analysis of more than 400 sites, published earlier this month. Cyrus Shepard’s analysis showed sites that offer products or services that enable the completion of work tend to gain organic traffic.
Ray cites Shepard’s data as supportive, despite different methods: Shepard measured correlation with third-party traffic metrics, while Amsive tracked SISTRIX visibility during the review window.
A SISTRIX ANALYSIS of German data found similar results: online shops and resource sites lost ground, while official websites and brands managed to resist.
Why This Matters
The data doesn’t confirm what or why Google changed. What it shows is that in all areas of travel, work, health, finance and entertainment, the same trend emerged.
Platforms that aggregate, list, or comment on other people’s content lose visibility, while sites that create or own the content gain visibility. That’s a pattern that should be checked against your data in the same window.
Looking Forward
Google didn’t elaborate on what changed in the March update. The release window was March 27 to April 8, and Amsive’s data should be read as one visual snapshot from that time.
Featured Image: Roman Samborsky/Shutterstock
