How have Google’s core updates been affecting travel insurance sites

Who doesn’t love travelling? Exploring new destinations, tasting different cuisines, and escaping your everyday routine can be a great way to recharge. However, when you do go on holiday abroad, it’s important to take precautions. Even on the most well-planned trips, you can run into unexpected problems, such as having your phone stolen or being involved in a car accident.

According to a Forbes survey, 48% of Brits take out travel insurance every time they go abroad. By choosing the right one, you can make sure you’re covered should anything happen.

In our previous blog, we analysed the winners and losers of the nutrition industry. This blog will instead focus on travel insurance companies, analysing recent shifts in SEO visibility and the potential reasons for this.

Winners of the travel insurance industry

AllClear Travel

The graph below shows the mobile SEO visibility for AllClear Travel Insurance over the past five years, along with markers highlighting all the Google algorithm updates.

As shown on the graph, a noticeable rise in visibility can be seen around mid 2021. From 2022 to 2023, visibility fluctuates but doesn’t reflect much of the impacts of Google’s updates in that period. A significant increase in visibility can be seen after the November 2023 Core update (6), which indicates strong growth, suggesting that the effects of this update were positive for the website. The site also seems to have been positively impacted by the March 2024 Core update (7) when it saw a spike in visibility, and, most recently, the site saw its biggest visibility ever after the August 2024 core update (9).

Analysing the website, it’s clear that it meets some of Google’s most important guidelines. As mentioned before, the highest positive impact that the website had was seen after the March 2024 core update. This update focused on reducing low-quality, unoriginal content in search results. Looking at AllClear’s website, we can see that the content is up to date. The blog section particularly is well-optimised, offering user-friendly content on relevant industry topics, with a logical structure and effective use of internal linking. These factors contribute to a strong SEO foundation and likely supported the site’s improved search performance post-update.

Therefore, the site’s visibility likely improved due to a combination of factors, such as content quality to better address user intent, a strong backlink profile, and optimised technical SEO elements (such as page speed and mobile friendliness).

To check this, we tested AllClear Travel Insurance’s website on Google PageSpeed insights and they passed the assessment for mobile speed:

Just Travel Cover

Just Travel Cover Travel Insurance’s visibility has grown a lot in the past five years as reflected in the graph below:

The visibility graph shows an increase in the visibility index from late 2019 to October 2024. Initially, visibility fluctuated at a low level, with minor peaks until around early 2022. From mid 2022, visibility started to increase, accelerating in early 2023. The growth intensified in mid 2023, with several spikes indicating valuable gains in visibility. The highest increase can be seen from mid 2023 onwards, reaching the highest visibility level just recently in October 2024. This suggests the site has significantly improved its search visibility, likely due to effective SEO strategies or content, leading to increased online presence and search performance. Moreover, some of the improvement on their recent visibility can be attributed to Google’s August 2024 core update (9) where they experienced a big spike in visibility. Google’s August 2024 core update was designed to improve search results by focusing on quality and relevance.

However, we have also tested the website using Google PageSpeed insights to check for speed, and the website failed the test for mobile speed.

Therefore, even though the website has improved its visibility a lot in the past few years, it still needs to do some work to improve its site speed. Site speed is a critical factor for user experience as slow-loading pages can lead to higher bounce rates and lower conversion rates.

This is particularly true for mobile users, who often access sites on slower connections. Mobile site speed not only helps with user experience and increases engagement, it can also improve search engine rankings as search engines consider page speed a key ranking factor, especially for mobile search results.

Losers within the travel insurance industry

Love it Cover it

Featuring our losers in the travel insurance industry, it’s Love it Cover It Travel Insurance.

As we can see, LoveItCoverIt’s visibility has fluctuated a lot in the past few years, showing significant dips around mid 2020 and early 2021 which indicates potential search visibility issues during that period. There is a small increase in visibility starting from late 2021 and peaking around mid 2023, suggesting improved visibility and possibly better SEO efforts.

However, after seeing its biggest visibility ever around early 2024, the website saw a big drop after the March 2024 core update (7). This decline suggests that the website may not have aligned well with the update’s changes, affecting its SEO performance and search visibility. And again, after the August 2024 core update (9), the website saw some fluctuation followed by a drop in visibility.

Again, we have tested the website’s speed using Google PageSpeed tool:

The website has passed the core web vitals assessment for the mobile version of the site even though it has seen a drop in visibility recently. Passing the Core Web Vitals test indicates good page experience (such as loading speed, and interactivity), but it doesn’t guarantee high search rankings. Core updates also prioritise other factors, such as content quality, relevance, and backlink profile.

Go Skippy Travel Insurance

Our second site featuring our losers is Go Skippy Travel Insurance.

Go Skippy Travel Insurance has also seen a lot of fluctuation in the past five years. The website experienced significant growth in visibility up until late 2021, with multiple peaks, suggesting effective SEO strategies during that period. However, starting from early 2022, there has been a gradual decline in visibility.

The most notable drop occurred around early 2023, followed by fluctuations, indicating instability in search rankings. This period likely reflects the impact of various algorithm updates.

Despite some peaks, visibility has not fully recovered to its previous highs, suggesting the website could be experiencing ongoing issues with search rankings. The trend in late 2024 shows some stabilisation, but the overall performance is lower than earlier peak levels which could suggest possible issues with content relevance, competition, or SEO strategies that need addressing.

Once again, we have tested the website using Google PageSpeed tool:

The website has also passed the Core Web Vitals test which reflects good page speed performance. However, visibility depends on more than just page experience sp the drop could be due to factors like content quality, relevance to current user search intent, competition, or shifts in Google’s algorithm that emphasise different ranking criteria.

Conclusion

All of the websites analysed have seen some issues that needed to be fixed in order to improve their visibility and search rankings. As we have seen, passing the Core Web Vitals test alone is not enough for sustained SEO and visibility success.

While technical aspects like loading speed and page stability are important, other factors such as content quality, backlink profile, keyword relevance, and user intent alignment play important roles in visibility and rankings.

To improve search performance, websites should adopt an SEO strategy that includes optimising content, improving domain authority, and optimising for any algorithmic impacts they may cause. Regularly updating content to meet search intent and monitoring changes in competitors’ strategies can also help maintain or improve visibility in the face of Google’s algorithm updates.