To me, when you see this page relative to the pages from Cancer.net and the CDC is painfully obvious why this page got the ranking boost.
The Moral of the Story: Again, I think what has transpired here is painfully obvious. Google has looked past the immediate authority of some of the pages here and has more heavily considered how relevant the content is to the query. As with the cases I have shown earlier, Google is rewarding content that speaks in a highly-focused way to the intent and nature of the query.
What Was the December 2020 Core Update About?
Are you expecting a one-liner that definitively characterizes the December 2020 update? You’re not going to get one from me.
This update, like any other, certainly included a whole plethora of different "algorithmic considerations” and themes.
That said, from where I sit, while other core updates did things to help put the most authoritative content at the top of the SERP, this update seemed to me as being more about pure relevancy.
Updates of the past have done things to weed out sites using a marketing tone within YMYL informational content or have rewarded sites that put the right content ahead of their affiliate pursuits. All of that, while part of relevancy, speaks more to a need for something authoritative at the top of the SERP.
Seeing so many .gov pages drop in favor of pages from sites like Healthline or WebMD seems to point to the update rewarding relevancy to the nth degree. Perhaps Google felt as if it had "authority” at the top of the SERP in order, paving the way for a focus on relevance? Who knows. All I can say is that I personally have not seen such a strong focus on pure relevance on page one of the SERP.
Content Creation Takeaways
Practically speaking, I think the era of broadly reaching pages is quickly coming to an end. I think that has been the case for a while. However, seeing Google pull pages off page one of the SERP because they deal with multiple subtopics is a new level, at least for me. It shows that you have to create content that talks about one topic and one topic only (unless the keyword reflects a specific desire for a broader survey of a topic).
I wonder if the idea of having one ultimate guide so as to win numerous keywords should be replaced with multiple posts where each post deals with one specific topic or subtopic. (If you do that, please don’t create thin content, that is not what I am advocating for.)
It’s a rather logical concept. As Google gets better at understanding content it is going to prefer highly-focused content around a specific topic to that which is of a more broad nature unless the query specifically shows intent for a general survey of a topic.