What’s Google Up To With Product Reviews?

There has been some ripples throughout the SEO community hinting of further algorithm updates post Google’s Product Review update early April 2021.

(article source: seroundtable.com)

For a quick refresher, this update is geared toward rewarding product reviews that share more in-depth research, opposed to ‘thin’ reviews that may only provide a very brief summary/overview of an individual of batch of products.

Google goes on to state “the focus overall is on providing users with content that provides insightful analysis and original research, content written by experts or enthusiasts who know the topic well.”

Before you start checking out the quality of your own reviews, it is important to understand that this update is for dedicated ‘product reviews’ (by independent reviewers) opposed to arbitrary ‘customer reviews’ that you’d typically find on ecommerce sites.

Quick Facts

Here’s a quick roundup of top level details to get across (source: seroundtable.com)

• Name: Google Product Reviews Update
• Launched: April 8, 2021 at around 1pm ET
• Rollout: It will take about two weeks to fully rollout
• Targets: It looks at product review content
• Penalty: It is not a penalty, it promotes or rewards “insightful analysis and original research.”
• Not a core update: Many are going to say this is a core update, it is not.
• English Only: This is only looking at English-language content right now, this is a global launch but only for English content at this point.
• Impact: Google would not tell me what percentage of queries or searches were impacted by this update.
• Discover: This update can impact your performance in Google Discover.
• Recover: If you were hit by this, then you will need to look at your content and see if you can do better with Google’s advice below
• Refreshes: Google will do periodic refreshes to this algorithm but may not communicate those updates in the future.

According to contributors on seroundtable.com;

• ‘service’ reviews may also be impacted by this update
• product reviews apply to both individual product reviews and roundup reviews
• the update will most likely impact broader parts of sites, or sites overall
• although this is a separate algorithm update, it is likely to filter into the core algorithm (think Panda, Penguin)

There is little known whether this will be a gamechanger, especially for affiliate marketing sites, or the size of the impact, but with all algorithm updates we’ll just have to wait and see as it rolls out.

Key takeaways

Further to the article released on seroundtable.com, Google has provided a list of questions to ask yourself if you feel your product review content is not performing as well as it used to:

• Express expert knowledge about products where appropriate?
• Show what the product is like physically, or how it is used, with unique content beyond what’s provided by the manufacturer?
• Provide quantitative measurements about how a product measures up in various categories of performance?
• Explain what sets a product apart from its competitors?
• Cover comparable products to consider, or explain which products might be best for certain uses or circumstances?
• Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of a particular product, based on research into it?
• Describe how a product has evolved from previous models or releases to provide improvements, address issues, or otherwise help users in making a purchase decision?
• Identify key decision-making factors for the product’s category and how the product performs in those areas? For example, a car review might determine that fuel economy, safety, and handling are key decision-making factors and rate performance in those areas.
• Describe key choices in how a product has been designed and their effect on the users beyond what the manufacturer says?