Google’s Product Reviews Update and Fixing Your Website

Author: The Linchpin SEO Team Category: Google Search Engine Reading Time: 3 minutes
Jump to a section:
1) What Google’s Review Update Impacted
2) How Google’s Review Update Works
3) How to Fix Your Review Website If Google’s Review Update Impacted You

On April 10, Google finally started cracking down on “review websites” – and companies trying to do barnacle SEO – by announcing they had launched a new algorithm update called the product reviews update. This update is designed to reward review websites that share in-depth research rather than summarize products with links to affiliate websites.

Launch Date: April 10, 2022

What Google’s Review Update Impacted

The Google product reviews update aims to promote review content from websites above and beyond much of the essential information you can find on the web and within Google’s search results. In addition, Google said it would start giving more weight to these product reviews.

How Google’s Review Update Works

Google is not directly penalizing low-quality product reviews and websites with thin review content or simply summarizing many products. However,  it can feel like a penalty if you see your rankings drop and other websites’ rankings increase – but it’s merely that they provide more value with their content (according to Google’s data points) than your website does.

People appreciate product reviews with in-depth research. Our product reviews update that’s going out today is designed to better reward such rich content. For now, it involves English language searches.

Google Search Central

This update not only impacts what is traditionally thought of as “review content,” but it also impacts expert round-ups.

How to Fix Your Review Website If Google’s Review Update Impacted You

Like the Panda Update and the list of content recommendations that brought,  review websites will need to focus on providing users with insightful analysis, original research,  and content written by experts or enthusiasts who know the product well.

In addition to the recommendation above, Google recommends your product reviews cover areas such as:

  • Show what the product is like physically or how it is used beyond what is provided by the manufacturer.
  • Provide quantitative measurements that are going to be helpful for decision-making purposes.
  • Explain what sets a product apart.
  • Cover similar products a shopper may want to consider.
  • Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of the particular product.
  • Describe how a product has evolved from previous models.
  • Identify key decision-making factors for the product’s category and how the product performs in those areas.
  • Describe critical choices in how a product has been designed and its effect on the users.

If you are writing the reviews, you will likely need to purchase the item to get this information.

Long term, you want to ensure that you put more detail and effort into your product review content to provide more user value than the competition.

If you need help with your enterprise SEO or local SEO, feel free to reach out.

Additional Google Update Resources