Last Thursday, April 8, Google announced a new update to the search ranking quality algorithm, called Products Reviews Update. This is an update that aims to reward high-level product review content over low-quality product review content. During its announcement Google said that “we know that people appreciate product reviews that share in-depth research, rather than poor content that just summarizes a bunch of products. That is why we are sharing an improvement in our rating systems. , which we call the Products Reviews Update, designed to better reward such content. ” And he added “the general approach is to provide users with content that provides deep analysis and original research, content written by experts or enthusiasts who know the subject well.”
This is not an update to the main algorithm (a core update) and is only intended for product review content types.
Keys to Google’s Products Reviews Update
In short, these are the keys to this new Google update:
Name: Google Products Reviews Update
Release: April 8, 2021 around 1 p.m. ET
Deployment – will take approximately two weeks to complete
Objectives: analyze the content of product reviews. But it can potentially affect service reviews.
Penalty: it is not a penalty, it promotes or rewards “deep analysis and original research”.
Only in English: although it is a global launch at the moment it only affects content in English. The next implementation in the rest of the languages is planned.
Impact: Google has not yet reported what percentage of queries or searches have been affected by this update.
Discover: This update may affect the performance of websites on Google Discover.
Recovery: If a website has been affected by this update, you will need to review its content and see if you can do better with the advice from Google below.
Updates: Google will periodically update this algorithm, but may not communicate these updates in the future.
Going into a little more detail
John Mueller, Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, explained that the Products Reviews Update is more focused on review sites and affiliate websites than on e-commerce sites with customer product reviews. That is, you will value affiliate sites that rate products more than ecommerce product pages.
He also explained that although it is a separate algorithm at the moment, it could later be integrated into the general algorithm. Something similar to the integration of Panda and Penguin.
How to recover from the Google product review update
Although this new update is separate from Google’s main algorithm updates, we can take advantage of many of their advice. However, Google has offered some guidelines for targeting our product reviews if we think our website may be affected by this update. The idea is to ask if the content of our reviews:
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- They bring expert knowledge about products where appropriate.
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- They show how the products are physically or how they are used, and they do so in a unique way by providing more information than is provided by the manufacturers.
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- They quantify the performance of products in different categories.
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- They explain what differentiates the products from the competition.
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- They cite which similar products are worth considering or explain which other products may be more suitable in certain cases.
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- They discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the reviewed products based on research.
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- They describe how products have evolved from their previous models or versions to indicate what improvements have been made, what problems have been fixed, or other information that helps users make a purchase decision.
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- They identify which factors are the most important when deciding on one product or another of a certain type, and assess those aspects of the reviewed products. For example, in a review of a car, you can determine that the most important when deciding which vehicle to buy are fuel consumption, safety and suspension, and assess these aspects of the car reviewed.
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- They describe the main design features of products and explain how those features affect users beyond what the manufacturers say.
Effects of the Google Products Reviews Update
Given that at the moment the implementation of this update only affects sites in English, in our country we have not noticed major changes. But globally if its effects have been noticed. The various tools for monitoring the variability of the algorithm indicate its important impact. Although they do not break down the data by type of site, that is, e-commerce, affiliates, etc.
However, it is important to note that the implementation of the Products Reviews Update is not yet complete as it will take place over two weeks. And that only affects sites in English. We will still have to wait for its implementation in our language.
Be that as it may, the Product Reviews Update is now available and it is expected that it will be expanded to other languages in the coming weeks. At Sinapsis we remain alert while waiting for it to be updated in our language and we are already working so that our websites comply with Google’s requirements and offer valuable reviews and quality content.