Update - End of April 21
I started off the month at a good pace writing content for my third site. But at the end of the first week, all of that came to a halt with the Products Reviews Update.
Unfortunately, google treated my site just like the gif below.

Honestly, this is the first time I've taken such a huge hit from an update. And that's even when seemingly doing everything "
right."
I've analyzed most of my pages and looked at the replacements for my rankings. And the conclusion I came to is that Google is full of shit which we all already knew.
This isn't about writing "Good" content nor is it about most of the things they state they consider good reviews.
What's my take on the Product Reviews Update?
This will be based on my own sites and interpretations of the results I'm seeing for my own sites.
1) My opinion is this update isn't so much about your review content but rather categorizing e-commerce terms and trying to implement their new Best Things feature. I've come to this conclusion since my most impacted terms are eCommerce variants rather than "Best XYZ."
For instance, here is a screenshot of one of my top pages and the direct product name that I typically ranked top 10 for:
Once the update hit all impressions were cut since my site fell off the first page and the top 10 is now only dominated by e-commerce sites.
While for questions, vs, best, and direct review KW variants of the same product I barely moved a few spots if at all as seen below:
These results are the same across most pages on the site. Furthermore, it isn't only related to so-called "review" or "best" pages as even my info pages have been affected once they contain a "product name."
2) Another thing I'm finding is that some niches and keywords seem to be affected differently depending on the number of e-commerce sites mentioning the product and how well google can interpret the keyword as a product.
3) They might be looking for different words throughout the content to rank the page. I found that reviews that are written more personally seem to do better than ones written in the third person and generically.
In terms of the guidelines, I feel like the majority of my content was already written the way they require it.
I shared my content guide that features some questions that I try to answer throughout the reviews I wrote in
my 10k Words Per Day thread last summer.
For each product I focus on answering the following:
Introduce the item: Examples:
- Is the brand behind it outstanding? If yes How?
- Is there anything unique about this item?
- Have you used it as a solution?
- Is it a good solution and why?
Second paragraph:
Talk about the features of the item: Examples
- Is there something to love about its style, shape, function?
- Is there a variety of options available for this item?
- What is it made from
- Who would it suit best or why?
- Is there any other noteworthy point to include?
Third Paragraph:
Conclude the review and lead into the Call to Action: Examples
What are some reasons the reader will want this item?
- Is it more affordable?
- Will they love the features?
- Is it much better than any other solution in a particular way?
- Is there a strong social influence with this item (Good reviews, etc)
- Does it offer a good warranty?
To see where I could improve or if I was on point I compared it to their guidelines:
- 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?
I feel like the first paragraph questions that I try to answer hits all the above points.
- 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?
I feel like the second paragraph should've covered all the points in this section that they require.
- 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?
The last paragraph should've tidied up the review nicely and hit these last points no matter how you tried to write it as long as the question guide was answered.
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The reason I think my content should've passed is that it seemingly went below their radar on some pages and was perfectly fine on my second site.
However, for the pages that I saw no changes to I either
wrote those myself or personalized the reviews using words and phrases such as "
I tested, I found, I liked x about the product, When I used x, etc"
Could there be an improvement in the content? Sure!
- The article lengths could be improved.
- I could add more details like specs.
- A few articles lacked more fleshed-out pros and cons.
- I could include comparison tables on every page.
- I could tweak the words on the pages to be more personal.
- I could photoshop images into the page instead of only have a picture of the product from AAWP.
Moreover, a good portion of the articles wasn't written by me and I did find them generic.
But that doesn't change the fact that some of the terms that brought in a majority of the traffic are now being dominated by eCommerce sites with no other reviews on the pages.
Furthermore, on some terms, the content ranking above me has "shorter summary reviews" so I don't think Google can actually understand the content as much as we give them credit to be able to figure out.
So as to whether I'd be able to completely recover is another story altogether.
Now let's look at the severity of the hit in terms of traffic and earnings.
SMH

. It's like they kicked me back to October. Coincidentally, it's just around the point where I stopped adding new content to this site.
Maybe I fell out of their good graces because I also noticed that my keywords peaked at the end of February and started falling.
But still, with such a dip I'll now have to change my plans completely so I won't be able to sell this site at the end of this month. Rather I'll just keep it and keep building new content for the site.
70-80% of my new content will be focused on providing information. At first, I never saw the importance of info articles until I saw the RPMs from mediavine and how stable the earnings were.
And until I can figure out what has changed with how I need to write "best xyz" content it's pretty pointless to write something that won't rank.
My Second Site:
This site still seems to be rising. However, the articles aren't aged well enough for me to accurately determine if they've been impacted by the update. So it doesn't even make sense for me to do anything to this site.
I feel like I'd get a better ROI by focusing on info content.
Earnings:
That's just how it is trying to get to 10k. But I know that the desires of the diligent are always satisfied so one day I feel like I'll get to and surpass it.
Amazon Earnings:
Ads:
Hopefully, I don't get kicked out of Mediavine for having less than the required amount of traffic until I can recover. At the very least I hope they pay me when the time comes for everything I made...
Total Earnings: $4,621
Wrapping Up
There's always something that comes up and failures are inevitable. But what will you do... QUIT?! Fuck no.
Adapt or Die and adapt I will regardless of how long it takes.
I've been doing internet marketing for years and have seen the rise and fall of a bunch of methods. I've tried a bunch and had great success in all of them but I've never felt quite the same doing any other method as I do with SEO.
It's not even that this is my passion. I just love everything about it, I think about it every day, I wake at 3 AM pumped to get back to it.
I've never felt this way about anything else in my life and I know no other way that can allow you to easily achieve your dreams as you can with affiliate marketing.
Look:
For the past 5 months, I haven't touched my main site at all and I still make $3k - $9k from it. What else could do this with such minimal effort and little to no initial investment and a tonne of luck?
I'm not lucky nor was my success a fluke. If it was my first site maybe I'd say fluke. But I've seen the same growth phase three times following the same principles KW research for Traffic > Content > On-Page > Domain Authority > $$$$.
This is the growth of my second site that got fully monetized at the end of January. It had its first good month of ranked pages in March that ended up earning $400. In April the earnings doubled to $848.
I've never done anything that has the same growth potential as building sites. So why would I stop or let updates set me back? Worst comes I'll go back fully blackhat but I still don't feel like I'm at that point.
So I'm saying this to anyone else that got wrecked by the update/s. Keep going! Never Give up. But if you do that's fine as well, one less competitor means more money for me.
What are my plans going forward?
- Add 3-4 info articles per day to the main site for the next 3 months.
- Try to recover my top affiliate pages by adding anything that's missing based on the current page ranking above me.
- Work on Core Web Vitals
- Keep building the other sites.
I also got accepted to one of the affiliate programs that initially declined out of the blue. Why now when I no longer have the traffic?
And I finally got access to Robinhood so I'll be investing heavily into ETFs and dividend stocks to diversify my assets. I'm tired of being at the mercy of others.
With that in mind, I'll definitely be doing daily updates again.
What companies want to see is that you are legit. In the US, just get a US LLC, a US phone number (I use skype), and join as a business, you will get accepted 99% of the time.
I am not from the US and when I tried to apply to US affiliate programs I was rejected, but when I got my US LLC and started registering as a business, everyone treated me differently and the doors were opened.
Usually, they will ask for your EIN (tax number of your company) right after signing up to pay you, so you will have to contact the IRS for them to assign an EIN to your US LLC.
You will look professional when entering a US phone number, an email with your domain (not Gmail or other free services), and with your US LLC.
Give it a shot, man, it works!
Also, congrats on almost reaching $10k in a month! Probably in April, you will reach it!
I planned to create an LLC after selling this site but now that things have taken a turn for the worst I'll have to push back those plans.
But great advice, I'll definitely get it done once I get a chance.
I'm was literally browsing through the Journey section to see if you were still going strong. And of course, you are. 10,000 USD per month using Amazing + ads. Amazing. Good job! The combination of being hardworking, successful, and honest about their methods and income is extremely rare on BHW. You and that Scottish guy with the Youtube videos are probably the only ones I've seen that make it to this level.
What I will tell you now is probably something you already know. In my country, it was recently an episode where one webshop had a monopoly on all the affiliates in that niche. One day they decided to cut the program - and people were desperate to sell their websites in that niche. But no one wanted to buy them as everyone knew the situation.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that Amazon is even close to having a monopoly.
But this is the exact effect you will see on Amazon websites if they decide to mess it up again. That's why I personally don't work with Amazon websites anymore (at least not updating them) - and I think you might be wise selling that site. By the current income stream, you're almost able to retire after selling them.
Sigh... Things don't always work out the way we'd like even though I knew that selling is the best way to go about it sometimes you just won't get the chance to sell in time like my current situation.
I could probably still sell this site but I'm sure my earnings are now down to about $2500 for the main site. And until I can recover that to $4k I probably will keep these earnings to keep me afloat. I don't really want or need a 60-80k exit. I'm more interested in 6 figures for two reasons.
1) Cash flow is better than money in the bank in most cases since that money in the bank will diminish over time. I only needed security and capital which was why I sold my first site, I no longer need those as badly.
2) Opportunity Cost - Selling this site for less than six figures is less beneficial to my current stage than keeping it and removing the site or adding more ad-focused content.
My reasoning behind that is once you sell a site you can't go back in the niche unless you are blackhat and don't give AF. I'll also be losing 1 year of age from a sufficiently clean and powerful domain that could keep growing or might magically recover on its own. The niche is fairly easy to play in with loads of keywords to go after so I could potentially build this site to become fairly large.
On the other hand, once I go to sell the site, I'll be dealing with buyers trying to lowball the price since they now have the upper hand. I'll have to use the capital from this site to start afresh in a new niche with new difficulties, with no expertise in the topic, no idea of conversion rates, a greater initial startup cost, and lastly the time it takes to rank and figure out if all the initial effort will pay off.
The only downside to this domain is the name and its association. But once I fly below the radar I should be fine to keep working on it.
@Bloooop Have you been hit by the new algorithm update that targets product reviews yet?
Yup, got wrecked.
Where are you hosting these sites?
Namecheap, WPX
Sorry for the lack of updates. I'll be updating daily going forward.