Google announces product reviews algorithm update

[thescrrr]

Google has released a new quality algorithm update that promotes outstanding product reviews.

Google announced a new Search algorithm update it is calling the product reviews update. This update is “designed to better reward” product reviews that “share in-depth research, rather than thin content that simply summarizes a bunch of products,” a spokesperson told Search Engine Land. Reviews that are written in a way that has “insightful analysis and original research” will be rewarded, especially “content written by experts or enthusiasts who know the topic well,” Google said

More at: https://searchengineland.com/google-product-reviews-algorithm-update-347568

 

[Zbigniew]

Sounds like long form articles will have an up-swing again

 

[Dark Sky]

Basically we have to buy the product and review it. Only downside to this is, if your in the UK with a USA site, your pretty much fucked with a lot of products not been available due to regional differences.

 

[thescrrr]

Basically we have to buy the product and review it. Only downside to this is, if your in the UK with a USA site, your pretty much fucked with a lot of products not been available due to regional differences.

And people will be massively fucked where there is no Amazon at all.

 

[Dark Sky]

And people will be massively fucked where there is no Amazon at all.

Yep definitely. Not only that, but once you get your hands on a product, there's going to be a ton more research involved if you have to compare to competitors and previous models. This is literally benefiting monopoly sites like Wirecutter and which?

It's a stab in the back from google.

 

[McSpike]

It's a stab in the back from google.

If there are enough good publishers that can deliver, then that is the right move from Google. Who in their right mind would want to read your shitty reviews that are not reviews at all but just summaries of product descriptions piled up.

I as a user sure wouldn't. They suck. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it.

And I own review sites. That got stabbed. Stabbed deep and the knife twisted.

And I say we had it coming.

And once again we got served the dish that's called "provide good content". Did we? No. So? A stab in the back? A stab in the right direction of user experience and getting rid of the weed that we are.

 

[fb3003]

have you guys noticed a change in serp presentation because of this update? i still have not. if you have, please let me know the keyword that you have searched. thanks in advance

 

[Fussballgott]

Haven’t heard of or seen any Changes in serp so far so let’s see first

 

[mw0]

Basically we have to buy the product and review it. Only downside to this is, if your in the UK with a USA site, your pretty much fucked with a lot of products not been available due to regional differences.

There has to be something you can do other than buying the product to make Google think “yep, this is more than a rewritten product description and actually valuable.”

I had a site lose over half its traffic through this update. Some pages faired better than others, and I’m thinking it’s the ones I put more effort into, with also researching what people say on forums and such. Perhaps Google is comparing the meaning behind what it finds for product descriptions and what you say about the product, and you get hit if yours is not very original.

 

[Zbigniew]

There has to be something you can do other than buying the product to make Google think “yep, this is more than a rewritten product description and actually valuable.”

I had a site lose over half its traffic through this update. Some pages faired better than others, and I’m thinking it’s the ones I put more effort into, with also researching what people say on forums and such. Perhaps Google is comparing the meaning behind what it finds for product descriptions and what you say about the product, and you get hit if yours is not very original.

It's obviously just bullshit that you will have to buy the product. How are Google going to check that? Making sure that every product review contains pictures that have never been posted on the web before? Are they going to manually check every review?

Write original articles that looks and reads like no other. Have your on-page on point and build links.

 

[haseeb9211]

My site is being hit by this update traffic is decreased by 65%. Most of the keywords are pushed to the 2nd page.

 

[DrPorner]

After this update, I lost 50% traffic. But I don't have the product review site.

 

[ecalwong]

how will i be affected if, my website has 100 articles and say, 3 articles are product reviews with aff links? will the whole website be 'penalised' ? or just the 3 pages ?

 

[GSERP]

It’s impossible for google to detect that the reviewed content is written by expert.

 

[Mukeshwar Singh]

It's obviously just bullshit that you will have to buy the product. How are Google going to check that? Making sure that every product review contains pictures that have never been posted on the web before? Are they going to manually check every review?

Write original articles that looks and reads like no other. Have your on-page on point and build links.

+1 for that. Guys, just read the reviews on Amazon, it'll give you the right information about the product.

 

[MKSKS]

This update is definitely going to kill those websites which were spammy yet indexed with thousands of pages.
Most of these websites are setup using expired domains having backlinks from quality and authority websites.
For content they use a review template on each page where they just replace the target keyword.
As per semrush these sites were generating a lot of traffic 500k and more. Worst thing was they were ranking for a lot of buyer keywords, keywords like best .......

 

[Dark Sky]

+1 for that. Guys, just read the reviews on Amazon, it'll give you the right information about the product.

Not going to be very original if everyone else does the same

 

[cozziola]

how will i be affected if, my website has 100 articles and say, 3 articles are product reviews with aff links? will the whole website be 'penalised' ? or just the 3 pages ?

just the 3 pages.

 

[Deleted member 1441825]

So how's everyone doing?

Seems like the past 2 days' fluctuations are even worse. Like a bouncy castle.

 

[Dark Sky]

It's obviously just bullshit that you will have to buy the product. How are Google going to check that? Making sure that every product review contains pictures that have never been posted on the web before? Are they going to manually check every review?

Write original articles that looks and reads like no other. Have your on-page on point and build links.

Just because a sentence is unique, doesn't make it unique. BERT can understand context. If the context is the same, it's not unique. Since BERT targets sentences and not entire articles, doesn't matter which order you decide to review it in or how it reads to you.

I assume google will be rewarding the articles that mention unique entities the most that's relevant to the product.

Now if you don't own the product, it's going to be extremely difficult to mention more unique entities over someone who bought the product and reviewed it. Your essentially blind, your competitor has full vision. They automatically get a big advantage.

In terms of unique images, probably some way to manipulate with photoshop, haven't looked too much into their use of T-SNE and machine learning on images. But I'm confident it can detect small edits on images. Will take some big edits in my opinion to fool it.

SEO is shifting massively into AI and Data Science. Which means it's getting exponentially more difficult to manipulate the algorithm.