Google is rolling out yet another confirmed Google search ranking algorithm update - the second Google Product Reviews Update of the year. So if you were hit by the April 2021 Google Product Reviews Update, you may see improvements if you made the necessary changes.
Google started to roll out the December 2021 product reviews update yesterday, December 1, 2021 at about 12:30pm ET. This impacts only English-language pages for now. Google said it will take about three weeks to complete.
As a reminder, the product reviews update aims at rewarding high-level product review content, above thinner product review content. It is not a core update, we just had one of those, this is aimed at product review types of content - like you see when you Google product name and reviews i.e. iPhone 13 Prod reviews.
Google Product Reviews Update Quick Facts
Here are the most important things that we know right now in short form:
- Name: Google December 2021 Product Reviews Update
- Launched: December 1, 2021 at around 12:30pm ET
- Rollout: It will take about three 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, Google previously said.
- 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. This may be the first refresh that Google has done, it is the first refresh Google communicated about.
Updated Best Practices & Advice Including Linking Out
Google also added some more advice from it's original advice, the new advice is based on receiving "more feedback from users on what type of review content is deemed trustworthy and useful, motivating us to provide additional product review guidance." Users have told Google that they trust reviews with evidence of products actually being tested, and prefer to have more options to purchase the product. With that, Google added two new best practices:
(1) Provide evidence such as visuals, audio, or other links of your own experience with the product, to support your expertise and reinforce the authenticity of your review.
(2) Include links to multiple sellers to give the reader the option to purchase from their merchant of choice.
The aspect of linking out to multiple sources is getting a lot of attention in the SEO world because Google has said numerous times linking outwards does not help your SEO. I think the key difference here is that this is just for the product reviews algorithm and in this case it is not about specifically who you link to, but that your links don't seem biased towards only one affiliate or site. So I do think this makes sense here but as you will see below, in the chat between SEOs and Google's Alan Kent and John Mueller, this may cause issues.
Here is the original advice but Google has posted this in a new help document yesterday.
- 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?
Tracking Tools Showing Volatility?
There does seem to be an unusual amount of volatility, which I think is maybe from the tailend of the end of the core update and not the product reviews update. I mean, if you think of it, how many sites on the web are categorized as product review sites? In any event, here are what the tools are showing this morning:
More Tidbits From Google
Here is more information from Alan Kent and John Mueller of Google on this update:
Humans get wary of reviews where they all point to affiliate links of one seller. Is it really a good review, or trying to maximize what the seller wants to push? Links to multiple sellers reduces that concern.
— Alan Kent (@akent99) December 1, 2021
(Alternative response… let me get back to you after a future rollout once the machine learning model has worked out the answer… or not)
— Alan Kent (@akent99) December 1, 2021
It is one of many ranking signals, but certainly the goal is to reward authentic high quality reviews. The docs page lists our recommendations for good reviews.
— Alan Kent (@akent99) December 1, 2021
Great question, especially regarding using an affiliate links system like genius (if those links are blocked via robots.txt). Or when affiliate sites block their own redirects from being crawled. How would Google know they are going to separate sites?? @akent99 @JohnMu
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) December 1, 2021
I will make the simple observation that this is a product review update, not an affiliate link update… but different ranking signals can combine in weird and wonderful ways.
— Alan Kent (@akent99) December 1, 2021
(1) The new recommendations are not relevant for this rollout, (2) My guidance is “follow the affiliate link page guidance”. (3) This rollout is based on the quality of reviews. Best answer I have regarding guidance!
— Alan Kent (@akent99) December 1, 2021
I hear you, and providing the best results to users is clearly a good thing. That said, forcing site owners to violate the TOS of the biggest e-commerce powerhouse on the planet could cause some issues. I'm sure you and your team have looked into that already, but worth noting :)
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) December 1, 2021
Yes. Someone who has done real effort to review a product is offering real value to the community. The best practices recommend that, and suggest things to include in your review to make it clear the effort you personally put into it.
— Alan Kent (@akent99) December 1, 2021
Let's just say that there may be a site or two on the web somewhere that takes product descriptions from vendors, makes minor edits, then publishes as a review. Yes, they are less useful than someone really reviewing the product and giving their own unique perspective on it.
— Alan Kent (@akent99) December 1, 2021
Ah, I see what you mean. It is an interesting question. Is it offering new content? No. Is it offering an opinion though. Do you see this happening often? (I will pass the feedback along to the internal team for consideration.)
— Alan Kent (@akent99) December 1, 2021
Although this may be against Amazon's TOS:
Random memory confirmed. That puts WP plugin users in a hard spot. Break the AMZ TOS and risk your account, find another way to get product images, or don't give a buy alternative. pic.twitter.com/j3OObnX0dC
— Ian Howells (@ianhowells) December 1, 2021
More from Alan Kent:
Mainly relevant to sites that post articles reviewing products. Think of sites like "best TVs under $200".com. Goal is to improve the quality and usefulness of reviews we show users.
— Alan Kent (@akent99) December 1, 2021
Some sites also put seller branded buttons for affiliate links. All I can say if our research did not show some benefit to consumers of reviews (aggregated across all review sites) we would not add the recommendation to the list.
— Alan Kent (@akent99) December 1, 2021
It's fine to have affiliate landing pages, repurpose existing images & text, use affiliate links, etc -- it's not what I'd consider a review though.
— 🧀 John 🧀 (@JohnMu) December 1, 2021
I realize a lot of sites do that. "Top 10 Blue Widgets in 2021", you've all seen them, and clicked away. That's not awesome content if someone wants a real review.
— 🧀 John 🧀 (@JohnMu) December 1, 2021
Yes. Someone who has done real effort to review a product is offering real value to the community. The best practices recommend that, and suggest things to include in your review to make it clear the effort you personally put into it.
— Alan Kent (@akent99) December 1, 2021
I won't give explicit examples, I'm absolutely certain you've run into the same thing, and gotten frustrated. We should & must do better in Search, and this feels like a step in the right direction. There are also great sites; people can make them; that's why we give guidance.
— 🧀 John 🧀 (@JohnMu) December 1, 2021
As a reminder, we just finished rolling out the November 2021 core update. Clearly Google held this so it would not overlap with the core update.
More SEO Commentary
Here is some of the reaction/commentary on Twitter:
that is to show they are not just feeding it to a single place, like a single affiliate feed. makes it more trustworthy
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) December 1, 2021
i believe so
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) December 1, 2021
„Include links to multiple sellers to give the reader the option to purchase from their merchant of choice.“
— Matthias Danner (@matthias_danner) December 1, 2021
Sounds like a good opportunity to get links from Amazon affiliate pages to the own webshop 👀 https://t.co/52HJOw4gxN
👀 Two new best practices being added to the Google Product Review update https://t.co/kZjcefnXm5 pic.twitter.com/v7LBPv7PIf
— Mark Stevenson (@Mark_Ste) December 1, 2021
Seems Google's team is going on leave in 2022 so they are trying to complete everything by end of this year. https://t.co/hDhCgWg4Vz
— Manish Chauhan (@ManishK_Chauhan) December 1, 2021
🤖 #SEO - December 2021 Product Review Update 🤖
— Praveen Sharma (@MusingPraveen) December 1, 2021
Google be like, 2021 is yet to be over, let's have some more fun. 😄 https://t.co/ZWTP44D8qv
https://t.co/WYC1jgylVn pic.twitter.com/fj4FOyyslZ
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) December 1, 2021
And btw, if you want to refresh your memory about the original Product Reviews Update (from April 2021), then read my post covering the update. I cover a lot in the post based on analyzing many sites impacted: https://t.co/iFQKvA4Z1q pic.twitter.com/pMralsPkCn
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) December 1, 2021
And sorry, had to mention this. Heard it from some people already in the reviews space. I wonder how that burn feels for Amazon based on this new guideline:
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) December 1, 2021
"Include links to *multiple sellers* to give the reader the option to purchase from their merchant of choice." pic.twitter.com/4rFT7pTqkD
"Include links to multiple vendors to give the reader the option to purchase from their merchant of choice."
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) December 1, 2021
I bet Google encouraging site owners to publish unique photos/videos is related to this announcement from SearchOn:https://t.co/Wr3zDQEys3
Is that a request for all updates in parallel?!? I prefer… pic.twitter.com/fGH5BXoCnI
— Alan Kent (@akent99) December 1, 2021
Forum discussion at Twitter.
