The Google April 2023 reviews update finished rolling out yesterday afternoon on April 25, 2023. It took 13 days and two hours to roll out this expanded reviews update, which goes beyond products, that initially kicked off on April 12, 2023.
As a reminder, the reviews update dropped "products" from the name because it now has expanded the product reviews update also to impact content reviews around products, services, destinations, games, movies, or other topics.
Google April 2023 Reviews Update Quick Facts
Here are the most important things that we know right now in short form:
- Name: Google April 2023 Reviews Update
- Launched: April 12, 2023 at around 12 pm ET
- Rollout: 13 days - completed on April 25, 2023 at around 2:30 pm ET
- Targets: It looks at all review content, including products, services, destinations, games, movies, or other topics
- 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.
- Several languages: English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Polish.
- 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.
Impact: Slow Start But Big Ending
The April 2023 reviews update started off slow, but early into week two of the roll out we saw some big changes. In fact, this past weekend, through yesterday, this update heated up even more.
This update was super strong and even widespread at the tail end of the update, which is not always the case for these types of updates.
Google Tracking Tools
Here is what these tools showed over the weekend over the past couple of weeks. As I said, the biggest volatility in terms of what these tools showed, which correlated with what I saw from the SEO industry chatter, was over the last week of the rollout.
Previous product Reviews Updates:
- April 15, 2023 - April 2023 Reviews Update and finished 13 days later on April 25, 2023
- February 21, 2023 - February 2023 Product Reviews Update and finished two weeks later on March 7 2023.
- Septmeber 20, 2022 - September 2022 Google Product Reviews Update and completed September 26th.
- July 27, 2022 - July 2022 Google Product Reviews Update and ended on August 2nd
- March 23, 2022 - March 2022 Google Product Reviews Update and ended on April 11th.
- December 1, 2021 - December 2021 Google Product Reviews Update and ended on December 21st
- April 8, 2021 - April 2021 Product Reviews Update and ended on April 22nd.
Google's Review Update Advice
Google has revised its advice on how to write review content that Google Search rewards. You can review that advice over here. "Publishing high quality reviews can help people learn more about things they are considering, such as products, services, destinations, games, movies or other topics," Google wrote. Here is Google's best practices on this topic now:
- Evaluate from a user's perspective.
- Demonstrate that you are knowledgeable about what you are reviewing—show you are an expert.
- Provide evidence such as visuals, audio, or other links of your own experience with what you are reviewing, to support your expertise and reinforce the authenticity of your review.
- Share quantitative measurements about how something measures up in various categories of performance.
- Explain what sets something apart from its competitors.
- Cover comparable things to consider, or explain which might be best for certain uses or circumstances.
- Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of something, based on your own original research.
- 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.
- Focus on the most important decision-making factors, based on your experience or expertise (for example, a car review might determine that fuel economy and safety 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.
- Include links to other useful resources (your own or from other sites) to help a reader make a decision.
- Consider including links to multiple sellers to give the reader the option to purchase from their merchant of choice.
- When recommending something as the best overall or the best for a certain purpose, include why you consider it the best, with first-hand supporting evidence.
- Ensure there is enough useful content in your ranked lists for them to stand on their own, even if you choose to write separate in-depth single reviews.
Forum discussion at Twitter and WebmasterWorld.
