The last Google product reviews update, the July 2022 Google Product Reviews Update, was an interesting one. Based on SEO and webmaster feedback, it felt that it just didn't hit the mark in terms of quality relative to past product reviews updates. If you have examples of where and how Google got it wrong, you can let Google know about it.
John Mueller of Google said on Twitter over the weekend "we do make updates for search regularly, and we push strongly to improve the quality of the results." He added "but it's good to double-check sites too" so he asked the webmaster to submit more details in the Google forums and send him the link to the thread.
So he did - but if you have examples, I think you should do the same. Google can potentially use this feedback and the specifics to improve the product reviews update going forward.
Here are those tweets, so you see the context:
Which many sites do you mean? how are they broken?
— 🥔 johnmu (personal) updated for 2022 🥔 (@JohnMu) August 14, 2022
It would be useful to have a list of your sites and the issues that you're seeing, ideally in a forum post. We do make updates for search regularly, and we push strongly to improve the quality of the results, but it's good to double-check sites too.
— 🥔 johnmu (personal) updated for 2022 🥔 (@JohnMu) August 14, 2022
Check these threadshttps://t.co/jEkyY08TLjhttps://t.co/7ZFzjgF9X6
— AKHTAR (@akhtarr_khan) August 14, 2022
You're welcome to start a thread listing the many sites and the issues you're seeing there.
— 🥔 johnmu (personal) updated for 2022 🥔 (@JohnMu) August 14, 2022
As a reminder, the July product previews update started on July 27th and ended on August 2nd. The sites you submit, should be specific to this update. This July 2022 Product Reviews update was the fourth product reviews update, the previous three versions were the April 2021 Product Reviews Update, the December 2021 Product Reviews Update and the March 2022 Product Reviews Update.
Google Product Reviews Update Quick Facts
Here are the most important things that we know right now in short form:
- Name: Google July 2022 Product Reviews Update
- Launched: July 27, 2022 at around 1:30 pm ET
- Finished: August 2, 2022
- 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 Language but will expand: This is only looking at English-language content right now but likely will expand to other languages, this is a global launch. I am surprised it is still only English but it is, as we documented below.
- 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.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
