July 28, 2022
Google Has Released Their July 2022 Product Reviews Update
eCommerce sites with product review content, watch out. Google just rolled out an update that could impact your rankings — especially if you don’t have reviews that are deemed useful to users. Google has officially begun rolling out their July 2022 Product Reviews Update. This rollout will take 2-3 weeks to complete.
What Is a Product Review Update?
The Google Product Review Update is an algorithm update to promote reviews that go beyond the simple, less insightful reviews you might see on the web. Google is not directly punishing lower-quality reviews, but instead rewarding sites with more insightful review content.
What’s New with the July 2022 Product Reviews Update?
Other than refreshing the algorithm, the July 2022 Product Reviews Update may in the future impact reviews in other languages. For right now, this update is focusing on English-language product reviews, but they plan on adding support for more languages in the future.
What Is Google’s Advice Regarding the July 2022 Product Reviews Update?
The “focus overall is on providing users with content that provides insightful analysis and original research, content written by experts or enthusiasts who know the topic well,”
Google recommends your product reviews cover the following for high-quality reviews:
- Evaluate the product from a user’s perspective.
- Demonstrate that you are knowledgeable about the products reviewed – show you are an expert.
- 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.
- Share quantitative measurements about how a product measures up in various categories of performance.
- Explain what sets a product apart from its competitors.
For the full list of best practices, please visit Google’s guide on writing high-quality product reviews.
Do You Want To Learn More About This Update?
As a Google Premier Partner, we’re always on top of whatever updates Google makes to their algorithms, and we work with a variety of clients across multiple industries to improve and optimize their SEO strategies. Contact us if you have any questions or concerns about your organic search traffic following the update. We’d love to help.
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Important Note: Google has added some further advice for this latest product reviews update. More specifically, they want those hosting or creating product reviews to consider the following:
Product review updates apply to all forms of review content. While the best practices shared above still apply, this means that you’ll want to also consider how you can demonstrate additional expertise and authenticity in your review content. Citing pertinent details from any tests you’ve performed with the product is a great start, as is the inclusion of any original images or video content.
For reviews that mention “the best products” of a given category, you’ll want to make sure that you share how you arrived at your conclusions with the reader. In other words, go into detail what separates one product from others on the market. If you can, explain why one particular product might be particularly suited for its purpose. If you have any first-hand experience of your own, this is also the time to include that.
For reviews that cover multiple products, it might prove beneficial to write out a ranked list of related products in combination with detailed product reviews for each recommended product. Should you choose to do so, be sure that you’ve included enough useful content within the ranked list for it to stand on its own.