Google began to roll out the fourth installment of its product reviews update on July 27, 2022. This update, fittingly called the July 2022 Product Reviews Update, should take two or three weeks to roll out.
The search engine first launched the product reviews update in April of 2021. In that announcement, Google said the update aimed to favor product reviews with in-depth research instead of “thin content that simply summarizes a bunch of products.” This update is not a core update, but rather an ongoing effort to specifically optimize product reviews in search results.
Since it first launched in April 2021, Google rolled out additional product review updates in December 2021 and March 2022. In those updates, Google released information about what each installment was aimed at optimizing for, but so far there aren't many details on the July 2022 update. However, Google did acknowledge the latest update, and specified it was for English-speaking product reviews, and linked to its best practices for writing quality reviews.
It’s possible that any kind of site that publishes product reviews could feel the impact of this latest update in a big way. Even though there aren’t many details yet, SEO expert Barry Schwartz was able to put together key points about he knows so far about the July 2022 Product Reviews Update on Search Engine Roundtable:
- Name: Google July 2022 Product Reviews Update
- Launched: July 27, 2022 at around 1:30 p.m. ET.
- Rollout: It will take about two to three weeks to fully roll out.
- 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.
- Impact: Google would not tell Search Engine Roundtable 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.
- 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.
Snag an SEO Boost With Structured Data for Reviews and Ratings
Google hasn’t been shy about making it clear that the product reviews update is aimed at favoring high-quality reviews that add value to the user experience. The best way to take advantage of this is to make sure your site’s product reviews are detailed, high-quality, and easy to understand.
However, ratings and reviews for product pages are populated with structured data. When inputted correctly, it can be a powerful way to provide more information to Google about your product pages, which improves your search ranking in return.
For example, RebelMouse successfully marked up the product review pages for our client Premier Guitar. Soon after, their articles were ranking at the top of Google's organic search results:
Click here to learn more about how structured data can help your site’s product reviews.
Never Stress About Google’s Core Updates
Our easy-to-implement structured data markup for ratings and reviews is just one of the ways RebelMouse helps sites stay ahead of Google’s updates and guidelines.
RebelMouse is a modern publishing platform that anticipates major changes from Google, like the July 2022 Product Reviews Update, before they even happen. Our holistic search strategy makes sure that the sites within our network consistently rank highly on search and crush industry standards on site performance.
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