On February 21, 2023, we saw the launch of the first Google update of the year. This is the first update that webmasters and those in the SEO industry will have to contend with and learn from. The focus of this update was the reevaluation of product reviews and was applied to many languages globally; these include English, Spanish, German, French, and Italian, plus more. Product review guidelines provided by documentation have also been updated.

This update has officially rolled out to eleven languages and should take around two weeks to fully roll out and have an effect on search engine results pages. We have also seen that Google has made some clarifications to the existing product review update guidance; Google has updated this document to better reflect what the system is and how it evaluates existing sites. This document should be the first thing to look at and read for any website owner or SEO professional, as it will give unique insight into what Google values.

One common question that is asked is what to do if your site or a client’s site is hit by this update and has seen a negative impact in search rankings. The answer is always to be patient and wait until the update is over; this is at minimum a 2-week wait, but you should also be aware that sometimes Google will provide another update later that may return your site back to its former positions.

The second thing you should do if you suspect you have been hit by a Google update is to focus on Google’s documentation, which should provide you some unique insight into what kind of sites are now deemed of higher value than others. This should enable you to do some detailed analysis on your own site and produce a plan to change your site’s structure or on-page strategy. It may seem difficult and time-consuming to do this, but if you make the changes, then Google will reevaluate your site, and you will see a long-term gain in rankings.

The overall purpose of the product reviews update that was launched was to weed out thin content sites and pages that are simply summaries or copy-and-pasted content rather than product reviews that are based on experience of using the product and conducting some testing and deep research into it; this will no doubt be an issue for affiliate marketers who have built smaller sites that will be hit by the update.

In Google’s guidelines, we can see that they provide examples for site owners that are providing or producing product reviews; these samples include an expert staff member of a retailer who helps shoppers choose between similar products, an independent blogger who promotes products by giving their own personal opinion, and editorial staff at a news or other publishing site.

From these, we can gather that these rules apply to sites from a wide range of industries and also reviews that are written by people at different levels of experience and with different goals in mind. It’s also worth noting that affiliate marketers would likely fall under the umbrella of bloggers, so it seems from this document that Google does not mind affiliate marketers who want to earn a living from recommending products, but they want them to produce real in-depth content that answers searchers’ questions before linking out to a retailer where they earn a commission from sales.

This update seems to affect a wide range of sites and people who have different goals; it is clear that Google is taking into account the reviews that are published by major e-commerce retailers who may have an incentive to push the highest-price products rather than a product that would be best for the customer and meet their price range.

It is clear from this update that the size or brand name of the site or content produced by it simply doesn’t matter; what matters most is that the content produced provides a unique insight into the product itself, and the best way to do that is by owning the product and using it on a regular basis, something that affiliate marketers often don’t do as they mass produce pages that are thin and, in general, just focus on building as many pages as possible in the hopes of getting some revenue from their website.

Google has also clarified that this update will target product review pages on e-commerce sites, blogger sites, and newspaper sites; it is not designed or aimed at user-generated reviews of the product, such as those submitted to major retail websites. This should help to clarify who and what the rules apply to and will prove to be helpful for affiliate marketers who are trying to produce the best quality of review that they can.

For many site owners, they will find that doing a deep-scale analysis using the best SEO tools, such as Ahrefs and SEMrush, will provide them with a deeper level of understanding of what changed in this update, and also taking a look at the official documents provided by Google will enable them to pick up certain hints that Google may drop without outright saying so.

Analysing not only a recent Google update but also individual markets and websites will always give you a larger amount of data, which almost always provides a deeper level of understanding than just looking into your site and your competitors’ sites; focusing on a much broader data set will help you to identify patterns that emerge but also help you understand what strengths and weaknesses your closest competitors may have.

One thing you may notice about this recent update is how the different languages of each website appear to affect the rankings of that page or site; how these sites write and produce content can easily be written into an algorithm to determine if it was produced by a larger-scale business or a personal blog.

Sites that have some firsthand experience of using the product will likely be promoted over generic templated content that provides thin value to search engine results pages. As an example of this, you may find sites that include words such as “I used product xyz for 10 days and found that…” may rank better than sites that are just a generic overview or, even worse, just copy and paste from other sites.

This may suggest to us that Google has found some rather simple differences between what makes a good review and what makes a poor review: sites that are loaded with affiliate links that appear high up the page and poorly written content that doesn’t mention the features of the product or even the weaknesses of the product but instead is just a really long sales pitch for how great it is, which clearly indicates that the person writing the review may be getting commission to only point out the positives.

A great way to think about improving your product pages would be to focus on brands that have a long history of reviewing products even before the internet. Which? magazine is a name that should be first on your list since they have been around a long time and have a good history of providing high-quality reviews that consumers love. It would be an idea to measure your review quality against one of theirs and see what elements of their reviews you like and dislike.

This will help to guide you on what elements should be included in your template when you next review a product; these can be things like unique images, breaking down features and benefits, focusing on a target audience that would benefit from the product, and also talking about how long you used the product for, alternatives to the product, and then including some non-affiliate links to provide alternative sources for the user to purchase from.

Site owners and producers of product reviews should ask themselves what value they are bringing to the table. If your site or product review contains information that the user could have just gotten from the manufacturer’s or retailer’s website, then it’s likely not producing a real need within the market, and you should rethink your strategy to produce unique content that adds more value.

Since people want genuine and trusted reviews, it would seem that Google wants to promote sites that have actually used the product in question firsthand and also sites that have a strong and trusted reputation for quality; the site in question should have a long history of trust with Google and provide real value to the internet as a whole before it starts off pushing affiliate links and uploading generic content.

Site owners should also build a resource box at the end of each review and state who reviewed the product; this will help to build credibility with Google, who prefers to see your sources, and also enables you to give some background on why they are qualified to review the product in question and how long it was tested. Having a real human review the product in question builds credibility with both your site and audience, and a good strategy for this is to hire experts within the field to write for your site exclusively if possible, as this gives you an advantage over the competition.