Three Big Ideas Around the April Reviews Update -- The SEM Daily 5.5.23
summarizing Glenn Gabe's deep-dive on the topic.
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Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Searcheye and is a look at the April Reviews Update by Glenn Gabe.
The three big ideas in this article are:
1. The Evolution From the Product Reviews Update to the Reviews Update
With the change to the Reviews System (notice “Product” has been dropped), the system now evaluates any content that can be considered a review or recommendation. For example, Google explains in its updated documentation that the system is “designed to evaluate articles, blog posts, pages, or similar first-party standalone content with the purpose of providing a recommendation, giving an opinion, or providing analysis.” That’s a big jump from focusing on just product reviews. And it also explains why so many sites were impacted by the April 2023 Reviews Update.
2. A Significant SERP Shakeup on 4/19
As the April Reviews Update started rolling out, I was documenting the volatility on Twitter. Although there was volatility, little did I know what was coming on 4/18 into 4/19… That’s when there was SERIOUS VOLATILITY based on Google pushing a tremor with the update.
I have covered what I call “tremors” many times in my posts about major algorithm updates and they are important to understand. Back in medieval Panda days, Google’s John Mueller explained that Google can make tweaks and adjustments during a rollout based on what they are seeing in the SERPs. And based on analyzing tremors over time, those smaller tweaks can have a big impact across the web
3. Google's Review Radar Finds Larger Publishers With Mixed Content (Some Reviews, Some Not)
Regarding Google getting better at finding reviews on larger publishers, a number of larger publishers were impacted heavily when the update first started rolling out. I’m referring to large sites with a lot of content (mostly not reviews content, but they do have reviews and recommendations content mixed in). And then with the 4/19 tremor, there was some type of correction pushed that reversed some of the impact on larger publishers. But then other larger publishers saw their first impact from the update.
Based on digging into the situation, it really looked like Google was evaluating and impacting reviews mixed into larger sites more with the April Reviews Update than previous updates (and then tweaking something related to this with the 4/19 tremor).
Here’s a link to the entire article if you want to give it a thorough read (recommended).
Coming up: my take on this whole thing. But first, a word from our sponsor:
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My Take
Glenn Gabe does some of the best Google Update analysis in the biz.
One reason his takes are so valuable and interesting: he has access to a TON of data. If you read the whole article, he talks about how these huge sites will hit him up in the middle of an update when traffic is down.
He works with a lot of these sites and sees their traffic reverse course in the future, so he has eyes on this kind of data (like, is this review reversing traffic drops from a previous one, and so on) and not many people have access to similar data.
The point about how Google’s updates are getting sophisticated when it comes to addressing large publishers that publish a shit-ton of content—SOME of which is review-related and then getting smashed or raised up depending on what the algo thinks… that is something to pay attention to.
If you have a site that reviews SOME stuff SOME of the time, you might consider reading those reviews guidelines closely to see what Google wants from you.
My advice?
You know how everyone went nuts after the medic update and scrambled to make sure their pages at least LOOKED like it had medical experts reviewing the content and etc.—I think the move here is to do the same. Over index on optimizing for the review guidelines. Go way out of our way to make what the algo is looking for super, stupidly obvious.
That’s the direction I’m heading with my sites, at least…
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Until tomorrow…
Sean Markey
sem@hey.com
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