March 2022 Product Reviews Update from Google: What’s New in the Additional Ranking Criteria?

Google has started rolling out the March 2022 product reviews update with added ranking criteria. This update is looking for comprehensive analysis, actual product use, specialised information and comparable product coverage. This search ranking algorithm update targets review-relevant content online that is especially helpful and useful to web searchers.

The launch of the first product reviews update was on April 8, 2021, and the second was launched on December 1, 2021. This third product reviews update was launched on March 23, 2022.

Purpose of the Third Google Product Reviews Update

The main purpose of the third Google product reviews update (March 23, 2022) is to give credibility and notice to review content that is superior to a large portion of the templated data that you come across online. Google plans to promote these forms of product reviews in Google results search rankings.

This is not meant as a direct punishment from Google for lower-calibre product reviews that have less than comprehensive content that merely summarises a group of products. Yet if your rankings decrease after you offer this content and other content is being promoted above yours, it will seem as though you are being penalised.

However, according to Google, your content is not receiving a penalty. Google is simply giving rewards to websites that offer review content with more insight by giving them a higher ranking than your site. This third update should actually impact only product review content.

Important Criteria for Determining What Matters with the Third product Reviews Update

The following criteria determine what matters with the third product reviews update:

• Include In-Depth Data. Include helpful comprehensive data such as the advantages or drawbacks of a specific item, details about how a particular product performs or how a new version is different from the previous ones. Unique data that is more advanced than the information provided by the manufacturer, such as visuals, audio or links to other content that describes the reviewer’s experience.

• Cover Comparable or Differing Products. Google states that the rollout of this update will take place during the next few weeks. Most of the ranking volatility should occur during the early phases of this rollout.

The Impact of This Product Reviews Update

Google reports that this update has the potential to impact creators of future product reviews in any language, although this initial rollout is of English-language product reviews. Google also reports positive results from past occurrences of this update. Google has plans to open up support for additional languages in the future for product reviews.

The overall focus of this update is on offering users content that gives analysis, insight and original research. It includes content produced by experts or enthusiasts who are very familiar with the topic. This type of update can be quite big. In fact, it can be nearly as large as core updates.

Helpful Questions to Consider Concerning Product Reviews

Google advises that your product reviews should cover areas such as the following, revealing answers to questions like these:

• What expert knowledge is available about certain products?

• What quantitative measurements are available concerning to what degree a product measures up in varied performance categories?

• How has a specific product evolved from earlier models or releases, offering improvements, addressing issues or helping users in making a buying decision?