In Search engine optimization
Google Product Reviews Update 2.0 Analysis (December 2021) - read the full article about google updates 2021, Search engine optimization and from Matt Diggity on Qualified.One
Youtube Blogger
- In this video, Im gonna review the latest release to Googles product review update and tell you exactly what you need to do to protect your site from its wrath.
My name is Matt Diggity and I make a full-time living from product reviews through my affiliate media business, LeadSpring.
I also teach this stuff at the Affiliate Lab.
So you can say the updates like this are absolutely crucial to my business and yours as well, if youre an affiliate marketer.
On December 1st in the season of giving Google announced an add-on to the original product reviews update, which was released in April.
According to the Googs, this update rolls out over three weeks.
So dont poop the bed until its all said and done.
What kind of websites does this effect? Namely, websites that create well, product reviews.
And according to Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, this applies to single product reviews like a review of Fitbit or Roundup reviews, such as an article on the best fitness tracker.
Websites that review products and give buyer recommendations on these products should pay extremely close attention to the release notes of these updates.
Ill dig into it shortly, but its important to point out that Google is literally giving out a playbook on what they wanna see in their perfect version of a product review.
Now, as mentioned earlier, this incremental update is an additional 2.0 addition to the original product reviews update.
After you watched this video, I highly recommend you watch my previous video on the first product reviews update.
But heres a quick summary of the key facts that you need to know.
First, this update doesnt penalize sites with bad product reviews.
It rewards sites that do it well.
So if you lost rankings its because other sites were rewarded past you.
Next, informational type queries should not be affected by this update.
Only review content.
If you wrote an informational article on how to calibrate a fitness tracker, it should not be affected.
Third, the first version of the product reviews update focuses on the need for expert knowledge in your content.
You achieve that by talking about review points that are above and beyond the typical information you can get from the manufacturer sales page.
Fourth, you should have custom rating criteria in your reviews.
If you reviewing fitness trackers, then generic criteria like price and rating are not helpful.
You should instead get into stuff like battery life and data accuracy.
Stuff that actually matters for a fitness tracker.
Next, you wanna show how a product stacks up against competition.
Dont just sell the crap out of a product as a standalone entity.
Talk about what it does that sets it apart from its competitors.
And next you need to talk about the cons of a product.
You need to talk about what the product does badly.
It cant all be peaches and roses.
You need to be real.
This summarizes the main points of the previous update.
Lets jump into the new requirements that are added into this recent one.
But before we do that, Id like to ask if you could smash the like button for me real quick.
A like button smashing lets YouTube know that this video is good.
And unlike a product review, its super quick to do and it makes my day as well.
Lets get started.
Heres the release notes for the December product reviews update.
Lets start picking it apart from top to bottom.
The first thing I wanna point out is this sentence here.
"If you have made positive changes to your content, you may see that improvement reflected as part of this latest release." What this means is that the product reviews algorithm isnt always running in evaluating sites based on its criteria.
It rolls out periodically.
So the changes you make today might not take effect until the next rollout of the update.
For USCO veterans, this is how the penguin algorithm used to work before they made it real time.
Now the juicy section of these release notes is these two bullet points here.
One thing we first recognize is that this new December update is a lot shorter than the one in April.
It focuses on two bullet points instead of nine.
So theres less criteria that you need to pay attention to this time around, but theres also more criteria overall.
You win some, you lose some.
Lets zoom in on bullet point number one.
According to Google, you should 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.
Yo, they kind of already talked about this in the last product reviews release notes.
In April, they said that you should show what the product is like physically, or how it is used.
In my opinion, the word to pay attention to here, is show, how else do you show something other than in an image? So essentially, this time around, they just crystallize this requirement with its own bullet point.
So does this mean that if you have a technology review site, you need to buy every damn fitness tracker, router and graphic card to review so you can show evidence that you actually use something? Thats gonna get expensive real quick.
I dont think you need to go that far.
After all, how would an actual algorithm be able to figure this out? Googles image algorithm can definitely figure out what a Fitbit is, but can they really figure out what your living room looks like? So they can confirm that youre actually looking at something from your home? Nah, come on.
Googles algorithm is pretty good at matching though.
Like if I do a Google image search of this photo of a Fitbit, it figures out right away and shows me every single website on the interwebs that use this image.
So essentially, they can figure out when you dont have original images.
Ill give you two solutions to this issue, a cheesy easy one and a more difficult one.
For the easy cheat mode, create original images.
Use Photoshop or some tool like that to craft an original image, a quick flip in a rotation and the algorithm chokes up.
Now slap that on a new background and youre good.
People also like to swipe product review images from unboxing videos on YouTube.
Its clever, Ill admit it.
But I also hate this one because people do it to my YouTube channels all the time.
Which brings me to the second solution.
Play along with Googles game and actually buy and review the products.
But my suggestion is to do these reviews on YouTube and then you can use YouTube embeds as your quote unquote evidence.
Theres a few reasons for this.
First, YouTube converts crazy good.
Second, you can often get your products for free.
As long as its not a super expensive product.
The owners are pretty lenient with sending something out for a video review.
Hell, we got sent out $1,000 rowing machine before.
And third, youre now in two platforms that send traffic to each other.
Your article review will send traffic to YouTube and your YouTube review will send traffic to the article.
Meanwhile, youve just solved this whole issue of demonstrating evidence.
If you wanna learn more about YouTube affiliate marketing, make sure to check out my video with Nick Nimmin after you watch this video.
Now, do I think that Google will eventually implement a trustworthy way for them to identify evidence of product usage? maybe someday, but its gonna take some time.
(dramatic music) I have friends that actually do this stuff legit for their sites.
They actually buy all the products and physically review them.
Lets see how they fair when this update completely rolls out.
Now onto the second bullet point, you should include links to multiple sellers to give the reader the option to purchase from their merchant of choice.
You know, who does this? Big ass websites like The Spruce.
In this article review of coffee tables you can see that they display purchase links for Amazon, Ashley Furniture and Walmart.
Heres Verywell Health doing the same thing, showing a billion links for a collagen powder.
Is this something you need to do as well? Now I can tell you from tons of conversion rate optimization tests that you dont want to do this.
Theres a concept called paradox of choice.
When a buyer is faced with too many decisions, they stall and dont do a thing.
This is what happens when you give them too many options.
You ever go to a dentist and take 10 hours to order something? But you can go to In-N-Out and have your order ready in one second.
Anyways, if this is what Google wants, should you do it? In short, eventually, yes.
This is something that the algorithm can indeed pick up pretty easy.
They can easily see if all your affiliate links are going to the same vendor or affiliate program.
This is particularly easy in a single product review where you simply send people to whatever affiliate program gets you paid the most.
They might have more challenge than this in a product round of review because theyre not likely sending all your affiliate links to the same place like, Amazon.
Or at least please tell me youre not sending all that traffic to freaking Amazon.
(Jeff Bezos laughs) - [Interviewer] Thats really good.
- Okay, lets get back to the super cool algorithm looking bureau because Google is saying that they want multiple affiliate links for a given product.
Theyre essentially saying, that more is better than less, which addresses a big concern that many affiliates have over how many affiliate links should be on one page.
Google is telling us right now that it doesnt matter.
Something Ive said for a long time based on my test results.
Now, should you stop whatever youre doing right now and apply to 50 affiliate programs? I would definitely not worry about it right now.
Like 1% of the affiliate internet links out to multiple providers.
Theyd nuke the entire web, but keep your on this kind of thing and see if it starts to become more commonplace.
Track successful websites in your niche and see if they start biting the bullet.
Or subscribe to this channel and Ill make sure youre kept up to date.
Matt Diggity: Google Product Reviews Update 2.0 Analysis (December 2021) - Search engine optimization