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Google’s New Update on Product Reviews
Google’s mission is to organize all the information from around the world. A part of this mission is to organize product information for shoppers and retailers. Google does this by collecting accurate and trusted product data and makes it available to shoppers. If you are an e-commerce site and wish to reach your target customers, we suggest you provide quality product information.
Through several experiments and testing, Google concludes that customers or users rely on in-depth product reviews to make any purchase. To help customers globally, Google has enhanced its ranking system. This algorithm update in the ranking system is specifically designed to reward or encourage such in-depth product reviews.
Google also states that their previous suggestions on ‘how to offer quality content’ are valid and must be followed strictly. The main goal here is to provide relevant, informative, and well-researched content written by experts or enthusiasts who know the topic well.
Check out the additional list of points given below before writing a product review:
- Express expert knowledge about products where appropriate.
- Show what the product is like, physically, or how it is used, with unique content beyond what’s provided by the manufacturer.
- Provide quantitative measurements about how a product measures up in various categories of performance.
- Explain what sets a product apart from its competitors.
- Cover comparable products to consider or explain which products might be best for certain uses or circumstances.
- Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of a particular product based on your research.
- Describe how a product has evolved from its previous models or releases to provide improvements, address issues, or otherwise help users in making a purchase decision.
- Identify key decision-making factors for the product’s category and how the product performs in those areas? For example, a car review might determine that fuel economy, safety, and handling are key decision-making factors and rate performance in those areas.
- Describe key choices in how a product has been designed and their effect on the users beyond what the manufacturers say.
Lastly…
After following the above-mentioned suggestions, if you still have questions or need more explanation on creating good content, check out the resources on Google Search Central, including tools, help pages, and our forums.
If You are Facing Indexing Issues, Report to Google
Recently, Google took to Twitter to make an announcement about indexing issues. They said that if anyone living in the U.S. is experiencing indexing issues they can’t figure out, Google has now introduced a channel through which one can report them directly to the Google search team.
Here’s the announcement:
To report the indexing issue, you will need a verified Search Console account, where you can access the ‘Report an Indexing Issue’ button in the footer of the URL inspection help document and Index Coverage report document.
This feature is beneficial for anyone who needs further support with indexing issues beyond the scope of the Google community forums and support documentation.
What Google has to say more about this feature:
“The form collects issues raised by site owners when trying to fix Indexing issues with their site in Google Search. A verified Search Console account is a prerequisite for site owners to report issues. Please visit the Google Search Central Help Community for general queries on How Search Works and to improve your site’s visibility in Google Search.”
Before you submit the issue directly to Google, the feature will take you through a step-by-step process to assist you in debugging the indexing issue from your end.
Actionable Strategy – Now, when you have exhausted all possible avenues to resolve this issue, you have one last option to resort to; because we have learned time and again that the issue really is with Google, not you. Now you can tell them directly when such is the case!
Instances Where Google will Remove a Page
There are just two such situations when Google removes pages from their index. Danny Sullivan from Google recently posted about them.
1. Content that violates the law
2. Content that can be termed as highly personal
Danny further explained the nuances and grey areas. The laws vary based on the location, particularly in regards to privacy and defamation.
Copyright violations, on the other hand, are hard to confirm unless reported. Child sex abuse material is virtually illegal everywhere and can be detected easily by automated systems.
He noted that Google has published a policy for personal information removal and sites with exploitative materials, personal threats and doxxing.
He went on to explain how Google looks for patterns to address these issues, “with trillions of pages and more being added each minute”.
Eliminating inappropriate content page by page or denying access to the entire site cannot be seen as an ideal option, as it isn’t scalable. The entire site would be affected only in instances where there is “a high volume of valid copyright removal requests.” This can be used as a reason to demote the site in the search results.
He also pointed out the fact that Google mostly relies on reported content.
What You Can Do – Before reporting any type of content, have a thorough look at it, whether it can qualify as violating or not. Also, keep in mind that even if the content gets removed from Google’s index, it isn’t completely removed from the web.
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