SEO News You Can Use: Google July 2022 Product Reviews Update Complete

Google’s July 2022 Product Review Update has stealthily rolled out earlier than expected. The update was expected to take between 14 and 21 days. However, Google surprised SEO juggernauts, Search Engine Land, who discovered that the amendments had been added to the page last week on August 2, sans any official announcement.

“We saw very limited changes from the tracking tools and honestly, while some sites seemed to get hard by this update, it does not seem there was a lot of SEO community chatter around ranking changes due to this update. In fact, we saw a spike on August 3rd but clearly, that was after this update was complete.”, said Barry Swartz of Search Engine Land.

Google stated that it would “take 2-3 weeks to finish” when it was first announced on July 27, 2022, but it evidently only took six days.

The Google July 2022 Product Review Update seeks to highlight and prioritize superior review content in search rankings over a lot of the pre-written data you encounter online.

Although Google doesn’t technically penalize reviews with lower-quality content, others will be rewarded coveted spots in search engine results pages (SERPs).

So, if you want to get a competitive edge on your opponents, Google suggests focusing your efforts on unique, detailed and useful review content, such as:

• Evaluating your product as though you are the user
• Showcasing your expertise/knowledge of the product
• Take a personalized approach – use visuals, audio or other links as evidence of your experience using the product
• Use quantitative metrics to rate the product’s performance
• What makes your product different from your competitors’?

In the long run, writing high-quality product reviews will only benefit your website. But in the meantime, keep an eye on your rankings and organic traffic to track whether or not your site has been affected by the update.

More SEO News You Can Use

Google Search Result Snippets Updated: Now Shows Quoted Text: Google has modified how quoted searches are shown in Google Search. Following the announcement, Google will now indicate where that precise term can be found on the page in the search result snippet. This follows user feedback that there was value in seeing where the quoted text can be found on a search results page (SERP) rather than a broad description. According to Google, if you type a word or phrase in the search bar and add quotation marks, the snippet will display the locations of the exact word or phrase on the web page. This makes it simpler to find the information you’re looking for when you click through from Google search results. Quoted search terms, however, were not always displayed in the Google Search result snippet. This is because, at times, the quoted text is located in places in a document that don’t make for useful snippets. “For example, a word or phrase might appear in the menu item of a page, where you’d navigate to different sections of the site. Creating a snippet around sections like that might not produce an easily readable description,”, said Google. According to Search Engine Land, Google clarified that this isn’t a ranking adjustment per se but rather a change to how quoted searches appear on the Google Search user interface. In other words, your rankings won’t be affected, but your click-through from these searches may be.

6 Essential Google eCommerce Insights To Rank in Search Results: In a recent video, Developer Advocate Alan Kent revealed six key insights on enhancing eCommerce websites to stand out among competitors. The video focuses on six ways to optimize eCommerce search results, particularly incorporating certain properties in line with Google product structured data requirements. These include: reviewing product title tags/links, using high-quality images, sharing rich product and price drop data, using accurate product identifiers and creating a Google Business Profile. These adjustments will improve the visual presentation and your click-through rates (CTRs). In addition, Kent highlights three crucial components for eCommerce product pages. First, images make it easier for website users to understand your products better. Second, star ratings foster confidence and user trust in the buyer’s journey and pricing. Third, availability assists buyers in choosing between brands. Check out the Google Search Central video, “How to make your ecommerce website stand out in Google Search (6 Tips),” for a more in-depth look at how to improve your eCommerce site. Alternatively, take a look at Search Engine Journal’s overview.

Google Core Web Vitals No Longer Affect Noindex Pages: According to the latest Search Engine Roundtable post, non-indexed pages on websites will not be taken into account when calculating Core Web Vitals (CWV) and Google Page Experience scores. To be included in the CrUX dataset, a page needs to be publicly discoverable, following search engine indexability criteria. The CrUX Methodology document now states, “Any page will not meet the discoverability requirement if any of the following conditions are met, including root pages for the origin dataset: The page is served with an HTTP status code other than 200 (after redirects); The page is served with an HTTP X-Robots-Tag: noindex header or equivalent; The document includes a <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”> meta tag or equivalent.” The document does, however, go on to state, “If an origin is determined to be publicly discoverable, eligible user experiences on all of that origin’s pages are aggregated at the origin-level, regardless of individual page discoverability. All of these experiences count towards the origin’s popularity requirement.” This means that noindex pages could still affect the overall origin-level CWV score.

New Search Off the Record Episode: How Do Google Search Removals Work?: In the latest Search Off the Record podcast episode, Lizzi Sassman, John Mueller and Gary Illyes discuss how crawling, indexing and blocking work in the backend at various stages when it involves removals. All three experts agree that it’s a good idea to understand how these larger systems work at different stages before choosing a removal or blocking method. They also discuss using removal tools. Mueller mentions, “there are two ways that you can remove a page with these tools. One is you remove it completely if you’re like, “I don’t want this page at all to be visible in Search.” And the other is it removes the snippet that is shown and the cached page, which is like, “I changed something on this page and I want Google to…Refresh it and definitely don’t show the old one for the time being, kind of thing.” Illyes then suggests that if you want to remove a search result from the index and search results, a noindex is probably best. However, the removal tool is the fastest way to remove a search result altogether.

LinkedIn Introduces New Human-Centric Discover Feed: LinkedIn is testing a new version of the Discover feed in a new section of its mobile app. A dedicated tab in the LinkedIn app will store content posted by accounts outside your network, much like other discovery-based feeds. However, how the content is chosen in the LinkedIn feed differs from other feeds. Although still in the early stages of testing, LinkedIn’s VP of Product, Blake Barnes, stated that, rather than using algorithms to select content based on knowledge sharing within your network, the LinkedIn News team would choose the content, which is then tailored to the user’s interests and profession. And it’s not just posts that appear in LinkedIn’s Discovery feed. You can browse movies, newsletters, events and more from the top menu. The new feed can potentially expand your network and could open up new career prospects in addition to enhancing the user experience with a wider range of content. The feed is currently only available in English to test group members.

Editor’s Note: “SEO News You Can Use” is a weekly blog post posted every Monday morning only on SEOblog.com, rounding up all the top SEO news from around the world. Our goal is to make SEOblog.com a one-stop-shop for everyone looking for SEO news, education and for hiring an SEO expert with our comprehensive SEO agency directory.