Google is rolling out its third version of the product reviews update, named the March 2022 Product Reviews Update. The previous two versions were the April 2021 Product Reviews Update and the December 2021 Product Reviews Update. The March version was updated to incorporate more signals and criteria in this niche ranking algorithm.
Google started to roll out the March 2022 product reviews update yesterday, March 23, 2023 at about 12:00pm ET. This impacts only English-language pages for now but Google hinted this can rollout to other languages soon, possibly before another official product reviews update. Google wrote “we plan to open up product review support for more languages.”
Google also said it will take about three weeks to complete and can impact “product reviews across many sites” – “many sites” Google said. So like previous product reviews updates, site hit by this, can feel this in a big way.
As a reminder, the product reviews update aims at rewarding high-level product review content, above thinner product review content. Product review updates are not core updates, but they may be mistaken as such.
This latest version “builds on that work to enhance our ability to identify high quality product reviews,” Google wrote. Google added “this will make it easier for us to get sound purchasing advice in front of users, and to reward creators who are earnest in being helpful.”
Currently, at the time of publishing this – I am seeing very little movement in the Google search results. I suspect that will change any moment now but the SEO industry chatter is quiet on ranking changes right now and the tracking tools have yet to pick up on any volatility. Again, I expect this to change soon, very soon.
Google Product Reviews Update Quick Facts
Here are the most important things that we know right now in short form:
- Name: Google March 2022 Product Reviews Update
- Launched: March 23, 2022 at around 12:00pm ET