Google’s Product Reviews March 2022 Update is Set to Roll Out!

The rollout of the March 2022 update of product reviews has been confirmed by Google. The update was announced on March 23 at around 12 P.M. ET, but it didn’t complete the rolling out till April 11. The update took 19 long days to officially roll out after its initial announcement.

However, the data providers opine that this new update may not be as huge as the December 2021 update.

How Does It Affect Product Review Content Creators?

If you create product review content for your website, you need to check whether your rankings may have been impacted. Closely look at your Google organic traffic, and see whether it improves, declines, or stays the same.

For your long-term plan, you should include a grave amount of effort and details into your product reviews, especially if you want to be seen as an authority on Google. Try to make it as unique as possible in order to get an edge over your competitors over the internet.

Additional Details about the March 2022 Product Reviews Update

How Does It Affect the SEO Community?

The start for the March 2022 product reviews update has been slow, and there has been some amount of volatility, and most of it came up on March 31. The SEO community has been hot by this update, and some have experienced it in a big way. However, the update isn’t as widespread as compared to the December update, not at least according to the collective chatter in the SEO community.

What Can You Do If You’re Hit?

If your website has been negatively affected by the latest update, there are a couple of things Google has suggested you must do. Google also shared two new best practices that you should adopt to keep up with the update – firstly, adding more multimedia along with the review of your products, and secondly, providing links to different sellers instead of only one. According to Google, you need to –

• Include evidence in the form of audio, visuals, or other links that express your experience with the product adequately to reinforce and support your authenticity and expertise as a reviewer.
• Provide links to not one but multiple sellers, allowing readers to go with the merchant of their choice.

In the March 2022 product reviews update, Google highlighted the things that matter while reviewing products. Here are the criteria –

• Add essential details in-depth, such as drawbacks and benefits of the product, specifics on how the product is different from other versions, or how it generally performs.
• Offer the experience of people who have used the product, explain how the product looks like physically or how it is used.
• Provide unique information that goes beyond what the manufacturer may already provide, such as audio, visuals, or links to other content that has details on a reviewer’s experience.
• Include comparison with other products, and how it’s different from other competitors.

In the third release of the March 2022 product reviews update, three additional points of advice were included.

• Demonstrating expertise and reinforcing authenticity is essential as a reviewer, and it can be done by mentioning relevant results and providing original photos from performed tests in the review.
• When a product is being recommended as the best for a specific purpose, reviewers must share exactly why they consider it the best. How is the product different and unique from the rest available in the market?
• For reviews of multiple products, they should ideally be in a ranked list along with in-depth single-product reviews. Each product in the ranked list should have enough content to stand on its own.

Through this update, Google is not necessarily penalizing product reviews of lower quality but rewarding websites that offer a much more insightful review – one that goes beyond the templated information we usually see on the web.