So far, I will say that the Google Products Reviews update version 3, the March 2022 version, is not that huge. That is, not that huge compared to the previous product review updates or core updates. Some would say this update is a mild update, again, so far…
I’ve been closely following the forums and social sites and the “chatter” within the industry has been pretty mild for an update of this kind. Yes, we have some chatter here and there, but is no where near what we saw with the December product reviews volatility or even that of the first product reviews update impact. I know it has only been less than six days and this update rolls out over a few weeks, but typically, we see the brunt of these updates in the first few days or so and I am not sure I would call this a big update thus far.
Of course, if your site was his by this product reviews update, it was a big update for you. What I mean by not big is that it is not as widespread, impacting as many sites, as the previous update. Maybe this update is more targeted in, maybe there was a delay in rolling it out, maybe I am missing all the marks and I am wrong? I am just throwing out theories here.
I did ask Alan Kent, who is the person at Google fielding questions on this update, if there is some sort of delayed rollout. He basically said he does not know:
I don’t know sorry. (Some previous companies slowed rolls over weekend so staff get a weekend rather than fight internal fires.)
— Alan Kent (@akent99) March 27, 2022
I posted a poll on Twitter shortly after asking if any SEOs have noticed changes with this update. Now I totally expect a good percentage of the responses that say yes and no are incorrect and they are looking at the wrong thing but hey – here it is anyway:
Are you noticing Google ranking changes related to the Product Reviews Update from March 23rd?
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) March 28, 2022
Most, about 60%, are saying no and I suspect many are looking at rankings in general, even for non product reviews sites. Also, some might be looking at unconfirmed Google Spring 2022 update that happened a few days earlier. By the way, that Spring unconfirmed update felt bigger than this product reviews update – so far.
Dan Richardson asked about it over the weekend, I retweeted it and the responses were nope, don’t see anything:
Anyone seen much movement with the product review update?
— Dan Richardson (@dan__richardson) March 26, 2022
There is some chatter in the SEO forums, but I think all of it is unrelated to product reviews category of sites. Both the chatter at two WebmasterWorld thread and all the BlackHat World threads (there are a lot of them) are not really showing complaints specific to product reviews sites. So I don’t have much to quote here from SEOs.
Then we have the tools that some showed a spike on March 25th, two days after the update, but that does not seem to align with the chatter specific to product review sites. I’ll share the charts so you can see them in one place:
As you can see, some show spikes shortly after the announcement of the product reviews update but the spikes are not at levels of previous product review updates or core updates.
In summary, so far this update seems mild – but there is still time.
