The English Google Product Reviews update has been announced. It is not mentioned if or when it will be released to other languages. Mueller answered a question about whether it applies to other languages.
Google Product Reviews December 2021 Update
On December 1, 2021, Google announced on Twitter that a Product Review update focused on English-language web pages will be rolled out.
The December 2021 product reviews update is now rolling out to English pages. It will take about three weeks to complete. We also gave our tips for product review creators: https://t.co/N4rjJWoaqE
– Google Search Center (googlesearchc) December 1, 2021
The focus of the update was to improve the quality of reviews displayed in Google search, targeting review sites specifically.
Google employee chirp Description of the types of sites that will be targeted for downgrading in search rankings:
Mainly relevant to sites that publish articles reviewing products.
Consider sites like Best TVs Under $200.com.
The goal is to improve the quality and usefulness of the reviews we show to users.”
Google also published a file blog post With more guidance on the product review update that introduced a couple of new best practices that the Google algorithm will look for.
The first best practice was the requirement to prove that the product had already been dealt with and reviewed.
The second best practice was to provide links to more than one place where the user can purchase the product.
The Twitter announcement said it was posted to English-language websites. The blog post did not say which languages it was released to and the blog post did not specify that the product review update was limited to the English language.
Google’s Mueller Thinking About Product Reviews Update
Product review Update goals More languages?
The person asking the question was under the impression that the product review update only affected English search results.
But he confirmed that he was seeing fluctuation in German-language search that appeared to be related to Google’s December 2021 product review update.
This is his question:
“I was seeing some movement in the German search as well.
So I was wondering if there could also be an impact on websites in other languages with this product reviews update…because we’ve seen a lot of movement and volatility in the past weeks.
…my question is, is it possible that updating product reviews will affect other sites as well? “
John Mueller replied:
“I don’t know… like other languages?
My assumption was that this was universal and across all languages.
But I don’t know what we announced in the blog post specifically.
But we usually try to get the engineering team to decide on that so we can properly document it in the blog post.
I don’t know if that happened with updated product reviews. I don’t recall the full blog post.
But… from my point of view it seems like something we can do in multiple languages and it just won’t hook into English.
And even if it’s English at first, it feels like something relevant across the board, and we should try to find ways to propagate that into other languages over time as well.
So I am not particularly surprised to see the changes in Germany.
But I also don’t know what we’ve already announced in terms of the locations and languages involved.”
Does updating product reviews affect more languages?
While the Twitter announcement specified that updating product reviews was limited to the English language, the official blog post did not mention any such restrictions.
Google’s John Mueller offered his view that updating product reviews is something Google could do in multiple languages.
One has to wonder if the goal of the tweet was to get the update to English first and then to other languages.
It is not clear if the product reviews update has been rolled out globally to more languages. Hopefully, Google will clarify this soon.
quotes
Google blog post about updating product reviews
Update product reviews and your site
Google New Product Reviews Guidelines
Write high quality product reviews
John Mueller discusses whether updating product reviews is universal
Watch Mueller answer the question at 14:00 Minute Mark
