Review Sentiment: Is It A Google Ranking Factor?

Review sentiment reflects the prevailing opinion that customers share in reviews of a company’s products or services.

Some believe that positive or negative sentiment has an impact on a business’s search rankings.

There are legitimate concerns about these claims, as it would leave companies vulnerable to negative SEO attacks if the rankings could be downgraded with bad reviews.

Conversely, there is concern that competitors will artificially inflate their ratings with fake positive reviews.

There is no doubt that review sentiment can influence consumer behavior and influence metrics such as conversion rate.

But does it have any impact on Google search rankings?

Let’s take a look at the claims and evidence surrounding review sentiment as a rating factor.

Claim: Review sentiment is a ranking factor

Review sentiments are brought up in discussions about Google ranking factors, with some claiming that positive sentiments can boost rankings and negative sentiments can lower ratings.

There are a number of reasons for these claims.

One of the most frequently cited “evidence” is associations between high-ranking websites and companies with positive reviews.

Sentiment analysis happens to be a built-in feature of SEO software, which can lead to the conclusion that review sentiment has an impact on search rankings.

Roger Monti of Search Engine Journal published an article with more detail on where the claims about sentiment came from and why they persist.

In addition to what is mentioned in Monty’s article, Google’s search quality evaluator guidelines for maintaining review sentiment play a recurring theme among SEOs.

Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines

Google lends credence to the claim that review sentiment is a ranking factor Research Quality Evaluator Guidelines.

Section 2.6 of the Guidelines tells Google’s quality manufacturers what to look for when evaluating the reputation of a website or content creator.

There are a number of notes about checking review sites to understand more about a company’s reputation.

This is an example:

“Customer reviews can be useful in assessing the reputation of a store or a business. However, you must interpret these reviews carefully, especially if there are few of them. Be suspicious of both positive and negative user reviews. Anyone can write them, including a creator The site or any person hired by the store or the company for this purpose.”

Some have drawn conclusions regarding review sentiment as a rating factor based on the above.

However, search quality raters have no direct influence on search rankings, and the guidelines they follow are not based on what the Google algorithm uses as ranking factors.

Quality scorers collect feedback on Google search results to help ensure that web pages shown in SERPs meet a certain quality threshold.

One way the quality of web pages is measured is by examining the reputation of the website where they are posted.

The headlines related to this chapter of the Quality Evaluator Guidelines were published in 2017 by Gary Illyes of Google Speak at a conference On the topic of reputation analysis.

Some of those present misunderstood his statements and incorrectly reported that Ellis said that reputation can affect a website’s position in search results.

However, Ellis was only discussing how quality rater guidelines work.

While customer reviews are a component of reputation research, the guidelines suggest treating them with a degree of skepticism.

Fortunately, Google has provided clarity on this matter and has stated definitively whether review sentiment is a ranking factor.

Evidence for review sentiment as a ranking factor

Studies may attempt to demonstrate that review tendencies are a ranking factor by showing the correlation between customer reviews and a website’s position in search results.

We’ll only consider hard evidence, and Google has repeatedly stated that review sentiment is Not ranking factor.

Gary Ellis from Google soon denied Allegations that began circulating on the Internet after speaking at the conference that we referred to in the previous section.

Not only does Google not use emotion as a ranking factor, its algorithms don’t even recognize emotion.

Danny Sullivan from Google confirm this in 2018.

Google can’t use sentiment to rank if it doesn’t have a concept of sentiment.

This should be enough to end speculation about revision tendencies as a ranking factor, but the theories persist.

In 2021, Sullivan was asked if anything had changed since he last said Google acknowledged the sentiment.

Confirms that nothing has changed.

Google’s algorithm still doesn’t recognize emotions.

Review of sentiment as a ranking factor: Our judgment

It is confirmed that review sentiment is not a ranking factor for organic search rankings, although we acknowledge that it is a factor for local search ranking.

This has always been the case, ever since Google’s inability to recognize emotions Infamously exploited.

Around 2010, a company was pissing customers off that they would write bad reviews.

This was done intentionally because the links from the reviews pushed the company’s site higher in the search results.

Google didn’t recognize people associated with the company were saying negative things, and Google only recognized links.

Since then, Google has gotten better at not rewarding websites that rip off customers, but Google’s indifference to sentiment remains.

Review sentiment can directly affect other areas of internet marketing, but search rankings aren’t one of them.

Featured image: Robin Biong / Search Engine Journal