After several months of waiting, Google unveiled the December 2021 product reviews update for sites that mainly target product comparisons and engage in item reviews. It was the second such update after the one rolled out in April of the same year. Its implementation took quite a long time, at least when compared to other Google broad core updates beforehand, with the deployment process being completed after three weeks.
The December 2021 product reviews update complements the changes rolled out by Google in April, which resulted in a significant surge in traffic for some sites and a spectacular dip for others. And some of those sites have returned to their pre-April update daily interaction numbers, only to be again hit by this new series of algorithm updates.
First of all, the update comes as a supplement to the changes already implemented in April. The main target affected by the new algorithm updates is composed mainly of sites that focus on writing product reviews or engaging in comparisons between items. The update is an advantage for sites that benefit from a low number of links, as significant traffic surges could be observed in domains with as low as 3000 active links.
With this update, Alphabet is trying to promote sites that focus on in-depth reviews and comply with many of the elements already confirmed by Google in their April blog post. What changes with the December 2021 product reviews update? It implements a more extensive evaluation of the performance of review sites, which can affect their performance in the SERPs.
It is also important to note that this latest update is not exclusively addressed only to sites specializing in product reviews but affects any domain that at some point had an article comparing one or more products or that showcased the features of an item, regardless of the central area of expertise of that respective site. Are you, for example, the owner of a news aggregator which only occasionally posts product reviews? The latest update can affect your ranking in the SERPs, even if reviews are not your primary activity area.
Google will now consider a suite of criteria when determining a site’s score and decrease the reliance on links for increased promotability in the algorithms. At the moment, the plan for these product reviews updates is to implement them periodically. Still, in the future, they may become an integrated part of Google’s core ranking algorithm and may end up affecting more than just English-language sites, as they do now.
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The December 2021 product reviews update works on the foundation built by the April update, which affected enough sites to be considered a core update for Google’s algorithms. What were the changes implemented then? More than anything, there was a shift towards expert reviews where article length and author expertise were considered. Sites that provided a simplified review with links to a single source from which you could buy products were now at a disadvantage.
Sites that did long-term reviews of products, that showed real-life usage, that provided statistics and objective criteria for differentiating between items, that presented a history of featured brands, and that could show the durability of the product after a more extended period of usage benefited from increased visibility in the SERPs.
Google has confirmed that after this December update, items such as posting images and videos where the reviewer uses the product and posting links to more than one store for the product being reviewed will also be considered. But what is important to note is that these two new criteria were not implemented with the rollout of this latest update but will be implemented by Google in future updates. The company has also confirmed that machine learning was at the heart of this update and that the input of human programmers was somewhat lower.
The latest update has introduced some volatility in the market. In the case of some sites, which have already been affected by the April product reviews rollout, the drip in traffic has been significant, reaching values of over 50%. Other sites, on the other hand, saw increases of over 30% in daily visitor interactions. The update only affected English-language sites, but the way some of them increased or decreased in traffic is interesting.
Some domains have reported losses or transformations of the rich snippets, which are vital to a site’s presence in the top results of the SERPs because they bring a visual element that differentiates the website from the competition, which is intriguing to visitors. It has been reported that some sites have completely lost these rich snippets, while for others, they have turned into JumpLinks.
The new product reviews update has also led to traffic volatility resulting from using head terms, such as top, best or greatest. Here the preliminary results are somewhat split, with some sites seeing a boost in traffic for comparison articles while others experienced a significant dip.
So, who stands to gain after this latest broad update? First and foremost, the sites that do an excellent job of visually organizing the products being compared. Based on this new update, a site with many pictures or videos in the review that shows charts where the differential features between products can be presented objectively will get a boost in the SERPs. This latest rollout also emphasizes using the product for extended periods and encourages explaining the review process to potential customers.
The latest core update for December was significant for many sites whose main activity is the promotion or presentation of products, and some areas gained more traffic than others. To always be one step ahead of the competition and to take advantage of the algorithm changes implemented by the new machine learning tools developed by Google, it is best to call a professional company with experience in the field, and GAMIT can be that company.
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