Last Thursday, Google began rolling out the new Google Products Reviews Update – I covered everything Google has said about it over in that story but now, it is time to cover the impact. It has been a few days since it started rolling out and those hit by this update are showing that this update can be as big as a core update if impacted.
If you missed what this update is about, read my original story – it should explain it all and I’ve been updating it through even this morning with new information from Google.
Now, with this rollout, it seemed to have really touched down right away. Google said it started rolling out Thursday afternoon and can take about two weeks to fully roll out but it seemed to really start in a big way early on, as early as Friday. So this is a pretty aggressive rollout, like some previous (but not all) core updates (not that this is a core update).
This seems to have done what Google said it would and shake up the product reviews category, and yes, it did seem to have a big impact on affiliate websites with a lot of product reviews.
Industry Chatter
Here is some of the chatter I’ve been following at WebmasterWorld and some BlackHat World threads – keep in mind, the affiliate forums are pretty heavy here, which I am not covering in detail.
Glenn Gabe shared some very mind-blowing charts of some sites that have product reviews that got his hard by this update:
Lily Ray shared later:
One SEO saying he got his hard:
Marie Haynes did an early poll asking if this impacted folks, most said no but it was a very early poll:
Tracking Tools
Now let’s look at the tracking tools but keep in mind, most of these tools do not break out the data by type of site – i.e. e-commerce, affiliate, etc, which is what this update leaned towards. But most tools showed big changes right after Google announced this:
Mozcast (101 temperature which is big for Moz):
SERPMetrics (huge spike):
Algoroo (big spike):
Advanced Web Rankings (same):
Accuranker (not as huge but yes, a change):
RankRanger (big changes here):
Cognitive SEO (big changes also):
SEMRush (same):
Anyway – so this update does seem to have legs – and those who have content that is product review related, especially in the affiliate space, seemed to have felt this update in a big way.
I’ll keep tracking it, because this update is still rolling out.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and BlackHat World.
Update: There is a bit of renewed movement according to Glenn Gabe but I will say, in general the industry is pretty quiet now about this update. This was added on April 20th:
