Google Product review algorithm update

A new month and a new Google Algorithm update is also upon us, the last few months have seen several pushes from Google. With all of them laterally focused on discovering low content and taking it away or dropping it in the search engines. Let's take a look at what's known about the update that will begin rolling out in America next week. And what this could mean for your website results.

Like any Google Update, it can shake up your website's search results quite a bit. With each update you can be pulled to the front, or you can end up on the second page. Many websites are constantly evolving and Google is not standing still. With the offering of content aimed at product reviews specifically, there is also a lot of low quality content available. Often from authors who have not had the product in their hands, and mainly get the information and plus and minus points from other sources. There have already been a number of updates for this, but it will be further unpacked in this update.

Helpful content update

Helpful content is of course a vague term, but basically means that content should help a user further in seeing information about a specific product. Or further help them choose between a selection of products for a purpose they want to achieve. So here has been an update earlier in July to pick out a lot of low quality content, and especially content created by artificial intelligence. This is to ensure that visitors are not just milked for ad revenue and affiliate revenue. But actually get something out of it.

Google explicitly states:

"To this end, we're launching what we're calling the "helpful content update" that's part of a broader effort to ensure people see more original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results."

Focusing on "People First Content"

Writing the texts for people first and not for Google's crawlers is seen as a main priority, if you only optimize the text and for example unnaturally incorporate the keyword every few sentences. This can already have a negative effect on the user who ultimately tries to read the text.

So take another critical look at your current texts, and try to imagine what an eventual visitor would like best.

Content created by Artificial Intelligence

Content created by A.I. is not seen as helpful with respect to a whole bunch of different purposes. Here in this update specifically, which focuses on product reviews. Under no circumstances can it still be that an A.I. can offer a unique Insight into a product as through a well written review by a human. So Google is rejecting these websites for this, and some results they are trying to filter out here.

Avoiding developing content that is purely search engine optimized

Google thus recommends writing content for people and visitors first, and not just optimizing your content for Google. Of course, it is not entirely clear how you can determine this. Fortunately, Google itself has set out a number of guidelines for this that you can use to create your content.

These are on the following link to study:

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/08/helpful-content-update

What this means for many bloggers

Many hobby bloggers will not notice much, they often write with passion about a particular product or hobby. The larger companies and blogs that have grown into a business will often feel more of the impact of this. As a blog or content website grows, more and more of it is written by external writers. Since content is always a big time investment for any business. Quality can therefore suffer if attention is not paid.

A quote I would like to add from Google's own article is the following:

"Are you writing to a particular word count because you've heard or read that Google has a preferred word count (No, we don't)."

In fact, there has been a longstanding notion that Google keeps track of the wordcount and puts the longer articles more at the top. However, this is often not the case. And is thus once again confirmed in this update. Wordcount will therefore be more of a guideline, again after this update, do not try to artificially add content that has no value on balance. Baked air is also not appreciated by Google, next to the most important, the visitor.

Are you tensely checking your ranking? Or do you expect no problems with your Google Results? Let us know via Social Media!