Google announced the release of the February 2023 Product Reviews Update. The update applies globally to eleven languages and will take approximately two weeks to fully roll out.
Change to Product Reviews Guidance
The February 2023 Product Reviews Update is accompanied with a clarification made to the existing Product Reviews update guidance.
Google updated their Product Review Update documentation to better reflect that the document is about the product reviews system itself and what it does.
The first notable change is to the title of the documentation.
Previous Product Reviews document title:
Google Search’s product reviews update and your website
New Product Reviews document title:
Google Search’s product reviews system and your website
Previously there was no mention of the topic “product reviews system” and now that phrase is used ten times.
The phrase, “product reviews update” appeared ten times in the original version of Google’s product reviews update guidance but now it only appears three times.
While that may seem like a minor change the effect is that it changes the focus of Google’s guidance away from product reviews update.
Changes to the guidance have the effect of emphasizing the product reviews system.
That in turn makes it clearer that the update is a change to the “product reviews system.”
One of the new passages in the updated Product Reviews System guidance explains:
“Periodically, we improve how the product reviews system works.
When we do this in a notable way, we share this as a “product reviews update” on our Google Search ranking updates page.”
Product Reviews Update for Eleven Languages
The update announcement makes a specific reference to the fact that it is rolling out to eleven languages.
The languages the update is rolling out to are:
- Dutch
- English
- French
- German
- Indonesian
- Italian
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Russian
- Spanish
- Vietnamese
Two Week Product Reviews System Update Rollout
Google also announced that the rollout will take approximately two weeks to finish, which puts the completion date at March 7, 2023.
What To Do If a Site is Affected by the Update?
It has consistently been the case that Google algorithm updates causes ranking changes that aren’t necessarily permanent.
Should your site become affected by the update it’s best to sit tight and wait until the update is over.
About the Product Reviews System
The purpose of the Product Reviews System is to weed out thin content that are merely summaries and surface more product reviews that are based on actual experience and research.
The announcement of the update to the Product Reviews System was via Twitter.
Today we released the February 2023 product reviews update, which applies to these languages globally: English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Polish. It'll take ~2 weeks to fully roll out. More here: https://t.co/YpNnK97G3O
— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) February 21, 2023
Featured image by Shutterstock/Kues
