Google’s September 2022 product reviews update is now fully rolled out. Google said this update only applied to English-language product reviews.
It took six days to complete, beginning Sept. 20 and concluding Sept. 26.
This marks the end of a flurry of Google algorithm updates that started with the helpful content update (Aug. 25 to Sept. 9), continued with the September 2022 core update (and Sept. 12 to 26) and concluded with the fifth version of the product reviews update.
Rollout complete. According to Google’s search ranking update page, “The rollout was complete as of September 26, 2022.”
Google’s July 2022 product reviews update also took six days to fully roll out.
There has been some discussion within the SEO community about the September product review update. Barry Schwartz covered that in What We’re Seeing From The Google Product Reviews Update #5 over Search Engine Roundtable.
About Google’s product review updates. These algorithm updates are meant to reward high-quality product reviews (in the form of insightful analysis and original research). Google said it will promote these types of product reviews in its search results rankings.
In short, if you were impacted, that means you probably need to put more effort into improving your product review content. Figure out how to make it unique so it stands out from the competition.
Why we care. Staying on top of Google’s multiple algorithm updates is important. This is a bit unique because Google rolled out overlapping updates this month – product reviews and a core update. Google says the product review update should only impact product review content. But having overlapping algorithm updates could complicate things – especially if you’re trying to diagnose ranking or visibility changes (positive or negative).
