Google moving to make every product review look the same
Google is changing how they return product reviews in your searches. Evidently the whole sellers paying websites to link to them to get domain authority and then shilling out substandard products using word spaghetti isn’t a business model Google is interested in encouraging any more.
There’s absolutely no tech notes for how this works, just general product reviewing best practices guides, so I imagine it’s an AI that goes through your product reviews and attempts to grade your reliability from that.
I’ve been turning down money left and right from companies trying to post linkbacks for years as part of Google’s SEO nightmare playing field and I suspect this latest move will probably mean my inbox is a little less flooded with people who claim they love the site and want to buy a guest post. Well, you love it so much note that on every page it says we don’t do that.
Now as opposed to linkbacks and domain authority we’ve got something else the SEO groups will be glomming onto… perceived expertise looks like the thing. That’s going to be interesting as Google becomes the gatekeeper to what is an expert, and what expertise in reviewing a product actually looks like for an algorithm.
I don’t dislike what the attempt is, however after several years of seeing how much money was involved in the tricking of Google to return “The Top 11ty Smart Bunion Pads you must buy” when someone’s searching for something and how long Google let SEO trickery go on I suspect we’re just going to see more fakes week by week as people trick the system.
Basically I don’t trust Google to be responsible gatekeepers after watching what Google as gatekeepers allowed pretty much unopposed since the Panda/Penguin days. I fully expect my inbox to be flooded with ads for SEO camps on building product reviews for products you don’t have and how to craft the domain-ranking illusion that you’re an expert.
If it works, good on ya. I’m tired of trying to research a product and getting a domain shilling garbage that was registered 3 months ago and has more domain authority purchased via linkbacks than this 22 year old site.
Sincerely Paul, reviewer, probably not an expert.
Oh yeah, as a note when I talk about SEO trickery, I got quotes on getting on the first page of Google for work – it’s obscene how much these SEO building farms get per month. I’m not just some blog owner complaining that Google isn’t interested in some of the content I’ve written. I mean, it hurts and all Google, but that’s just rejection I know…
Google built entire industries of fraud surrounding what gets ranked, they did very little to curb that that I could tell. I suspect highly that by later inaction they’re just doing it again.
[Google Blog]
