Google Reviews System Improvements Still Ongoing

Google rolled out its reviews update on November 8. There’s no confirmation of the rollout ending. The company did announce updates about the review system will happen at a regular pace. Google won’t be announcing further updates on the status dashboard because of this.

Google published a Q&A for their upcoming core updates. The review update was also included in the announcement. But it provided little information about the update.

Many experts believe that Google’s Reviews System is a machine learning model. It could also have a classifier process like the Helpful Content System. Documentation for the system doesn’t mention any Google reviews link or signals. There’s also no detail on how it affects the ranking process.

The only explanation given is that the review system evaluates articles and posts. It also reviews pages and other first-party standalone content. There’s a caveat that the written content gives a recommendation or an opinion. The reviews system won’t check third-party reviews though. These are posts made by users in a company’s product reviews section.

What is clear is that the Reviews System update signals a new schedule for Google. The company is transitioning to regular updates and system improvements. Experts say Google appears to be aiming for rolling updates. It refers to a system that’s improved in increments.

A new review system could mean big changes. Time will tell if these are positive changes. Updates in the Reviews System were bad news for many websites in the past. It’s because any rank changes remained on hold until the next system update. Publishers could fix the issues that cause the drop in rankings. But they won’t see the benefits until there’s an updated Reviews System. This resulted in sites with low search traffic for months.