Site without any product reviews destroyed by July product review update

[motocross123]

I have a site that got demolished by this latest July product review update. Traffic is down ~70% starting July 27. The problem is that none of the articles hit were even product reviews. I think the geniuses at Google can't tell that my articles are not product reviews at all and is judging them by the wrong standard. The type of content hit the hardest is of the format: x products/brands that do/have y feature. For example, "Credit cards without international transaction fees", "Treadmill models with decline setting", "US made electric lawn mower brands"– none of these are mine, just the format I am following.

Naturally, these articles have a lot of affiliate links, at least one for each product but they aren't meant to be a review, just a comprehensive list of every product that meets the searched criteria. My guess is that I triggered the review algorithm with this content but then failed to meet the quality guidelines because I'm not giving first hand descriptions of each product.

I'm at a loss about what to do. I can't afford to buy all of these products to review and the visitors don't even want that necessarily. This has been my best performing content and has received a lot of positive comments from visitors because it actually takes a ton of work to aggregate and is quite helpful.

 

[CCarter]

The problem is that none of the articles hit were even product reviews.

I'm not commenting on the algorithm or whether it hit whatever, but your definition of a product review is not correct.

Treadmill models with decline setting

That's literally a product review. You are talking about products... reviewing them.

They have affiliate links... you're making money off of it.

"This is the product, this is what it does." <- that's a review.

aggregate and is quite helpful.

If it's helpful, it's a review of the product.

You can't just make up definitions of what YOU consider a product review. Anyone with a set of eyes and reading what you wrote would consider what your website does is review products.

Coming from the other angle, how are these NOT reviews, in your mind?

(Again I'm not commenting on the July Algo, just your perspective)

 

[motocross123]

You can't just make up definitions of what YOU consider a product review. Anyone with a set of eyes and reading what you wrote would consider what your website does is review products.

Coming from the other angle, how are these NOT reviews, in your mind?

My (maybe mistaken) view is that a product view is a subjective overview of a product and your personal experience with it. I don't claim to own any of these products nor do I comment on any of their subjective qualities. My articles are cut and dry lists based on objective features.

 

[Potatoe]

My articles are cut and dry lists based on objective features.

Maybe your articles aren't very useful compared to what else is out there? Are they different than what you'd find on the Amazon page for the product, the manufacture's page, the store you're linking to from your articles? If so, why would they rank you for this and not rank the store directly?

Maybe Google is like, hmm, this isn't really bringing anything to the table, this isn't unique content, it's a copy/paste of something 1000 other sites are covering and those other sites are doing more. Maybe they compare your posts to ones from people that DO claim to have experience with the product and are sharing they experience with it. Maybe Google thinks that's more useful for a reader.

If a reader can find an objective list about the traits of a product, or an objective list about the traits of the product that also adds onto that with the author's knowledge, experience, opinions... Maybe that better matches the intention of the searcher?

If you look at the SERPs for these keywords, are they filled with subjective reviews? Are they filled with eCommerce stores? Are they filled with objective lists just like yours? Take a look, and that'll help you determine your next plan of attack. If it's a bunch of eCommerce product listings that are ranking, you might be swimming against the current.

 

[Ryuzaki]

My (maybe mistaken) view is that a product view is a subjective overview of a product and your personal experience with it. I don't claim to own any of these products nor do I comment on any of their subjective qualities. My articles are cut and dry lists based on objective features.

I agree with @CCarter that you're talking about "product reviews" in the sense that Google is likely categorizing them. We could argue semantics but what matters is what Google thinks. I'd say that "product suggestions" are "reviews" to them.

But as far as your drop goes, there's there possibilities:

1. You got hit legitimately by the Product Reviews Update
2. Your site is new and weak and outperformed itself until it saw it's first major update as a newly mature site (around 6 months to a year old or so)
3. You got caught in Google's attempt to hide the fact that they're trying to deal with AI content and de-rank it and not index it. This is happening to a lot of people (with weaker and new sites).

I'm increasingly of the opinion that Google is acting just like the US Congress. They'll push a bill called "Save the Veterans" which allocates 5 million to them and then attach a bunch of "pork" to it like "10 trillion for carbon deductions, 8 billion to study tuna fish swimming up stream, 18 million for art museums, 3 billion for gender studies in Iraq, and we're banning firearms." And if anyone votes against it they can say "Why do you hate veterans?" Then all the casuals bark like seals on command.

I don't mean to make it political or to take any side of that debate. But I wanted to give a real example. Google is doing the same crap. They can push an update called "Product Reviews" meant to push quality product reviews, but really it's meant to favor big brands (but not so much as to hurt PPC revenue) only in an effort to help them not have to fight spam, and it also pushes a Penguin update, a Panda update, removes some SERP features and introduces new ones, fights A.I. content, and deindexes spam sites, and updates the perceived intent of most keywords.

Now everyone is confused and anyone who speaks up about anything but "Product Reviews" is labeled an SEO conspiracy theorist, spammer, a moron, low authority, a "go back to black hat world", "someone that did something wrong but won't admit it", and so forth. That's the barking simp-seals. It's meant to obfuscate and confuse and lie, and it's done through a single label: "Product Reviews".

If you look at the SERPs for these keywords, are they filled with subjective reviews? Are they filled with eCommerce stores? Are they filled with objective lists just like yours? Take a look, and that'll help you determine your next plan of attack. If it's a bunch of eCommerce product listings that are ranking, you might be swimming against the current.

This ties into my possibility #2 above. Your post is indexed and "understood" immediately, but it's not "internalized" until some offline calculations are performed and that data rolled back into the live algorithm. So all of your content could have been "kind of on the right intent but not quite enough". To say it another way is you might only had" halfway intent with an 'almost' review". That's if you're fighting actual reviews in the SERPs.

You might have been in a bunch of SERPs that have split intent. Many these days aren't any one intent but have 2 or 3. An example I mentioned yesterday was the search query "bike". Search that and you'll see what I mean. It's got ecommerce intent, local intent, news intent, buying guides, types-of, best bikes, and even Bike Magazine makes an appearance. Google used to consider these pure ecommerce but they never were. They have it right now.

But freshness plays a big role in these kind of short tails now since they're such high volume. One listing I'm looking at was published 2 days ago. So you could have lost freshness on queries like this too.

The main think I meant about this possibility #2 is that if you came out of the gates swinging with a new site and publish a bunch of content, you can perform better than you "should", because Google happens to be in their "data collection phase". Then you get your first big update where they roll out that data that includes data about your site and you get put in your place. Then you grow from there. It's super common. I see it 100% of the time whenever someone builds a new site or takes a weak one into a strong one. This might resonate with you.

Bottom line is, possibility #3 is a really big shit show right now crushing people a lot harder than the 70% you mentioned. I've seen 90% and even 100%, all without deindexation or a penalty. And Google is being quiet about it because the last thing they want is negative PR. That's why they hide these other kinds of updates behind and mixed in with names like "Product Reviews Update".

EDIT:
Like magic, as soon I published this, someone posted on here that this update hurt their site. I'm not calling anyone out or nothing like that, just sharing that this is the common thread between all the sites that are crashing and burning for no reason:

had 2 small sites I never touch lose 85%, was only 100 visitors a day on each so didn't matter, but interesting to see, both affiliate sites using Affiliate Lab method.

And I immediately opened up Reddit to see this:

I have a small niche site with informational and review content. 70 posts currently, abiding by the 70/30 info-to-review ratio. [...] I've been steadily working on this site since September 2021...

The sites are always new and/or weak. And the crashes all look like this:

I'm going to stop typing about it because we've had this same discussion across like 10 threads now and I keep having to rehash it in private conversations and even on the phone. Bottomline is Google is screwing up in their fight against spam and there are civilian casualties. We hope they'll correct it but by not talking about it they're deflecting any need to take responsibility. So who knows if and when they'll fix this.

 

[ToffeeLa]

Just a further point.

If you or anyone else used a page format which involved listing items (with or without a traditional review) so that people did not have to search for them and then earning affiliate fees on those listings what kind of entity might see that as not adding value and indeed competing with their own business model?

(See 'hotels in *any US city*')

 

[motocross123]

Thanks for the advice everyone. I admit that Google probably is considering my content "reviews." Looking into it further I can answer some of your questions.

Maybe your articles aren't very useful compared to what else is out there?

I'm biased but I doubt it. I'm mostly going after zero competition keywords or at worst only UGC content that targets it. Hard to explain without giving away my exact niche but the product features are super niche and not easily searched for. A lot of my articles involve emailing the manufacturers to get the right answer.

there's there possibilities:

1. You got hit legitimately by the Product Reviews Update
2. Your site is new and weak and outperformed itself until it saw it's first major update as a newly mature site (around 6 months to a year old or so)
3. You got caught in Google's attempt to hide the fact that they're trying to deal with AI content and de-rank it and not index it. This is happening to a lot of people (with weaker and new sites).

Weaker site definitely describes me. Less than 100k words of content, under 2 years old and reached about 12k uniques a month and have a weak backlink profile. I've looked at similar content to mine but for more competitive keywords that authority site dominate, the first page is all doing the same thing I am. No one has personal experience/ true review content, this makes me think it's more of an authority issue than content.

Here is my plan of attack for this:
1. Shore up my topical authority by better siloing my content and improved inner linking
2. Link building push to build site authority
3. Wait a while to see what happens
4. If that isn't enough I'll start updating the reviews to include more review elements. I can add Pros, Cons, conduct tests for products I do own, increase personal experience keywords to signal that I have used the product personally.

Hopefully that'll be enough to break my out of this.

Side note: one thing I can't figure out about the update is that although traffic and impressions are down, my rankings don't appear to be down at all. Not sure how this is possible?
Here's my worst affected keywords by impressions:

Mostly ranking improvements so that has added to my confusion. My understanding is that impressions shouldn't change if unless you lose the first page. It looks like people just stopped searching for all my keywords suddenly?

 

[harrytwatter]

I'm going to stop typing about it because we've had this same discussion across like 10 threads now and I keep having to rehash it in private conversations and even on the phone. Bottomline is Google is screwing up in their fight against spam and there are civilian casualties. We hope they'll correct it but by not talking about it they're deflecting any need to take responsibility. So who knows if and when they'll fix this.

lol yes, I am one of these people. @motocross123 my main earner was decimated with this update. I believe the civilian casualty analogy is accurate as the site has keywords dropping from the index like flies..not specifically product/purchase intent stuff but obscure zero comp info intent queries as well, queries I've held snippets/rank for probably a year or so at this point.

I can only conclude Google is fucking up. Some element of their AI analysis is capturing false positives. I wish I knew what exactly that was but as of yet I do not. Personally I'm going to wait a little while and see what happens.

Posted in the PRU thread that Google announced the rollout complete August 2nd, after announcing it as a 2-3 week rollout on July 27th. Either the rollout was the smoothest ever and was completed in a fraction of theorized time or it was making a mess of things and they ended it early.

Hopefully time will tell, if not, bring on the kitchen sink!

 

[wikibum]

Your site is new and weak and outperformed itself until it saw it's first major update as a newly mature site (around 6 months to a year old or so)

Agree 100% with this. Many of the sites (including some of mine) that got hit with the updates are new/weak. It took me a minute to realize it, but I was only gaining traction (and sometimes crazy traction!) because of freshness and when the first few updates came along - boom, we got put back into our rightful place. That's why the drops are heavy just like the screenshots @Ryuzaki shared.

It might "feel" shitty and that Google is screwing with you, but at the end of the day - look at the metrics and compare it to your competitors. Don't just look at the your content quality (ours is way better than our competitors), but our overall metrics are not as strong. We don't have that much history and we are still working our way up the ranks.

If you are in the same boat as me with some newish/weaker sites, then just be patient and keep doing what you are doing. Eventually you will get there and things will get better.

If you lost motivation or feeling down, just think of how many sites got hit with the same update and how many will quit! That's less competition, which is actually good news.

 

[bernard]

Some element of their AI analysis is capturing false positives.

I'm not saying any of you guys do this and my preference for websites is not the gold standard, but...

I see and have seen so many shitty blogs shared and listed on Flippa and elsewhere, where I just think: Can you really make money with this?

Because those sites have content that is clearly written by people who can't spell, with no editorial process and what seems like very basic research.

That in itself is not a problem perhaps, because the internet is also for non-natives, who can have great content, a lot of tech content is like this, but then you have a blog with a very basic mobile optimized theme (good?) and practically no information about who or what it is (not good).

And for topics, it's just random "People also ask" collections with no greater idea or philosophy.

I'm thinking to myself here, these sites, in Google's opinion, are they brandable websites or are they just temporarily filling a gap until Google gets a better way to serve answers to these questions?

Again, I'm sure most of you guys don't make these sites, but I do see them selling on marketplaces.

What I would think about was: How is this site going to grow? What is my philosophy with this site?

Like if you're in outdoor niche, one philosophy could be: "I want everyone to be able to afford an outdoor lifestyle, finding the best cheapest products and activities, but also making sure they're safe".

Now with such a philosophy, you'll do a lot of smaller things on your website, your about page, your design, your marketing, that will make it a real site.

It's all subjective, we all think our sites are better than they are, mine included for sure, but that's why having someone impartial look them over is so important. Someone who doesn't work in the industry. I have gotten a lot of great advice from family members and friends.

 

[harrytwatter]

Yeah it is impossible to verify anything without looking at a site yourself. I've worked with a lot of Motion Invest type sites, built for the flip, to never want to work on one again. My site which was hit was about 50/50 content written by myself and content ordered from the marketplace here (tried 3 vendors before finding one of satisfactory quality). Even then outsourced content is almost always edited to match the site's voice perfectly.

Honestly this niche is passion and I've just been publishing what I've been learning along the way. Is my writing Pulitzer level? No it isn't. However when doing manual searched for keywords in which I've dropped from the index entirely neither is anything at the top of page one, in fact it's usually pure crap.

But I get the point, every time there is an update inevitably many of those impacted deserved to be impacted.

 

[motocross123]

Agree with @harrytwatter. Further evidence this is not about content quality is that my best article by far where I spent hundreds of dollars to buy 10 competing products, took great original pictures, conducted real tests with quantitative measurements displayed etc, still got completely wiped off the face of the earth.

Gonna keep doing what I'm doing but with an increased emphasis on link building. Trusting good content will win out eventually.