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Google recently came up with an update to clarify the lingering doubts about its best practices for writing product reviews. The documentation includes guidelines, minor recommendations, and a clarification of the people they address. It also has examples of various product reviewers and instructions to use more accurate wording. The new update contains three omissions and seven additions from the previous document, resulting in producing a total of 24 lines.

Google’s Product Review Best Practices For Writers

Google’s Search Central documentation will form a template for review publishers and merchants to understand what high-quality product review means. Google released the documentation to benefit both website owners and users alike. For brands, following the guide will enhance the chances of getting featured in SERPs and improves visibility.

The tweak in the documentation also dictates what type of publishers it aims to guide. 

Let’s understand this better with examples of product review publisher types. Also, the addendum does not call it a shortcoming of publishers currently exempted from best practices. The seven additions do not specify this as a limitation on the best practices.

It’s just three examples of product review publishers.

The three examples mentioned in the documentation:

• A brand’s expert in-house personnel guide buyers between products of competitors. 
• A blogger who writes authentic reviews about products
• A staff member from a news channel’s editorial team or another publishing website. 

The update also held onto the line allowing businesses to include affiliate links in product review pages. 

Product Review Pages

With the second change, Google attempts to clarify that the mentioned product review best practices are all about product review pages and no product reviews. By doing so, Google puts an end to potential confusion among publishers. 

List of tweaks in the Product Review Best Practices

1. Scrapping of “reviews”, and the introduction of “product review pages”.

2. Removal of 20 words, including everything succeeding the word ” for example”.

3. Updated the documentation with the word “review pages” instead of “reviews”  

The updates exclude user-generated content from the purview of the best practices. They went ahead to exemplify the qualifying authors for product reviews: bloggers, news reporters, writers representing some publishing groups, and merchant employees. To many, these changes may be trivial, but in reality, the documentation will help a lot of confused writers and business owners move ahead with confidence and narrow their focus on such specifics.