Watch Out — Google Just Released Another Product Review Update
What this means for affiliate marketers
One of my first gigs as a freelance writer was writing product reviews. Well, more like rewriting product reviews.
A guy I met in a Facebook group had a kitchen gadget review site. He wrote reviews about all sorts of kitchen tools. He paid a cheap writer for 20 posts, but they turned out to be garbage. He paid me to edit/rewrite all of them.
I was stoked to get the gig, but it was weird to review toasters and air fryers that I had never used. I could only make recommendations based on other people’s Amazon reviews.
I did my best with what I had.
I’d read tons of Amazon reviews and make recommendations based on that.
I’ve written a ton of reviews just like that.
I’d write reviews of finance apps that I’ve never used. Water bottles, car batteries, website hosting, ski poles, gloves, shoes, gym equipment. I’d give people travel recommendations for cities I’ve never been to.
That’s all a bit weird, because people trust you because the article is at the top of their search results.
Of course, I did my best to offer people genuine recommendations. When you have an affiliate website, you want people to love the stuff you recommend.
Anyways, in December I wrote two articles about the new updates Google was making to product review content. They announced that people would need to start using the products they were writing reviews about.
I agree with that, sort of.
If you do enough research, you can find good products and make an educated recommendation without having first-hand experience.
Plenty of people are as lazy as possible and reword the reviews that other people wrote. When I was writing reviews, I’d find everything people were saying about the product and compile that into one, easily readable article.
Today, Google is continuing that algorithm update. It seems like they’re continuing to get more strict about product review content.
