Merchant Reviews and Rankings

It has been highlighted in the past how a merchant with terrible reviews was still able to rank high on Google.  This has baffled a lot of people because they have this belief that a site with terrible reviews would also rank terribly. Recently, Google has announced some changes to its ranking systems which will prevent similar things from happening again.

Google aims to correct this by rolling out updates which will help businesses get the rankings they deserve.

Collecting reviews and using them

Google collects reviews from all over the Internet to help them rank sites. These aggregate reviews are collected from all over the Internet. Google Product Search gives merchants an overall page for their reviews and Google is now using these reviews in their ranking algorithm although they never explicitly said that.

Google reported on their last blog post that the algorithmic solution developed can detect merchants which provided poor experience to their users. The algorithm has been incorporated in their search rankings so that all users will have a better experience.

Google, however, refuses to reveal the details of their so-called solution. They do not want to divulge their data sources and how the data have been combined to improve the rankings.

Google is Using Reviews

Google has denied using reviews for rankings. However, a lot of people are feeling that Google is not telling them the truth. If Google does not use reviews, they are left with very few options to help them determine if a merchant has good or bad reputation.  Although Google uses rankings, it does not mean that reviews override all other signals used for ranking. They are just another factor which must also be considered but if Google had the guts to admit this, it would be a lot better.

Sentiment Analysis

Aside from reviews, a lot of other options have been suggested to solve the bad merchant problem. One of these solutions is sentiment analysis. Reviews are also not being used alongside listings and in the future there is a big chance that this will happen. Google has already explained that there are some links which are tagged as nofollow and they do not provide any credit to the sites they point to.

Will Google Be Able to Tell the Good from the Bad

The question which is on everyone’s mind is, is Google able to tell good from bad sites. It is not that difficult for people to become jaded because of the reports running all around about Google not being able to tell bad reviews from good ones.  A lot of experts in SEO have already given up thinking that something will change somewhere down the road.

Understanding Reviews

It is important for websites and SEO experts to understand reviews and how Google uses them to rank sites and pages. There is a lot to be learned about this topic and it is encouraged that everyone does at least a little research about it if they want to gain an advantage over the competition.