(breaking news theme)
- Welcome to Ninja News.
We've got some breaking news for you today.
Google has removed a blatant SEO loophole
that we've been exploiting for years and years and years.
And the SEO community is up in arms.
If you're concerned about the loss
of your organic rich snippet reviews
then listen up because we've got
all of the information about this desperate
breaking news for you right now.
Cue the titles.
(blades spinning)
(click)
All right people, Tim from the no nonsense
Exposure Ninja here on this video
we're gonna be deconstructing
Google's recent news about how it's looking
differently at how review stars are used in search results.
Now, just to give you a bit of context
and I've got some Google notes here
to make sure I don't misspeak.
But just to give a little bit of context
for many years back when I was first
building websites for tradesmen,
you were able to add a plugin to your website
which showed review stars and Google would index.
So what you'd do is you'd send your website
to your customers and when they left a review
on your site and gave you some stars,
these stars might show up in search results.
And that was great.
That was how it was supposed to work.
The thing is, and I learnt this very early on,
was some slightly devious clients.
The thing is, you could go on your own website
and add a whole bunch of five star reviews and guess what?
Those review stars would show in Google search results.
This is the world of self interested schemer
ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Jurassic Park.
So what's happened recently is that
Google has decided to shut this loophole
which is what Google does and
say right, you know what, this whole thing
is a complete scam so we're gonna stop showing
these review stars in search results.
And the SEO world has exploded in uproar.
It's like a volcano of, dunno, badness.
(laughs)
So here's the actual news, here's what Google has said.
And I quote, "Search results that are enhanced
by rich review results can be extremely helpful
when searching for products or services."
And it shows an example of a website
with the little stars underneath
and a rating, an aggregate rating,
of the reviews on the page.
And what Google is doing as they say,
"To make them more helpful and meaningful,
we are now introducing algorithmic updates
to reviews in rich results.
We've also addressed some of the invalid or misleading
implementations webmasters have flagged to us."
So basically, you can still collect reviews
and display them on things like books, courses, episodes,
events, games, how to information, local businesses, movies,
music playlists, organisations so businesses, products,
recipes and software applications.
But, where the change has come is when
Google sees the implementation of these reviews
as self-serving.
So what is a self-serving review?
Well, you know.
Because if you've ever thought,
oh I could hack this.
This thing is interesting I could post
a whole bunch of five star reviews
on my website and get my review rating
in Google showing five stars.
Kerching!
Then that is self-serving.
What's not allowed anymore, or won't be allowed very shortly
is when somebody goes on your website and
puts five star reviews on your site directly
and then you show them in search results.
If you have control over what's shown,
Google's not gonna show that anymore.
The other situation Google's going to be
very careful about showing them is
if you're using a third-party widget,
something like Trustpilot or reviews
or any kind of other rating sites.
If you control how those reviews are
displayed on your site, again Google's like
well you're technically controlling that
so it's not necessarily accurate.
And Google said it's not going to show those ratings.
So, crazy crazy crazy.
What on earth are we supposed to do now?
Well firstly, chill out everyone.
(ding ding ding ding)
Keep calm.
Google's just closing a loophole here.
It's not taking away anything.
Like all SEO, you rinse it until it gets
taken away and then you say
fair play we always knew that was a loophole
and we find another way to get ahead.
That's just what SEO is.
Now the problem that everyone is having at the moment
is there is still a little bit of a
lack of clarity over exactly what Google means.
There are some grey areas.
For example if you've got an ecommerce store
with product reviews on your site,
what happens to those product reviews like Amazon?
Right, 'cause Amazon could technically
control the reviews that shows on
any particular product page so
do no Amazon reviews show in search results now?
Who knows?
Google's being really unclear about that
or rather it's been completely silent about that.
So what I think is always helpful to do
in these situations is not to try and
read into what Google's doing.
Let's go back to first principles.
What's Google trying to do is basically
trying to show accurate ratings in search results.
It's not trying to show manipulated results
for one star businesses that have put
five star reviews on their site.
So if we know that, we can then reverse engineer and
say okay what would the brightest people in the world,
Google, do in this situation in order to make it fair?
So Google can't trust reviews that you put on your own site.
Google can't trust reviews from third-party sites
if you control how they're shown on your site.
Here's what I would do.
Continue to put reviews on your site
as a conversion measure.
Continue to use whether it's third-party reviews
or your own collected reviews on your site
to increase conversions because the reason
you put reviews on your site originally
is to show people that you're good.
So continue to do that.
Don't panic, don't go and strip them all off
'cause Google's not gonna show them anymore.
Keep putting them on there.
It's gonna be okay, you will not be penalised.
They just might not show in search results anymore.
Second thing I would do, is just leave Google
to display reviews for your organisation
from third-party review companies like Trustpilot.
By the way, just wanna say Trustpilot is
the biggest scam in the whole of internet marketing.
That whole third-party review collection thing
is a pack of lies and it's all coming down one day.
Who knows when but the whole thing is a total scam.
We've done some internal analysis and
we've concluded that Trustpilot is 100% a scam.
This is great news if you are a rubbish business
and you wanna manipulate the Trustpilot reviews
to make your business look really awesome
even if you are total trash.
But if you're just a regular business
then it's bad news because there's
people out there who are doing that.
Anyway, back to the story.
Trustpilot, please don't see me.
You don't need to see me, you've got enough
money coming in from your fake reviewing clients.
Anyway.
You may or may not want to put that in there.
Lawyers to be advised.
The one thing I would change about what you're doing
is if at the moment you're just collecting reviews
on your own site i.e. you're not using
a third-party review site then
I would encourage you to start using
third-party review sites whether it's
Google My Business or whether it's a site that
Trustpilot, feeforeviews.io.
They're all the same.
The reason I'd suggest doing this
is because if you want any review stars
to show on Google they're gonna
have to come from a third-party site.
So you need to make sure that you're collecting some
on one of these third-party sites.
The big question for ecommerce businesses
is is what do we do?
Do we need to start collecting product by product
reviews on Trustpilot?
Or do we just get reviews for our organisation?
Well here's what I would do if I were you.
Continue to collect product by product reviews
on your website like Amazon, right.
Because as far as I know, there's no kind of
legitimate third-party way of collecting
those product by product reviews.
I would also start collecting organisations,
so reviews of your business, on third-party websites.
Just in case Google decides not to show product reviews
and instead just shows your organisation reviews.
I suspect you will be okay with product reviews
hosted on your website but organisation reviews
you will not be so those need to be hosted
on a third-party site.
So I hope that has all made sense.
It's a fairly confusing thing to cover and I'm also
extremely sick so I'm gonna go and vomit in a toilet.
But I hope you found this useful and
I hope it's cleared up some of the mess.
Stayed tuned to Ninja News and
most of all, keep panicking.