Review sentiment reflects how customers are Reviews of Enterprise Products or service.
Some people believe that whether this sentiment is positive or negative affects a business’s search rankings.
There are legitimate concerns about these claims, as it would leave businesses vulnerable to Negative SEO Attack If bad reviews can be downgraded.
Instead, there are concerns that competitors will artificially inflate their rankings with false positive reviews.
There is no doubt that review sentiment affects consumer behavior and affects metrics like conversion rates.
But does this have an impact on Google’s search rankings?
Let’s look at the claims and evidence surrounding review sentiment as a ranking factor.
Disclaimer: Review sentiment is a ranking factor
Review sentiment has been brought up in discussions about Google ranking factors, with some claiming that positive sentiment can improve rankings, while negative sentiment can lower rankings.
There are many reasons for these claims.
One of the most frequently cited “evidences” is the correlation between highly ranked websites and businesses with positive reviews.
Sentiment analysis happens to be a feature included in SEO software, which may lead to the conclusion that review sentiment has an impact on search rankings.
Roger Monty of Search Engine Magazine published an article Explain in more detail where the claims surrounding emotions come from and why they persist.
In addition to what’s mentioned in Montti’s article, Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines have played a role in keeping review sentiment as a recurring theme in SEO.
Google’s Search Quality Evaluation Guidelines
Google believes in the claim that review sentiment is its ranking factor Search Quality Assessment Guidelines.
Section 2.6 of the guidelines tells Google’s quality raters what to look for when evaluating a website or content creator’s reputation.
There are many notes on checking review sites to learn more about a business’ reputation.
Here is an example:
“Customer reviews are helpful in assessing the reputation of a store or business. However, you should interpret these reviews with care, especially if there are only a few reviews. Be skeptical of positive and negative user reviews. Anyone can write them, This includes the creator of the website or the person employed by the store or business for this purpose.”
Some have drawn conclusions about review sentiment as a ranking factor based on the above.
However, search quality raters have no direct impact on search rankings, and the guidelines they follow are not based on Google’s algorithm used as a ranking factor.
Quality raters collect feedback on Google search results to help ensure that pages displayed in the SERP meet a certain quality threshold.
One of the ways to measure the quality of web pages is to check the reputation of the publishing site.
Top headlines related to this chapter of the Quality Assessment Guidelines circulating in 2017 after Google’s Gary Illyes speak at a meeting On the topic of reputation analysis.
Some attendees misunderstood his statement and misreported what Illyes said reputation affects a site’s position in search results.
However, Illyes is only discussing how the Quality Rater guidelines work.
While customer reviews are an integral part of reputation research, the guide does recommend treating them with a degree of skepticism.
Thankfully, Google has made the issue clear and made it clear whether review sentiment is a ranking factor.
Evidence for review sentiment as a ranking factor
Research may attempt to demonstrate that review sentiment is a ranking factor by showing a correlation between customer reviews and a site’s position in search results.
We will only look at confirmed evidence, Google has repeatedly stated that comment sentiment is no a ranking factor.
Google’s Gary Ellis swift denial Claims that started circulating online after his conference presentation, which we touched on in the previous section.
Not only does Google not use sentiment as a ranking factor, its algorithms don’t even recognize sentiment.
Google’s Danny Sullivan confirmed this 2018.
If Google doesn’t know what sentiment is, it can’t use sentiment to rank.
That should be enough to end speculation surrounding review sentiment as a ranking factor, but the theory lives on.
In 2021, Sullivan was asked if there had been any changes since he last said Google acknowledged sentiment.
He confirms that nothing has changed.
Google’s algorithms still can’t identify emotions.
Review sentiment as a ranking factor: our verdict
Review sentiment was confirmed not to be a ranking factor for organic search rankings, although we acknowledge that it is a factor for local search rankings.
This has been the case since Google couldn’t identify emotions. notoriously exploited.
Back around 2010, a company irritated customers so much that they would write bad reviews.
This was done on purpose, as the links received from the comments pushed the company’s website higher in the search results.
Google doesn’t acknowledge that people linking to the company are speaking negatively, Google only acknowledges the links.
Since then, Google has gotten better at not rewarding sites that deceive customers, but Google’s emotional apathy remains.
Review sentiment can directly affect other areas of online marketing, but search rankings are not one of them.
Featured image: Robin Biong/Search Engine Magazine
