Johannesburg - Google’s latest Search update announcement targets improving results for product reviews of all kinds.
It acknowledges that there is always incentive to game the search engine system to generate revenue without presenting the user with much of value.
“We know people don’t find content helpful if it seems like it was designed to attract clicks rather than inform readers,” the company said on a blog post.
“So starting next week for English users globally, we’re rolling out a series of improvements to Search to make it easier for people to find helpful content made by, and for, people.”
This means getting around things like review aggregators, which only serve to collect other people’s opinions, and content using keyword soup to rank highly without anything useful on the page.
Google expects this to improve results particularly for searches regarding online education, entertainment, shopping and technology.
As always, Google keeps its Search algorithm cards close to its chest. It’s unclear exactly the kind of metrics they will be changing or what kind of tools they will be employing to decide what content is “valuable, original and relevant” or “misleading and low quality”.
These changes are the latest in an effort to serve users the kind of high-quality information that they’re looking for. Previous updates have come in response to users becoming less interested and trusting of unrelatable, faceless, formulaic reviews.
Instead, users have turned to other regular people on forums such as Reddit, where they can get reviews from peers who (presumably) have no incentives to talk up a product.
This trend is being targeted in this latest update, which will prioritise “unique, authentic information” that you haven’t seen before.
IOL Tech