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Google’s December 2021 Product Reviews Update – Analysis and Findings Based On An Extended And Volatile Holiday Rollout

December 21, 2021 By Glenn Gabe Leave a Comment

Google's December 2021 Product Reviews Updates (PRU)

Update: May 2022
I just published a post covering a number of findings from the March 2022 Product Reviews Update (the latest PRU to roll out). My analysis covers linking to multiple sellers, the use of video content, loopholes in the PRU, intent shifts, dueling machine learning algorithms, and more.

—–

The past month has really been something for site owners and SEOs… Google pushed a broad core update on November 17, 2021, right before Black Friday (which shocked many people, including me). And following the rollout of the November broad core update, Google pushed yet another major algorithm update that can impact sites during the holiday shopping season. On 12/1/21, Google rolled out the December 2021 Product Reviews Update, the second official PRU following the initial update in April 2021.

I’ll cover more about the rollout below, but Google explained it can take up to three weeks to complete. And they were right… we just heard from Google that the update has completed (exactly three weeks in). During the extended rollout, I have been heavily analyzing many sites that have been impacted and this post covers my findings. I’ll continue to update this post as I surface more findings or if we learn more about the update from Google itself.

This post contains a lot of information about the December Product Reviews Update, so I have provided a table of contents for those looking to jump around the post:

  • Extended Rollout
  • Periodic Refresh Still Necessary
  • Google’s New Guidelines
  • Surges, Drops, and Overall Volatility
  • Recovery From The April PRU
  • Double Hits
  • Dueling Machine Learning Systems
  • Will The Product Reviews Update Expand To Other Languages?
  • Rich Snippets Impact
  • Large Publishers With Reviews Content
  • Google’s New Guidance Not Being Applied Yet
  • Links Aren’t Everything
  • Intent Shifting
  • Reviews Content That’s Working Well
  • The Wirecutter Standard

Note, I also published a companion Web Story covering key findings for site owners and SEOs. Both this post and the web story work well together if you are trying to learn more about the December product reviews update.

A Note About The April Product Reviews Update (PRU):
If you are interested in learning more about the Product Reviews Update overall, definitely check out my post about the April 2021 Product Reviews Update. I cover a number of important findings based on analyzing many sites that were impacted. I also published a companion Web Story covering top tips for site owners and affiliate marketers based on my analysis of the April PRU.

In this post, I’ll cover what I’m seeing based on the December PRU, including surges, drops, recoveries, how core updates and the Product Reviews update work together (or not), rich snippets impact, what I’m calling “The Wirecutter Standard”, and more.

First, as usual with my posts about major algorithm updates, a quick disclaimer:
I do not work for Google. I do not have access to Google’s algorithms, including the machine learning system fueling the Product Reviews Update. I did not dress up like Will Ferrell in Elf, make believe I know Santa Claus, and sing endless Christmas carols in front of Google’s Danny Sullivan’s house looking to gain access to his laptop. I might have tried, but I never executed on my plan. ;)  I am simply providing what I’m seeing across many sites impacted, including review sites I’m helping across verticals, that were impacted by the April and December Product Reviews Updates.

Rollout and Refresh:
As I mentioned earlier, Google explained it could take up to three weeks for the December Product Reviews Update to fully roll out. That’s a relatively long rollout, especially compared to broad core updates which typically roll out in less than two weeks. The update began rolling out on December 1 and impacted English-language pages globally:

Our December 2021 product reviews update is now rolling out for English-language pages. It will take about three weeks to complete. We have also extended our advice for product review creators: https://t.co/N4rjJWoaqE

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) December 1, 2021

And again, it took exactly three weeks to fully roll out. We heard from Google’s Alan Kent on Tuesday, December 21 that the update completed rolling out:

The Google product review update is fully rolled out. Thank you!

— Alan Kent (@akent99) December 21, 2021

It’s important to note that I have seen several adjustments being made by Google during the rollout. I’ve tweeted several examples of the volatility on Twitter (and you can see a few of those adjustments below). Although a number of sites impacted have leveled off, notice how search visibility reverses course for some sites, surges more, drops more, etc. It has been wild to monitor:

Ranking volatility during the December Product Reviews Update
More ranking volatility during the December Product Reviews Update
Ranking volatility during the December Product Reviews Update

Also, here is my tweet thread about the December Product Reviews Update in case you want to view more of my tweets about the rollout and what I’ve been seeing:

Another weekend & more volatility with the Dec Product Reviews Update (which can take 3 weeks to fully roll out). Many sites impacted are moving in the same direction or leveled off, but there are def. some seeing a lot of volatility during the rollout. Google has been busy :) pic.twitter.com/9YXDdtuSww

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) December 13, 2021

The PRU Still Requires A Periodic Refresh:
Also, and this is important, Google still has to push a periodic refresh of the Product Reviews Update. So this is like medieval Panda where Google pushed out Panda updates every few months (before incorporating Panda into its core ranking algorithm).

So, if you’ve been heavily impacted by the December Product Reviews Update, you’ll need another refresh to see significant improvement. It’s also important to understand that Google’s John Mueller explained that he could see the Product Reviews algorithm get baked into Google’s core ranking algorithm at some point.

On that note, I’m sure Google wants to do that based on what I’m seeing with sites impacted (and how those sites are also being impacted by other major algorithm updates which sometimes go against the PRU). It doesn’t make a lot of sense and I’ll cover more about that soon in the section about dueling machine learning systems. Here is John Mueller explaining that he could see the PRU getting baked into Google’s core ranking algorithm:

And as a quick reminder, Google is evaluating sites more broadly with the Product Reviews Update (similar to how broad core updates work). For example, site or section-level evaluation. That’s why some sites can see a lot of movement with the PRU. You can read my post about the April Product Reviews Update for more information about that.

Two New Guidelines For Sites Publishing Reviews:
As a quick reminder, the Product Reviews Update is looking to reward high quality, insightful reviews versus lower-quality and thinner reviews. In Google’s original post about the April PRU, they provide a number of questions site owners can ask themselves about their own reviews content.

For example, do your reviews express expert knowledge about products, show what the product is like physically, provide quantitative measurements, and more. You can read my post about the April Product Reviews Update for more information about that.

Google's questions for sites publishing reviews content.

With the December Product Reviews Update, Google published another blog post with two additional guidelines for sites publishing reviews content. It’s important to understand these guidelines were NOT taken into account with the December PRU, but might be in future Product Reviews updates.

Here are the two new guidelines for site owners from Google’s new blog post:

  • Provide evidence such as visuals, audio, or other links of your own experience with the product, to support your expertise and reinforce the authenticity of your review.
  • Include links to multiple sellers to give the reader the option to purchase from their merchant of choice.
Two new guidelines from Google for sites publishing reviews content.

So, if you publish reviews, this is a big heads-up about potential new factors that will be taken into account during subsequent Product Reviews Updates. And the “multiple seller” bullet has been controversial based on a certain large e-commerce retailer’s terms of service (TOS), cough, Amazon. It should be interesting to see if Google changes their view of this over time, or not. And how Amazon reacts to the change… Time will tell.

More information from Ian Howells about this below:

https://twitter.com/ianhowells/status/1466391965868728332

Massive Visibility Changes For Some Review Sites (and larger publishers that provide reviews):
When the April Product Reviews Update rolled out, I said it was core update-like for many sites. There were huge swings in search visibility for many sites publishing reviews (whether those were affiliate sites, larger publishers with reviews content, etc.) Also, I surfaced sites that saw a lot of volatility that didn’t even focus on reviews content (you can read the section about “collateral improvement” in my post about the April PRU for more information about that).

Well, with the December Product Reviews Update, there has also been a ton of movement. Some sites are surging through the roof, while others got hammered.  It was also super-interesting to see sites recover from the April Product Reviews Update, while others got hit for a second time. I’ll cover more about that soon.

First, here are some examples of big surges and drops during the December Product Reviews Update. I’ll start with some surges:

Surge during the December Product Reviews Update
Surge during the December Product Reviews Update
Surge during the December Product Reviews Update
Surge during the December Product Reviews Update

Now here are some big drops based on the December PRU:

Drop during the December Product Reviews Update
Drop during the December Product Reviews Update
Drop during the December Product Reviews Update

Recovery from the April Product Reviews Update:
As I mentioned above, some sites recovered after getting hammered by the first Product Reviews Update in April. And for some of those sites, the recovery made sense. They worked hard to improve their content, user experience, and more, over time.

For example, here is a site that got pummeled by the April Product Reviews Update that surged during the December PRU after implementing a number of key changes. Those changes spanned several categories, including content quality and detail, user experience, expertise, ad situation, and more. Note, this company contacted me for help after the April PRU, but they implemented a number of changes even before I started helping them. So this surge is based on what they implemented on their own (after reading Google’s posts, my post about the April PRU, reviewing sites that surged, objectively analyzing their own content, etc.)

Recovery from the April Product Reviews Update

It’s worth noting that although they surged, they aren’t back to where they were prior to the April Product Reviews Update. This was a great first step in recovery, but they can do more in my opinion. It should be interesting to see how the site does based on future PRUs after implementing more changes.

Partial recovery from the April Product Reviews Update

Another site that recovered from a big April PRU drop also has improved overall. When checking the content now that’s ranking (and surging), it contains strong reviews content in my opinion. It’s balanced, thorough, provides great visuals, a nice breakdown of key features, and more. After reviewing the site, I could definitely see why it surged back. I’ll cover more about reviews content later in this post.

Another recovery from the April Product Reviews Update
Partial recovery from the April Product Reviews Update

A Quick Note About Double Hits During The April and December Product Reviews Updates:
While analyzing the December PRU, there were some sites that got hammered in December that also got hammered in April. Those sites are in grave condition right now… Although sites can see big changes during broad core updates, the two Product Reviews Updates were separated by seven months. That’s a long time to wait to see if you recover… I’ll cover more about dueling machine learning systems soon.

When checking the sites that saw double hits, it often made a lot of sense. The content was thin, wasn’t in-depth, just provided a quick paragraph about a product (sometimes right from the manufacturer), and then often just linked off to Amazon. And some of these sites mixed thin content with a terrible user experience with aggressive, disruptive, and/or deceptive ads. So the situation was not good…

Here are some examples of sites with double hits (April and December PRUs):

Double Product Reviews Update hit.
Double Product Reviews Update hit.

Interesting Example: Site dropped after surging in April. A mistake or a change in the algorithm?
When reviewing sites that reversed course during the December PRU, I noticed an interesting example. The site surged with the April PRU, more with the June 2021 core update, even more with the November 2021 core update, only to get hit very hard by the December PRU. So it’s been an interesting ride for the site in Google Land. I’ll explain more about Google’s core updates in the next section.

But the interesting part from a Product Reviews Update standpoint was that the content that dropped doesn’t provide specific reviews of products. Instead, it provides general information about the product category, what to look for, etc. and then just provides a quick list of products you can buy. That doesn’t really help users understand more about the products (since again, they aren’t being reviewed). Here is trending for the site over time. This is clearly not a good holiday season for this site…

But again, they surged with the April PRU, then more with the June 2021 core update, and then even more with the November 2021 broad core update, only to drop heavily with the December 2021 Product Reviews Update.

Google Product Reviews Update Change

Dueling Machine Learning Systems – Core Updates vs. Product Reviews Update
While analyzing the impact from the December Product Reviews Update, it was interesting to also see the impact from the November broad core update (and the recent broad core updates in June and July of 2021). The November update rolled out on 11/17/2021 and impacted a number of sites in the reviews space. But when the December PRU rolled out, some of those sites reversed course… For example, some sites that dropped with the November broad core update surged with the December PRU (and vice versa). And beyond just the November broad core update, there were many examples of sites surging in June or July and dropping heavily with the December Product Reviews Update. It’s clear the updates were at odds with another…

Here are some examples:

Dueling machine learning systems (core updates and product reviews updates).
Different changes with the Product Reviews Update versus broad core updates.
Surge during a broad core update and drop during the December Product Reviews Update.

And like I said earlier, there were some sites impacted by the November 2021 core update that reversed course! Talk about dueling machine learning algos… I’m sure those sites were on a roller coaster ride over the past few weeks.

Dropping with the November core update and surging with the December Product Reviews Update.
Dropping with the November core update and recovering with the December Product Reviews Update.

I think this emphasizes a very important point about major algorithm updates like broad core updates and the Product Reviews Update. When Google is using different machine learning systems, those systems can be at odds. If a site gets hammered by a broad core update, yet surges with another major algorithm update like the Product Reviews Update, which one is right?

As Bing has explained in the past about its core ranking algorithm, it sends thousands of signals to the machine learning system and the system determines the weighting (and ultimately where sites will rank). So even Bing’s search engineers don’t even know how powerful certain signals are. That’s why it’s impossible to try and figure out the one or two things causing problems with a site… And its also why I have used a “kitchen sink” approach to remediation with my clients. Don’t try to focus on one or two problems… surface as many as you can and fix them all (or as many as you can).

Here is Bing’s Fabrice Canel explaining more about Bing’s machine learning approach to rankings:

How much does a certain factor matter for SEO? Via Bing's @facan We simply don't know. Bing is heavily using machine learning. We don't set the weighting. It's about sending thousands of features to the ML system & the system figures it out: (at 35:02) https://t.co/EiTktEFqx7 pic.twitter.com/HTzu9wkA5m

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) November 9, 2020

And here is Google’s Alan Kent mentioning Google’s machine learning system used for the Product Reviews Update:

(Alternative response… let me get back to you after a future rollout once the machine learning model has worked out the answer… or not)

— Alan Kent (@akent99) December 1, 2021

In addition, John Mueller was asked in a Search Central Hangout if the Product Reviews Update is using machine learning to train the algorithm, if human reviewers were used, etc. John explained that for updates like the PRU, it’s not something where human reviewers would be in the loop. And he explained that Google uses a lot of machine learning overall, so yes, it’s probably being used to some extent (reinforcing what Alan explained above). Again, this is important to understand.

You can watch the video below to hear John’s comments:

This is also why I believe John Mueller’s comments about baking the Product Reviews Update into Google’s core ranking algorithm makes complete sense. I’m not sure you can have multiple major algorithm updates that cause the same site to surge one minute, then drop the next. Those algorithms need to work together in my opinion. If not, they will surely drive site owners insane.

When Will The Product Reviews Update Expand To Other Languages (Beyond English)?
The current Product Reviews algorithm impacts English language content globally and does not impact other languages at this point. Google’s John Mueller has been asked when the PRU will expand to other languages and he addressed this in a recent Search Central Hangout.

John explained that they have nothing to pre-announce about expansion, but Google’s goal is to roll out algorithms like this to other languages. He also explained that for some updates, the team at Google works fast to roll things out to other languages. And for others, it’s a slower process. John also explained that there are sometimes policy and legal reasons that can slow things down.

You can watch the video below at 46:17 to hear John’s response:

Sites Gaining or Losing Rich Snippets – Yep, it’s clear.
It’s also important to understand that rich snippets can be impacted by broad core updates and other major algorithm updates (like the PRU). You can read my blog post about that topic to learn more. This can happen when Google reevaluates site quality overall. For example, it’s not uncommon for sites to gain or lose review snippets, FAQ snippets, etc. when a broad core update rolls out (or other major algorithm updates like the Product Reviews Update).

With the December 2021 Product Reviews Update, I saw more of that happening. It’s important for site owners to understand this since rich snippets can absolutely impact click through rate from the SERPs. The additional real estate and visual treatment of rich snippets can attract eyeballs as people scan the SERPs. You don’t want to lose rich snippets if you have them.

Here is an example of a site that surged during the December 2021 Product Reviews Update and it received FAQ snippets back. This is after losing them during the April Product Reviews Update.

Rich snippets back with the December Product Reviews Update.

But, as you can see below, it was short-lived. The site has continued to do well rankings-wise, but Google stopped showing FAQ snippets for the site. Sometimes Google is just not showing FAQs at all in the SERPs and sometimes other sites do have them. It’s been volatile from a SERP features standpoint, that’s for sure.

Rich snippets temporarily back with the  December Product Reviews Update.

Below, you can see FAQ snippet tracking for the domain (visibility-wise). It spikes with the rollout, then drops as Semrush begins picking up the loss of snippets:

Semrush showing a tempoary surge in FAQ snippets with the December Product Reviews Update.

But as I explained on Twitter during the rollout, I saw other strange things happening with rich snippets (and especially FAQ snippets). For example, I saw some sites losing FAQ snippets completely, I saw some *SERPs* losing them completely, and then I saw FAQ snippets replaced by jumplinks (when a page included a table of contents with named anchors for each product reviewed). So, just a heads-up to check your rich snippets if you’ve been impacted by the December Product Reviews Update.

Here is an example of jumplinks showing the top products being reviewed in the post (which I saw replace FAQ snippets during the rollout). It seems Google is testing the best SERP treatment.

Jumplinks for product reviews pages in the search results.

Large publishers with reviews content – The PRU will find you.
The Product Reviews Update is supposed to be focused on reviews content, so what happens when large publishers contain reviews content, in addition to a ton of other types of content? Well, the PRU can find that content and those sites can see volatility there. I’ve seen this many times while analyzing both the April and December Product Reviews Updates.

So, it’s easy to think that the PRU didn’t impact your site, but it might have impacted reviews content significantly (whether that’s in specific sections or mixed throughout the site). I just wanted to bring this up in case larger publishers had questions about their reviews content blended into their overall content on the site (since those sites can have hundreds of thousands of pages indexed, or more).

For example, here is specific reviews content within large publishers being impacted. These are sites with a ton of different content, but they do also have reviews.

Reviews content on large publishers impacted by the Product Reviews Update.
Reviews content on large publishers impacted by the Product Reviews Update.
Reviews content on large publishers negatively impacted by the Product Reviews Update.
Reviews content on large publishers negatively impacted by the Product Reviews Update.

Google’s new guidance for review sites NOT applied yet. And that’s pretty clear.
In Google’s latest blog post about the December Product Reviews Update, it provided more guidance for site owners (beyond the guidance in their original blog post). It’s important to understand that the new guidance is NOT being applied yet from a ranking perspective. I bring that up since many site owners were concerned about the second piece of guidance, which covered linking to multiple stores so people have more choice when deciding to purchase the products being reviewed.

As I mentioned earlier, affiliate marketers could end up violating Amazon’s terms of service (TOS) by linking to other retailers from their product reviews, so that bullet caught the attention of many marketers. So, this is a big heads-up to any site providing reviews that is just linking to one retailer (like Amazon). I’m not sure how this will work down the line, and if Google will change its stance on the topic. Again, it’s not being used now as a factor for the Product Reviews Update, but sure looks like it might with the next update.

For example, you’ll often see review sites linking to just Amazon:

Linking to just Amazon from affiliate sites.

And to confirm this isn’t really being used yet, I noticed a number of review sites that surged that still only link to one retailer (often Amazon). So again, this is more of a heads-up for affiliate marketers:

Site surging that just links to Amazon via affiliate links.

The PRU Proves Links Aren’t Everything (Just like the April PRU proved):
I covered this in my post about the April Product Reviews Update, and site owners that are overly focused on links should definitely be aware of this. There are many review sites that surged that had much weaker link profiles than competitors.

For example, some sites surging through the roof have under 10K links total, with some having less than 5K links total. And when comparing links from authoritative sites (which is important from an authority standpoint), the comparisons weren’t even close. Sure, they had some powerful links, but not even close to some competitors that dropped.

So yes, links matter. But no, they aren’t the end-all (and especially based on the Product Reviews updates). For example, here are two examples of sites surging during the December Product Reviews Update. Their link profiles are much weaker than many competitors.

Yes, that’s a site with 3.3K links surging during the December Product Reviews Update (and 1.7K after what Majestic calls “noise reduction”):

Site with low link count surging during the December Product Reviews Update.

And here is a site with just 11.8K links surging too (5.1K after “noise reduction”). And it’s competing with sites that have hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of links:

Site with low link count surging during the December Product Reviews Update.

Intent Shift(ing) – Review Sites Appear, and Disappear, For Head Terms
One important finding that others have seen as well was Google changing the SERP for head terms that don’t contain “best”, “top”, or “reviews” in the query. For example, searching for just humidifiers versus “best humidifiers”. During the rollout, I’ve seen a ton of volatility with this. Sometimes the SERPs contain review sites and sometimes they don’t… When they don’t, retailers rank since Google believes the intent is to buy versus find reviews. But again, this has been changing a lot during the rollout. And some sites are jumping all over the place as Google changes the SERPs.

So if you’ve been impacted by the December Product Reviews Update, definitely dig into the queries that dropped or surged. And see if you are part of the reviews dance going on the search results.

Here is a good example. For a specific head term, this product reviews site has suddenly showed up on page one, dropped from page one, show up, dropped, etc. during the rollout. When this happens across head terms, it can sure cause a lot of volatility:

Head term impact for product review sites.

Also, Lily Ray has covered similar things on Twitter (with regard to the companies/products being reviewed jumping up the SERPs versus the sites reviewing them). Here is one of her tweets covering that:

https://twitter.com/lilyraynyc/status/1467948310094823425

Product Reviews Winners: A quick review of what’s working well with reviews content:
My original post about the April Product Reviews Update covers a lot of information about high quality reviews content. So you should definitely check out that post for more information detailing the various aspects of insightful and valuable reviews. That said, I did want to revisit review content to explain more about what I’m seeing that works well, what’s helpful for users, and what Google seems to be rewarding.

Note, not every site surging provides incredible reviews content. I mentioned that in my post about the April PRU, but I would always strive to provide the highest quality content you can (and follow the guidelines that Google has provided). It’s your safest bet for steering clear of a drop during a subsequent Product Reviews Update.

Here are some additional insights based on analyzing reviews that are being rewarded:

The Power of Organization:
Comparison charts are super-helpful for reviews content. I noticed more and more of this on sites benefiting from the December Product Reviews Update. When comparing multiple products, organizing all the details can help users get a lay of the land.

Charts in product reviews.
Charts in product reviews.
Charts in product reviews.
Charts in product reviews.

Strong Visuals (Photos, Videos, and Gifs):
When looking for help with choosing the right product, killer visuals can clearly help users. If you provide reviews content, I would think way beyond a stock manufacturer photo and provide original photos of the product you are reviewing (if possible). In addition, providing video of the product so users can get a strong feel for the item can really help readers. And providing quick gifs of how things work can also be beneficial.

Here is a series of visuals for a specific product review:

Photos in product review articles.

Here is Wirecutter showing off several bike racks:

Photos in product review articles.

Actual experience using the product. Prove you really tested the product and understand the pros and cons:
When reviewing a lot of product reviews content (see what I did there?), it was easy to see when the person reviewing that product truly used it, tested it, etc. Those reviews went way beyond superficial reviews, and I really dug that. By the way, one of Google’s latest guidelines explains that reviews should provide this level of detail. I agree, and it’s clear that Google is trying to surface those types of reviews in the search results. You don’t have to look further than Wirecutter to see examples of this type of review. More about “The Wirecutter Standard” soon.

Animation and video in product review articles.
Animation and video in product review articles.

And as I covered in my post about the April Product Reviews Update, make sure experts or enthusiasts are writing the articles (author expertise). After analyzing many reviews, you could clearly tell when the author had a lot of experience in the topic they were covering. And no, just having an expert write the content doesn’t mean it will be super high quality. But, making sure someone has expertise in the subject matter they are writing about can clearly help drive insightful, helpful, and high quality content. In other words, don’t just have anyone writing your reviews content.

Explain your review process and why people should trust you:
When people are searching for reviews, providing your review process clearly for readers is a smart idea (and can help break down barriers). Explain how you review products, the process you take, the metrics you are using to rate products, how you chose the top products per category, and more.

If you want a good example of how this looks, you should check out Wirecuttter. They provide that information in each review. Safewise also provides a section covering how they review products, but it’s at the end of the review. In my opinion, I would put that higher up the page to help users understand that process before reading the reviews. That said, they at least provide that information for readers.

Here is a section from a safewise review for wireless cameras:

Explaining how reviews were conducted in product review articles.

And here is a section from a Wirecutter review about why you should trust them:

Explaining why readers should trust a product reviews site.

The Wirecutter Standard: Try to be the Wirecutter for your niche. You can’t go wrong.
I mentioned Wirecutter earlier, just provided a bunch of examples from the site, and also covered it heavily in my post about the April Product Reviews Update, and all for good reason. Wirecutter provides some of the most thorough, high quality, insightful, and helpful reviews on the web. And it’s no coincidence they have done very well over time rankings-wise.

When helping companies focused on reviews, I find myself often saying, “be the Wirecutter for your niche”. I know that’s not an easy thing to do, since Wirecutter has a killer team of writers, people testing products, editors, etc., but it’s what many sites should strive for in my opinion. I recommend spending some time on their site, seeing how they break down reviews, the level of detail provided, and try to emulate that for your own niche.

The Wirecutter standard for providing product reviews.
The Wirecutter standard for providing product reviews.

Summary: Understand The April PRU, Learn About The December Update, and Get Ready For The Next
Like the April Product Reviews Update, the December PRU was significant for many sites focused on reviews. It was core update-like for many, yielding surges, drops, and recoveries across verticals. If you have been impacted by the December PRU, I recommend reading Google’s blog posts about the updates, my post about the April Product Reviews Update, review this post about the December update again, and then objectively analyze your own site.

I would surface gaps in your reviews content and fill those gaps, improve the user experience, watch the aggressive ad situation, and work to become the Wirecutter of your niche. Don’t improve a little… make BIG changes. Remember, there are dueling machine learning systems out there looking to surface the highest quality content possible. Control what you can control. That’s the best path forward in my opinion.

GG

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Filed Under: algorithm-updates, ecommerce, google, seo

The short and long-term ranking impact of removing long and fluff e-commerce category descriptions [Case Study]

August 30, 2021 By Glenn Gabe Leave a Comment

ecommerce category description case study

Imagine the following scenario… Excited about buying a new house, you decide to browse for a new kitchen table. So you fire up Google and start searching. You end up clicking through a search listing to view modern kitchen tables and land on the category page of an e-commerce site. But before you start to view all of the great tables they have, you are presented with multiple lengthy paragraphs of content.

As you scroll and scan the description (if you even choose to do that), you notice that the copy is long and doesn’t really help you at all. It’s basically fluff content. For example, maybe it contains the history of modern kitchen tables or maybe it tells you all of the reasons you must have a modern kitchen table (while mentioning different types of modern kitchen tables four or five times). Frustrated, you quickly scroll to get to the actual products.

All of us have come across this situation (and across different types of e-commerce sites). But do we have to? Is it necessary for e-commerce sites to provide long and excessive descriptions that most people won’t even read? And can you rank well without those longer fluff descriptions? That’s a question that many SEOs and site owners must consider while crafting e-commerce category pages and the topic I’m covering in this case study.

If possible, I recommend reading this post from beginning to end to understand the history of the situation, the multiphase approach the site owners employed, the short and long-term impact, and more. But if you are short on time (pun intended), then here’s a table of contents so you can jump around the case study.

Case Study Table of Contents:

  • The e-Commerce Description Conundrum.
  • Case Study Details.
  • When long category descriptions roamed the site.
  • The Desktopian Era: Before mobile-first indexing.
  • Phase One: Refining the descriptions.
  • Phase Two: Hiding shorter descriptions.
  • Boom: The March 2019 Broad Core Update.
  • Phase Three: Biting the bullet with concise descriptions.
  • Final tips and recommendations for e-commerce retailers.

The e-Commerce Description Conundrum:
While helping e-commerce companies deal with major algorithm updates, and analyzing some sites with long and excessive descriptions, it’s clear that some site owners believe those long descriptions help those pages rank well (or are a key part of helping those pages rank well). Therefore, my feedback about the long and questionable descriptions is something that they might make note of, talk about with their teams, and possibly even brainstorm solutions for improving, but never move on. The fear of losing rankings because of removing long and fluff descriptions is enough to keep those descriptions in place (and sometimes for a very long time).

I get it, change in SEO (especially when the competition is consistently using a certain approach) is tough to deal with and implement. But, frustrating users and potentially sending mixed signals to Google about the core intent of a page could also hinder your efforts. To make things even more risky, you have short-term ranking changes to worry about, but then you have broad core updates to worry about. And those only roll out three to four times per year.

To make matters more complex, it’s also important to understand that short-term testing will not always tell you what a broad core update will bring. I’ve covered that several times in my posts about broad core updates, and Google has also explained that testing just a subset of pages is not enough for their algorithms to determine that site quality has improved enough (if you are working on improving quality overall). So, just tinkering with a few category pages will not reveal what a broad core update could roll in…

Here is Google’s John Mueller explaining this: (at 11:41 in the video)

The Case Study:
Below, I’m going to cover a case study of an e-commerce site I helped over time that struggled during several major algorithm updates years ago and finally decided to address their lengthy and excessive descriptions on category pages. And in their place, they added much shorter descriptions that better fit their products, users, and niche overall.

This change was a long time in the making, since I initially brought this up to them several years ago (2015). Being cautious, they took a multi-phase approach (over years) moving from long and fluff category descriptions (that weren’t really valuable for users) to shorter, tighter descriptions that fit their product line and users much better. So, I have data from the short-term changes they implemented, and data over the long-term.

My hope is that this case study can get your wheels spinning about the best possible e-commerce category pages you can provide to prospective customers. And to be clear, that might include longer descriptions, or it might not. It really depends on what your research and testing yields. That’s a good segue to an important disclaimer.

Disclaimer: I’m not saying every site should nuke or replace their long descriptions and I’ll cover the various nuances in this post. But, I do think every site owner should review their category page content, understand what real users want to see, provide the best experience possible, while obviously trying to rank well in the search results. This case is a good example of a site owner taking a multi-phase approach to refining category descriptions over several years and those changes paying off. Read on.

Jumping Back in History: When long category descriptions roamed the site.
Again, the company reached out to me for help after seeing its fair share of volatility during major algorithm updates. They initially reached out to me in 2015 and I heavily analyzed the site (with the goal of using a “kitchen sink” approach to remediation). That’s where my goal is to surface every potential issue that could be impacting the site from a quality standpoint and then site owners working hard to implement as many of those recommendations as possible.

One glaring finding was about their e-commerce category pages. The pages had lengthy (and excessive) descriptions at the top of the page before the actual products were presented. The descriptions were multiple paragraphs long and didn’t really help users.

Also, the descriptions weren’t displayed in full by default. The first paragraph was shown with a “read more” link that would trigger the full content block. I found that strange since the content was supposed to help users (but most of it was being hidden on-load). Also, this was before mobile-first indexing, so hidden content was not given full weight from a ranking perspective. I’ll cover more about that next.

Here is a mockup of what the category descriptions looked like in 2015:
One paragraph on-load with a “read-more” link revealing several paragraphs:

Long e-commerce category descriptions hidden behind "read more" link.

Long description displayed once the “read more” button is clicked:

Expanding long e-commerce category descriptions via a "read more" link.

The Desktopian Era: Before mobile-first indexing.
Before I go any further, it’s important to remember that this was before mobile-first indexing was a thing. So, any content hidden on-load was not given full weight from a ranking perspective. I explained to my client that the hidden content in each description was (probably) not given full weight, along with other key points about what Google had been explaining about e-commerce category pages that contained lengthy, fluff descriptions.

For example, John Mueller has explained many times that e-commerce sites don’t need to add lengthy descriptions in order to rank well. Instead, he said it is important to add some textual content so Google can have context about what the page is about, but that writing a book about the category can actually confuse Google’s algorithms.

In other words, if you provide a lot of informational content about a category, along with product listings, Google’s algorithms can start to wonder if the page is informational or transactional. i.e. Are you selling products or are you providing the history of the category? John has also mentioned the danger of keyword stuffing when you add really long descriptions to e-commerce category pages.

Here are two clips from Google’s John Mueller about e-commerce category pages:
Watch the entire clip. There are some great nuggets of information from John: (at 29:25 in the video)

In this second video, John explains how site owners should focus on providing informative content and place it where users will actually see it. He also covers alt text, captions, and headings: (at 7:18 in the video)

So, the implementation of lengthy (and mostly hidden) category descriptions in 2015 could have been a UX barrier (frustrating users) without much ranking benefit (since the descriptions were mostly hidden). And if Google did take that content into account, it could have been confusing Google about the core point of the page. These were all important things to consider before implementing changes.

Phase One: e-commerce category descriptions refined.
After surfacing many of the e-commerce category descriptions that were long and not extremely valuable, the site owners decided to take action and implement some changes. But, they wanted to test the waters by using a multi-phase approach to changing the descriptions.

They first cut down the descriptions and made them all readable on-load (without needing to click a “read more” button). The new descriptions were about 30% shorter and supported the category better than the longer, fluff descriptions that were replaced.

Shorter e-commerce category descriptions visible on-load.

Their hope was that this change, along with many others they were implementing across the site, would help with Google’s evaluation of quality over the long-term. So even a short-term drop would be ok if the site performed better over the long-term. Now it was time to see how Google would react.

The short-term impact: All clear on the ranking front.
Nothing really changed immediately following the first description change, which was good. The pages still ranked where they were, so it seemed removing all of that extra content didn’t impact the short-term rankings for the pages (or site). Phase one was complete.

Here are some ranking graphs from that timeframe for head terms leading to category urls. Note the site moved to https in 2016 so you will see the http urls switch to https in the graphs below (green to blue). Rankings for the category pages held steady through the description changes and the move to https:

Ranking impact for a page with shorter e-commerce category descriptions.
Ranking impact for another key page with shorter e-commerce category descriptions.
Ranking impact for a third category page with shorter e-commerce descriptions.

Phase Two: Hide the shorter descriptions.
The next phase was implemented when the site was redesigned the following year. The site owners decided to hide the shorter descriptions behind a “read more” link. And to clarify, the entire description was hidden behind the link (on both desktop and mobile). As you can probably guess, I wasn’t a big fan of this approach. If you have descriptions that are helpful for users, then I think you should provide them on the page by default (especially on desktop). If not, then refine that content so it can be displayed on-load. To clarify, it’s fine on mobile to collapse some of the content behind a UI element, if needed, but the entire description shouldn’t be hidden in my opinion.

Also, the site had not been switched to mobile-first indexing yet, so the content should not have been given full weight from a ranking perspective. My recommendation was to implement changes there and provide more of that description on-load (and to possibly cut down those descriptions even more). The site owners totally understood and said they would figure something out to improve the situation.

Shorter descriptions fully hidden on-load behind a “read more” button:

Fully hiding a shorter e-commerce category description behind a "read more" link,

Shorter descriptions displayed after the “read more” button was clicked:

Revealing the shorter e-commerce category description after clicking a "read more" link.

Note, rankings did not change much when the descriptions were hidden. So, it seems that change didn’t really impact much rankings-wise.

Here are rankings for some head terms leading to those category pages when phase two was implemented:

Ranking impact of hiding an e-commerce category description behind  a "read more" link.
Ranking impact for another category page after hiding a description behind  a "read more" link.
Ranking impact for a third e-commerce category page after hiding a description behind  a "read more" link.

So far I’ve covered the short-term impact of the description changes, but Google pushes broad core updates several times per year (and they can clearly have a huge impact on sites across the web). Well, a broad core update rolled out in March of 2019 and it was a big one for the site. I’ll cover that next.

March 2019 Broad Core update: Boom, the site surged, and so did many of those pages.
When the March 2019 broad core update rolled out, the site surged overall (and so did many of those pages). It was amazing to see. Now, broad core updates can often impact a site overall (and increase rankings across many pages). That’s due to Google’s site-level quality signals. And as I’ve covered in my posts about broad core updates, Google is evaluating many factors over time and is reevaluating site quality and relevance with broad core updates. It was just interesting to see the site surge, and those category pages jump in rankings.

And, removing 30% of the description content from the original implementation clearly didn’t hurt those pages long-term. Actually, the description content was better for users with more relevant information. Also, by the time the March 2019 core update rolled out, the site had been moved to mobile-first indexing (so the content hidden on-load was given full weight). So the descriptions being hidden behind a “read more” button were given full weight after the move to mobile-first indexing.

Here are some of the increases for category pages during the March 2019 broad core update (head terms that lead to those category pages increasing in rankings based on the update):

Ranking changes for e-commerce category pages based on the March 2019 broad core update.

Phase Three: Biting the bullet with concise descriptions.
In the final phase of category description changes, the site owners decided to go even further and cut down the descriptions to just a few helpful sentences and provide all of that content on-load (without forcing the user to reveal the description). And in my opinion, it was a much better fit for users, the niche, the categories, etc. You can see below they provided just a short paragraph on each page without hiding the description at all.

Providing concise e-commerce category descriptions that are visible be default.

This change was implemented in late 2019 and the site has done extremely well since then. And those category pages are also doing extremely well. It was also interesting to see the site’s search visibility surge with the July 2021 core update. So, clearly those new, shorter category descriptions aren’t hurting the site or rankings for those pages.

Many of the category pages rank on page one, with a number of them in the top five listings, and several key category pages are ranking number one in the search results. Again, it’s great to see an improved category page with shorter, but more valuable descriptions, working well. They didn’t need to write a book about the category… they just needed enough content to meet or exceed user expectations (and to give Google enough signals about what the pages were about).

Here is search visibility trending when filtering by category pages on the site. There was a big surge during the December 2020 core update and then more during the July 2021 core update:

The search visibility impact for e-commerce category pages during the December 2020 and July 2021 broad core updates.

Final tips and recommendations for e-commerce retailers:
Now that I’ve covered the case study, I wanted to end with some final tips and recommendations for e-commerce retailers. Note, there’s not a “one size fits all” approach when it comes to e-commerce category descriptions. I would use a logical process for implementing changes across your category pages if you currently feel stuck with long and fluff descriptions:

  • User Studies: First, run a user study. Ask real users what they want and how they feel about your current descriptions. I’ve covered user studies through the lens of broad core updates many times in my blog posts. Hearing from objective users can be enlightening. Note, you might need to run multiple studies based on your initial results. Again, you never know what you’re going to see and hear while testing your site.
  • Short-term testing: Run some short-term testing of category description changes (just keep in mind this will only show the immediate impact rankings-wise and not what impact during broad core updates will look like). As I mentioned earlier, you can’t run a test on a subset of pages to fully understand the impact during broad core updates. But you can gauge the short-term impact of refining category descriptions.
  • Taking (an educated) Leap of faith: Do what’s best for your users and your site long-term based on the user study, your understanding of your niche, the short-term testing, etc. And if that means cutting down those long fluff descriptions, and replacing them with shorter, but more valuable content, then so be it. As this case study showed, those pages (and the site overall) can do well without adding excessive descriptions like that… Google has explained this over and over, but I know it’s hard to pull the trigger on something like that. Just remember that Google’s John Mueller did explain that having some relevant text on the page about the category is smart (so Google can have some context about the page). Don’t just add images and call it a day…
  • The danger of blindly following the competition: Don’t blindly follow what the competition is doing. I can’t tell you how many site owners have reached out to me over the years after getting hit hard by a broad core update and explaining that they were following one of their top competitors (and it ends up they both got hit during the same core update). As Google’s John Mueller has said many times, some sites might be ranking well despite the bad or risky things they are doing.

Summary – Working towards better e-commerce category descriptions.
I hope you found this case study interesting. I know there’s a long history of debate over e-commerce category descriptions, despite what Google has explained many times. Again, I’m not saying all sites should nuke their long category descriptions. It’s more nuanced than that. But I would start to understand what your users truly want to find on those pages, run user testing, implement short-term changes, and then gauge how that’s working for the site. And if all signs point to cutting down those long descriptions, and replacing them with shorter, but more valuable descriptions, then that might be the best move. And that’s exactly what worked for the site I covered in this post (over both the short and long-term).

GG

Filed Under: ecommerce, google, seo

Trapped In Google’s New Video Carousels – A Dangerous SERP Feature For Some Ecommerce Retailers [Case Study]

July 17, 2018 By Glenn Gabe Leave a Comment

Trapped in Google's new video carousels.

{Update 8/13/18: I started noticing a number of ecommerce retailers being released from video carousels when their category or product pages didn’t contain any video (or if the video just supported the main content on the page). The first signs of the change were on Sunday, 8/12/18 and I’m seeing the changes roll out more widely on Monday, 8/13/18. It’s still early, but I hope the changes stick. I included more information and screenshots below. And you can see clicks return via GSC screenshots, which I added on 8/27/18.}

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In June of 2018, Google rolled out video carousels in the desktop SERPs (after having them live in the mobile SERPs for some time). Google had been testing the desktop feature on and off for a while, but finally pulled the trigger and fully rolled it out. And when I say “fully”, I mean the whole enchilada. More about that soon.

It wasn’t long before many people started noticing the change in the search results, which makes complete sense. The feature is hard to ignore based on the massive real estate the carousels take up and their visual nature.

Here’s an example of Google’s new desktop video carousel:

Google's New Video Carousels in the Desktop SERPs

Also, it didn’t take long to notice that Google had seriously turned up the dial on the amount of video carousels surfacing in the search results. For example, the carousels were triggering for many different types of queries, even if it didn’t make much sense to include video carousels for some of those queries.

Heck, they were even triggering for people’s names! I understand that video would make sense for some people, but definitely not for all. It seemed like Google was pushing the new video carousels too hard. Brodie Clark wrote a quick article covering this situation when the carousels first rolled out.

The video carousels are harmless… but are they? Just ask ecommerce retailers:
Some marketers checked out the new video carousels in the desktop SERPs and automatically thought the amazing real estate and visual nature of the carousel would be incredible for sites gaining those listings. But that’s simply not the case for ALL companies.

Ever since the carousels rolled out, Google’s John Mueller has been asked a number of questions about how to get out of the video carousels. Yes, that’s “get out” and not “get in”. Some questions have been asked via Twitter, while others have been asked in John’s webmaster hangout videos. I’ll cover more about Google’s recommendations soon.

Some ecommerce retailers have had a rough time with dealing with the video carousels. For example, some sites have found their way into those video carousels without even having video on their pages! In addition, it seems that many users are simply scrolling right past those carousels when searching for products. And that can lead to a serious drop in clicks and conversions.

My guess is that they think the carousels just contain YouTube videos or other video clips versus links to ecommerce pages. And that’s a terrible thing for ecommerce retailers that used to rank in the normal organic listings (the ten blue links). When you rank in the video carousels, you are removed from the organic listings. Not good.

Here are some examples of sites now ranking in video carousels that used to rank in the standard organic listings. The pages ranking in the carousel either don’t have video, or only provide video as a supporting feature. And these are ecommerce category pages, not video pages. I’ll provide some stats next.

SERP for “fidget spinner 1 dollar”. Alibaba ranks multiple times in the carousel:
ecommerce category pages caught in a video carousel

Ecommerce category page on Alibaba.com containing one small video (bottom-right):
ecommerce category page with small video

SERP for “jewelry sets for less”. Overstock category page ranking in the carousel:
Overstock ranking in the video carousels for an ecommerce category page.

Ecommerce page on Overstock.com without video:
Overstock page ranking in video carousel without video.

SERP for “roller shades”. Blinds.com ranking in video carousel multiple times:
Blinds.com ranking in the video carousels.

Ecommerce category page on Blinds.com without video:
Blinds.com ecommerce category pages ranking in the video carousel.

Show me the data! Clicks and CTR fall off a cliff while impressions remain high:
Again, it seems users are scrolling right by the video carousels when searching for products. How bad is the drop in clicks when comparing ranking in the standard organic listings versus the new video carousels? Pretty darn bad.

For example, I’ve included some screenshots from Google Search Console (GSC) of clicks and impressions from an ecommerce retailer that is experiencing this problem. Note, this a B2B ecommerce retailer, so those clicks can turn into big dollars. The average sale for this company is in the thousands of dollars and not tens of dollars.

Notice how impressions remain the same (or surge) while clicks drop off a cliff. This B2B ecommerce retailer began testing adding video schema markup (and video sitemaps) in late April and got caught up in the new video carousels by accident. They first started showing up in the mobile video carousels (which were already live in the SERPs), and then began showing up in the desktop video carousels when they launched in early June. I’ll explain more about what they are doing now soon.

A big drop in clicks while impressions remain strong for ecommerce category pages caught in the video carousel:
Click and impressions for page in a video carousel.

Clicks drop while impressions remain strong for page in video carousel.

Clicks drop and impressions surge for page in Google's new video carousel.

Clicks drop heavily while impressions remain strong for page mistakenly caught in a video carousel.

John Mueller’s Recommendations – The Current Fix
I mentioned earlier that a number of people have pinged John Mueller via Twitter and via his webmaster hangout videos about how to get out of the video carousels. John was quick to respond and had some recommendations for getting out of the carousel and back into the main SERPs.

John explained that you can disallow crawling of the video file and thumbnail image, or submit a video sitemap file with an expiration date set in the past.

Here is John’s tweet explaining how to get out of a video carousel:
Google's John Mueller explains how to get out of the video carousel.

And here is a video from John’s webmaster hangout explaining what you can do:

Again, the B2B ecommerce retailer I mentioned earlier was testing adding video schema markup (and video sitemaps) in late April and got caught up in the new video carousels by accident. After seeing the video carousel problem, they removed all video and video schema markup from the category pages, and then removed the listings from their video xml sitemaps to get removed from the carousels. Unfortunately, none of that worked.

They also tested blocking the video thumbnail image, which didn’t work either. Google ended up creating its own video thumbnails. Then out of desperation, they added video schema and video sitemaps back to add an expiration date set in the past. That didn’t work either. As of today, the site ranks in the video carousels for thousands of keywords. They used to rank in the standard organic listings until the end of April and early May when they started testing adding video. And then the desktop video carousels hit the scene in early June and the situation has gotten even worse.

From a business perspective, the site owner estimates they have lost $300K to $500K in sales since this started happening. Their category pages drive a large percentage of sales for the company, so this is really hurting them financially.

Danger Levels Rise: When all else fails, implement some hacks…
Remember, there is no video on the pages in question, so they had to add a video xml sitemap just to add the expiration date set in the past. Since nothing has worked, they decided to implement some hacks, which is always a dangerous thing to do. I never recommend implementing hacks SEO-wise since they can come back to bite you. That’s potentially happening here as well.

For example, the company started implementing more extreme changes to try and get their listings out of the video carousels. They started 301 redirecting to new urls to see if that would break the connection. That hasn’t seemed to work either (although they did see a few of those pages pop out of the carousels in the short-term).

Yes, they are literally redirecting important category pages that rank well for extremely competitive queries as a last resort. That’s crazy… They also started removing the videos from YouTube (those are the videos that Google was connecting with the site) or making them private. Remember, the videos aren’t on the site, just on YouTube. Those hacks didn’t work either.

Again, with an average sale in the thousands of dollars, and the category pages driving a high percentage of those sales, the company estimates they have lost approximately $300K to $500K since late April or early May when they started ranking in the video carousels.

Burning revenue as pages remain caught in Google's video carousel.

It just seems crazy that site owners need to jump through hoops while their revenue tanks due to something completely out of their control (and something they didn’t opt into). This ecommerce retailer, in particular, was blindsided in late April and early May when both traffic and revenue dropped off a cliff for important category pages.

A (Better) Fix Is Needed And Brainstorming Possible Solutions
Since video carousels are being populated algorithmically by Google, any change to that algorithm can take a while to hit the SERPs. Google’s John Mueller has explained that recently with regard to Top Stories (another SERP feature that’s gained a lot of attention). John explained that the Top Stories team needs to implement changes to the algo, then heavily test the changes, and then it could roll out down the line. That could take weeks, or even months before hitting the SERPs.

Here is Google’s John Mueller explaining algorithmic changes for Top Stories:

My guess is it’s the same way with video carousels. My recommendation to Google would be to first tone down the algorithm triggering the carousels. They should only trigger when Google is extremely confident that users want to see videos for a specific query. And if video carousels are triggered for a query, then Google should make sure that the pages being ranked in the carousel ACTUALLY contain video. As I explained earlier, some ecommerce retailers that don’t have video at all are being included in video carousels. And that’s killing their revenue.

Beyond the algorithmic part, there should be some way for sites to easily opt out of video carousels (either at the site-level or page-level). Whether that’s an option in Google Search Console (GSC), a tag that can be implemented via code, a directive delivered via the header response, or an addition to xml sitemaps, something needs to be done so sites can make sure they don’t become collateral damage with video carousels.

A mockup of GSC reporting showing a page being blocked from showing in video carousels:

GSC reporting a url is blocked from showing in a video carousel.


**Update 8/13/18: Many ecommerce retails are being released from the video carousels.**
Actually, a number of video carousels are simply being removed from the SERPs for some ecommerce queries. This is outstanding news for ecommerce retailers that were trapped in video carousels when they didn’t even have video on those pages (or if the video just supported the main content). I began noticing these changes on Sunday, 8/12/18, and then saw the changes roll out more widely on Monday, 8/13/18.

For example, I’ll use the queries from earlier in the post to demonstrate what I’m seeing now. I hope this change sticks. I know the B2B ecommerce retailer I documented in this post is ecstatic right now. But the company knows that anything can change in a heartbeat… I’ll post more updates soon. Stay tuned.

1. Blinds.com had a category page for roller shades (without video on it) trapped in a video carousel. It’s free now:
Roller shades - video carousel missing.

2. Overstock also had a category page without video stuck in a video carousel. Well, not anymore:

Jewelry sets for less - video carousels missing.

3. And Alibaba was released from the video carousel for this query, even though the carousel remained in the search results. But now it’s just populated with YouTube videos (which is accurate):

Fidget spinner one dollar - video carousel changed.


Clicks Return!
Regarding the e-commerce retailer I documented in this post, it’s been amazing to see their clicks return. When they were trapped in the video carousel, their impressions remained strong, but their clicks dropped off a cliff. Well, as soon as they were released from the carousels, those clicks came back.

Here are three different screenshots from Google Search Console (GSC) demonstrating the changes to key category pages that were once trapped in the carousel. Considering this retailer lost between $600K-800K in revenue due to the problem, they are pretty happy to be back in the standard organic results again.

Released from Google's video carousels. Clicks surge.

e-commerce retailer released from video carousels.

Clicks surge as e-commerce retailer is released from Google's video carousels.

It’s great to see Google make the right changes here. It took a bit of time, but as I explained earlier, that can happen when Google needs to implement changes, test those changes, etc.

**End Update**
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Summary – Escaping video carousels is harder than you think
For ecommerce retailers mistakenly caught up in video carousels, this situation has been a horrorfest. Some have been blindsided by being included in the new video carousels. And then combine that with users that are scrolling right past those carousels when searching for products. And that’s after ranking well in the standard organic search listings where users were clicking their listings. As I documented above, revenue has dropped significantly for those important category pages.

My hope is that Google implements changes both algorithmically (refining the video carousel algorithm) while also providing ways for site owners to opt-out of video carousels (via GSC, meta tags, the header response, or xml sitemaps). If not, the bleeding will continue, sites will continue to implement hacks to try and get out of video carousels, and users will keep scrolling right past those carousels when searching for products. I’ll keep monitoring the situation and provide an update if I see any changes roll out. I hope that’s the case. Stay tuned.

GG

 

 

 

Filed Under: ecommerce, google, seo

How To Properly Set Up Pagination With Sorting Parameters Using Rel Next/Prev And Rel Canonical [SEO Tutorial]

March 30, 2017 By Glenn Gabe 20 Comments

Last Updated: October 2021

How to set up pagination using rel next/prev and rel canonical.

Update – October 2021
Google just published new help documentation containing best practices for e-commerce sites, which included a section about pagination. In that section, Google explains that for category pagination, it recommends having each paginated url indexable and that each contains a self-referencing canonical tag. Google also emphasizes to not canonicalize each page in the pagination to the first page in the set. In addition, Google explains to link paginated pages sequentially to help it understand the relationship between pages in the pagination. And as part of that, Google recommends providing a link back to the first page in the pagination on all pages in the collection (which can give Google a hint that the root page in the pagination is the best landing page versus the other deeper pages in the pagination.)

Best practices for pagination from Google

In addition, I also just published a case study showing what happens when 67% of a site’s indexed urls are pagination. The site is using the approach I have documented in this post where all pagination is indexable using self-referencing canonical tags. The case study backs up what Google’s John Mueller has been explaining for a long time (that Google has a lot of experience with pagination, and that it can often just work).

Update – April 2021
Google’s John Mueller just covered pagination in a Search Central Hangout when asked about the best way to handle pagination for categories. First, he said to determine if you are addressing articles split into multiple urls or category pagination (like what’s found on many e-commerce sites). If you are addressing articles that have been split up into multiple urls, then make sure each url is linked to & indexable. For category pagination, if your urls are crosslinked well on the site, then do what makes sense for you. For example, you can noindex the pagination beyond page one, you can canonicalize those urls to page one, or you can have the urls indexable if you want (with self-referencing canonicals). It totally depends on your specific situation. Here is the video from John:

Update – December 2019: Google provides new guidelines and recommendations
Google’s John Mueller just presented at the Webmaster Conference in Tel Aviv on December 4, 2019. In that presentation, he covered how to handle pagination now that rel next/prev is not being used for indexing purposes. It sounds like more information will be coming via a blog post, but I wanted to provide John’s recommendations here until we have more information. Igal Stolpner tweeted a photo from John’s presentation where he was covering how to best handle pagination now that rel next/prev doesn’t help from an indexing standpoint.

As you can see in the tweet below, John explains to link naturally between pages, to use clean urls (with no or few parameters). He also explained that it’s important to determine the goal of the paginated content and then adjust your strategy based on that.

For example, if it’s paginated content (like an article that’s paginated), then you should link all pages and make them all indexable. But if it’s what he calls “detail links”, like for e-commerce sites, then you can either link all pages, or if all content is findable via cross-linking, then you can just have the first page indexable (or the first few pages in the pagination). You can canonicalize the rest to page one or noindex the rest. Again, I hope Google publishes a post soon with more detail about these recommendations. I’m sure many people will have questions. :)

Google's John Mueller provides guidance about setting up pagination.

Update: March 2019: Google just announced that after evaluating its indexing signals, it realized it’s not using rel next/prev as an indexing signal anymore. As of a few days ago, Google was still recommending using rel next/prev to signal to them that pages were part of a set, and that Google should consolidate indexing properties from across that set. But it ends up they haven’t been using rel next/prev for a few years. Crazy, but true.

Google announces that rel next/prev is not an indexing signal anymore.

Confirmation from Google's John Mueller that rel next/prev isn't used for indexing.

But don’t feel like you need to remove rel next/prev or radically change your setup. This is not a recent change on Google’s end. So if you’re setup is working for you, then don’t change a thing. Google’s John Mueller has explained that as well. You can read this post on Search Engine Roundtable by Barry Schwartz, which covers the change. And you can watch Google’s John Mueller explain more about the situation in a recent webmaster hangout video.

Here is the video segment (starting at 14:35 and lasting about ten minutes):

My recommendation is to try and fold paginated articles together into one strong url (or at least cut down on the amounts of pages that each article is broken out to). As Google has explained, each page needs to stand on its own. And for pagination for lists of items (like articles in categories, e-commerce product categories, etc.), pagination should still be used like you are hopefully doing now. And then use the right canonicalization strategy based on your situation. You can read more about that in my article below. Just skip the rel next/prev information and focus on the canonicalization sections.

As Google always says, change in constant. At least they informed us about this change, even if it was a few years late. :)

———————–

While helping companies improve overall quality, I’m typically neck deep in performing technical audits and analyzing crawl data. And with many large-scale sites, it’s not uncommon to come across a heavy amount of pagination used throughout those sites. Now, pagination is totally fine to have and can help both users and bots get to your content through organized categories. But, it’s important that your pagination is set up properly from an SEO perspective, so you can get the most bang for your paginated buck. Unfortunately, I’ve seen so many pagination flaws during my audit travels, it’s not even funny.

Based on the botched setups I have seen, and the confusion surrounding pagination, I’ve been jokingly telling clients that I need to write a blog post about how to properly set up rel next/prev when a pagination uses sorting or filtering. Because if I did, I could just point new clients there versus explaining it over and over. So, I finally decided to write it up. :) And yes, I know there are many posts out there about pagination and SEO. But, I wanted to provide one detailing the exact setup that I recommend (based on Google’s official recommendations and my experience helping many large-scale sites that employ pagination).

This post will cover a number of topics under the pagination umbrella, including how to set up rel next/prev, how to handle sorting and filtering parameters, and how to combine rel canonical with rel next/prev. My hope is that this post can clear up some of the confusion surrounding pagination and SEO.

Your Goal and How Google Should Process The Setup
First, let me quickly explain why this is important. When using pagination, you often have several pages of content within a specific category. For example, pagination is prevalent on ecommerce sites that might have hundreds of products under a certain category. Or you might have sites with reviews that might have dozens or more reviews per product.

From an SEO perspective, it might not sound great to have dozens of category pages indexed by Google. But you absolutely could, as long as you know Google is handling those pages properly. The catch is that you should use rel next/prev in the code of your component pages so Google can consolidate indexing properties from across the paginated set. That means Google can treat your paginated set as one, versus dozens of separate pages containing a list of products. And when Google does that, it can surface the right page from the paginated set in the SERPs based on query, but it will still treat the paginated set as one (signals-wise).

Using rel next/prev to consolidate indexing properties.

Warning: Don’t Canonicalize All Component Pages To The First Page! Set Up Rel Canonical Correctly
Also, and this is important to understand, if you canonicalize all component pages to the first page in your pagination, then Google can’t index any of the additional content. So you are diminishing the power of the paginated set by canonicalizing each component page to the first page. It’s simply not the right setup. I’ll cover how to use rel canonical the right way with pagination soon.

A Note About Google Resources for Pagination and Rel next/prev
Before we begin, I wanted to mention that there are some great resources from Google explaining more about this topic, and I highly recommend checking them out. For example, there’s a great video from former Googler Maile Ohye covering how to use rel next/prev in detail. And then Google has written several blog posts about pagination, including one about common mistakes that site owners make when implementing rel canonical on their sites. There’s a part about not canonicalizing all component pages to the first page in the pagination. Between my post today and those resources, you should be ready to rock and roll pagination-wise. Let’s get started.

How To Properly Set Up Rel Next/Prev with Filtering: Step-by-step
It’s best if I use an example that’s easy to understand, so let’s say we have an ecommerce site named “Glenn’s Baseball Gloves”. Hey, I coach baseball and I’m helping my players choose the right gear now. :) Let’s set up the pagination for a category of pre-broken in baseball gloves. Here we go!

1. Our Ecommerce Category
The category url is https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm. The category contains 75 products and we’re going to provide fifteen gloves per page. So, we’ll have five component pages in the pagination. Page two will have the following url: https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=2. Then page=3, page=4, etc.

Handling pagination on an ecommerce site.

2. Filtering or Sorting The Pagination
We will also provide sorting for our pagination. To keep this simple, let’s provide sorting by price. So if the user chooses to sort “Price High-To-Low”, the pagination will reorder the gloves and show the most expensive gloves first. The sorting parameter will be price=X, where X could be high or low.

Sorting by price on an ecommerce site.

So we might end up with a url that looks like this:

https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=2&price=high

3. Rel next/prev
This is the easy part. You will need to add rel next/prev tags in the head of each component page that provides the next url in the pagination, and the previous. The only exceptions are the first and last pages in the pagination. That’s because the first page will have a rel next tag, but won’t have a previous tag. And the last page will have a rel prev tag, but won’t have a next tag. All other component pages should contain both rel next and prev.

For our root category page https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm, we’ll use the following in the head of the document:

<link rel=“next” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=2” />

Remember, the first page will not contain a rel=”prev” tag since there isn’t a previous page!

And our page=2 url will contain the following tags in the head of the document:

<link rel=“next” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=3” />

<link rel=“prev” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm” />

Important note: I’ve seen many sites use ?page=1 in the rel prev tag when pointing back to the root category page, when that’s not the actual url. The url actually doesn’t contain any parameters, so it’s just https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm without page=1.

You should complete the tags for the remaining component pages and then include just a rel prev tag on the last page (since there’s not a “next” url). For example, the final page in the pagination (page 5) would contain the following rel prev tag in the head of the document.

<link rel=“prev” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=4” />

4. Rel canonical
When setting up the pagination, I highly recommend using self-referencing canonical tags on each component page. Rel canonical and rel next/prev are separate concepts and can be used together on the same url. Again, these should be self-referencing canonical tags for each component page.

The root page should contain a self-referencing canonical tag, page=2 url should as well, so on and so forth. Remember, we want Google to index each of the pages so it can consolidate indexing properties from across the paginated set. Don’t simply canonicalize all component pages to the first page. That’s not the right setup. Google even lists that in their common mistakes blog post for rel canonical! See screenshot below.

Don’t do this!
Don't canonicalize all component pages to page one in the pagination.

Here is an example of what we should implement based on our fictitious website:

The root category url https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm would contain the following rel canonical tag:

<link rel=“canonical” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm” />

and then the second url in our pagination https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=2 would contain:

<link rel=“canonical” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=2”>

Again, DO NOT canonicalize all component pages to the first page in the pagination. That’s not the proper setup (as documented above)! And rel canoncial should contain the url with the page parameter, but not contain any sorting or filtering parameters. I’ll cover more about that next.

5. Handling Sorting or Filtering In The Pagination
This part seems to confuse a lot of people, just based on the number of parameters being handled and how it ties to rel canonical and rel next/prev. If filtering or sorting parameters are provided, then you should include them in rel next/prev tags, but not include them in rel canonical. Rel canonical should only contain the core url for the component page without the filtering parameters. Google’s Maile Ohye explained this in her video about pagination.

Also, it’s important to keep a consistent order for your parameters. In my opinion, you should always start with the core url and page parameter (page=X). Then layer on filtering parameters, but keep the order consistent. Don’t use page=X&price=Y&size=Z on one component page and then page=X&size=Y&price=Z on the next. Or worse, don’t move the page=X parameter to after the filters! Make it easy for Google to understand the structure so it can consolidate indexing properties without running into trouble.

For our example, let’s say a user sorted by price, the first page would contain the following rel next tag and rel canonical tag:

<link rel=“next” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=2&price=high” />

<link rel=“canonical” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm” />

Then page 2 would contain:

<link rel=“prev” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?price=high” />

<link rel=“next” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=3&price=high” />

<link rel=“canonical” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=2” />

And page 3 would contain:

<link rel=“prev” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=2&price=high” />

<link rel=“next” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=4&price=high” />

<link rel=“canonical” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=3” />

Notice how rel next prev carries the sorting parameters from one url to the next, while rel canonical only references the core url. We would follow the same formula for page four. And the final page (which is page 5 in our example) would contain the following tags. Remember, the final page would not contain a rel next tag since there isn’t another page in the pagination:

<link rel=“prev” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=4&price=high” />

<link rel=“canonical” href=“https://glennsgloves.com/baseball-gloves/pre-broken-in.htm?page=5” />

Rel=Got It?
And that’s it! Now you are handling rel next/prev correctly on each component page of the pagination, as well as rel canonical. And you are also providing consistent sorting parameters via rel next/prev. And you’re not canonicalizing all component pages to the first page (which is the wrong way to go).

Now Google can understand the structure of your pagination, consolidate indexing properties from across the paginated set, treat the pagination as one signals-wise, and then surface the correct url in the SERPs based on query. Groovy. :)

A Note About Indexation
You will probably see indexation increase when checking the Index Status report in Google Search Console (GSC) as Google crawls and indexes the component pages in your pagination. This is especially true for those sites that were once canonicalizing all component pages to the first page in the pagination. This is totally normal to see, so don’t freak out if it starts to rise. Indexation should level off as Google indexes all of your component pages.

Indexation will increase when using rel next/prev correctly.

Summary – Consolidate Indexing Properties With The Right Pagination Setup
The next time you’re faced with providing a heavy amount of pagination by category, you can use the setup I covered in this post. It’s based on Google’s official recommendations and it’s something I have helped clients with many times in the past. So don’t fall victim to common pagination problems. Instead, let Google crawl and index all of your component pages, but tie them together via rel next/prev. And then use rel canonical to send clear signals about which pages should be indexed. Pagination shouldn’t be scary and I hope this post made the setup a little less intimidating… Now paginate away!

GG

Filed Under: ecommerce, google, seo

Facebook Ads for eCommerce – How To Combine Custom Audiences, Lookalikes, and Unpublished Posts to Target Customers and Similar Users

August 12, 2013 By Glenn Gabe 6 Comments

How to use unpublished posts as Facebook Ads

I used to be extremely critical of Facebook Ads in the past.  But that’s before Facebook released a boatload of functionality for enhancing your campaigns.  Sure, marketplace ads, or ads running the right sidebar, have seen declining engagement over the years, but that’s just a fraction of what you can do now with Facebook Ads.  And I’m finding many advertisers don’t know about the powerful options available to them.

For example, there’s FBX (or retargeting on Facebook), news feed targeting, mobile-only targeting, promoted posts, custom audiences, lookalike audiences, unpublished posts, etc.  And with this enhanced functionality comes better targeting and performance.  Now, I still think paid search can reach someone who is searching for a specific solution at the exact time they need it, and social advertising can’t do that (yet).  But, using advanced targeting within Facebook can absolutely make an impact, and on multiple levels.

In this post, I’m going to explain one method of using three pieces of functionality in Facebook Ads that might change your view of social advertising.  It has for me, and I’ve been using this technique for some time now.  It leverages unpublished posts, custom audiences, and lookalike audiences to target your current customers, and users similar to your customers, when you are running a specific promotion or sale.  It’s a great way to make the most of your current assets, and at a relatively low cost.

Meet Unpublished Posts
I find many business owners have no idea what unpublished posts are.  If you fit into this category, then today is your lucky day.  Unpublished posts enable page owners to create page updates that don’t get shared with their entire fan base.  In addition, you can run ads based on the unpublished posts and use a wealth of ad targeting to reach the right audience (which can include current customers).  Interesting, right?

Unpublished posts in Facebook

The easiest way to create an unpublished post is to use Power Editor.  And if you’re running Facebook Ads and not using Power Editor, you should start today.  It offers a lot of functionality and targeting options not available in Ads Manager (which is what advertisers use on Facebook’s website).

By clicking “Manage Pages” in Power Editor, you can actually craft a page post.  But since we want an unpublished post, you can create the update and not publish it.  That’s ultra-important, since we want to use the post as an ad, and not an update that’s broadcast to your entire fan base.

Creating an unpublished post in Facebook using Power Editor.

So, if you’re an ecommerce provider running a specific sale, you could create an update focusing on that sale, with an understanding it will reach a very specific audience (and not every fan).  I’ll cover how to target specific parts of your customer list soon, including people that are similar to those users.  Once you create your post, you can click your account ID in the left pane to return to your ads dashboard (in Power Editor).

Now we’re ready to talk about custom audiences and lookalikes.

Meet Custom Audiences and Lookalikes
I wrote a post earlier in the year about custom audiences in Facebook.  You should read that post to learn how to set them up.  You’ll need a custom audience in order to use the method I’m covering in this post (since that’s the audience you will target, and it’s also the list you will use to create a lookalike audience).

Custom audiences enable you to upload a list of current customers, based on your in-house email list.  Then, Facebook will match up the list with users on the social network.  Yes, you read that correctly.  That means you can target your in-house email list (or parts of that list) via Facebook Ads.  Awesome, right?

Using Custom Audiences in Facebook

Once your custom audience is created, you can use that list to target current customers with specific promotions and sales.  And you can use unpublished posts to reach them.  Did you catch that?  I said unpublished posts.  That means getting your targeted promotion in front of your current customers (whether they are fans of your page or not).

Great, but what’s a lookalike?
Lookalike audiences enable you to base a new audience (set of Facebook users) on a custom audience (your current customers).  Facebook reviews a number of characteristics about your custom audience (your current customer base), and then finds people similar to your customers.  Yes, once again, eye-opening targeting opportunity ahead.

Imagine you had five custom audiences set up, all containing specific customers for specific categories of products.  Then you could use lookalikes to find similar people (which you can then target via Facebook Ads).  The old days of Facebook ads seem so caveman-like, right?  :)

How To Set Up Lookalikes
Once you have set up a custom audience (following my tutorial), then you can easily select that audience in Power Editor, and choose “Create Similar Audience”.  Choose “Similarity” in the dialog box and Facebook will find users that are similar to your in-house list (based on a number of criteria).  It could take up to 24 hours to create the list, but I’ve seen it take much less time than that (especially for smaller lists).

Using Lookalike Audiences in Facebook

Combining Unpublished Posts, Custom Audiences, and Lookalikes
OK, we have covered unpublished posts that contain targeted messages about new promotions or sales.  We have also covered custom audiences based on our in-house email list.  And, we have covered lookalike audiences, which enable us to target similar people to our own customers.  Now we are ready to tie them together.

1. Create a New Campaign
In Power Editor, you can create a new campaign and set the campaign parameters like name, budget, etc.

Creating a new Facebook campaign in Power Editor.

2. Create a New Ad
Click the “Ads” tab to create your ad.  Under “Type”, choose “Ad”, and then select the radio button labeled “For a Facebook Page Using a Page Post”.  That will enable you to choose an unpublished post for your ad.

Creating an unpublished post ad in Facebook.

3. Choose a Destination
For “Destination”, choose your Facebook Page.  Note, your page’s image and title will still link users to your page, but the post itself can drive users to the sale landing page on your website.  Your post itself is where you should place the link to your landing page (on your own site).  In addition, you should add tracking parameters to your destination urls for your unpublished post (so you can track each campaign via your analytics package).

Choosing an ad destination for unpublished post ad in Facebook.

4. Select An Unpublished Post
Now, choose your unpublished post to use that post as the actual ad.  Note, you can also create your unpublished post at this stage (using Power Editor).  That’s a nice feature that was recently added.

Selecting a page post for an unpublished post ad in Power Editor.

5. Choose your placement:
OK, how awesome is this?  You get to choose where your unpublished post shows up.  For example, in the News Feed (Desktop and Mobile).  This is the most powerful placement in my opinion.  Your ads will show up directly in someone’s news feed versus along the right side.

Choosing ad placement for unpublished post in Power Editor.

6. Choose Your Targeting
Under “Audience”, you can choose targeting, based on the goals of your campaign.  Note, this is not where you will choose your custom or lookalike audience, although the tab is titled “Audience”.  You can choose location, age, gender, etc. if you want more granular targeting than just the custom audiences we created earlier.

Choosing ad targeting for unpublished post in Power Editor.

7. Choose Your Audience (Yes, this is what we’ve been waiting for.)
Under “Advanced Options”, you’ll notice the first field is titled “Custom Audiences”.  If you start typing in that field, your custom audience should show up (based on what you named the audience when you created it).  Once selected, it should show up in the field.  You can leave the rest of the targeting options located below as-is.

Selecting a custom audience for an unpublished post ad in Power Editor.

Clarification Side Note:
To clarify what we’ve been doing, this ad will target your current customer list.  When you create a second campaign, you can choose your lookalike audience.  Then you can run both campaigns and target both your current customer list and people similar to your current customers.   And since they are in separate campaigns, with separate tracking parameters, you can track performance by audience.  Awesome.

8. Select Your Pricing and Status Options
For this example, let’s choose CPC and enter the desired cost per click.  Facebook will provide a suggested CPC to the right.  Once completed, you’re ready to rock.

How to set pricing for an unpublished post ad in Power Editor.

9. Upload Your Campaign
Click “Upload” in Power Editor and your ad will be uploaded to Facebook, where it will need to be approved.  Once approved, you’ll receive a notification that your unpublished post is live.

Uploading an unpublished post ad using Power Editor.

Why this approach works:

1. Exposure and Sharing
By using this approach, you can get your latest sale or promotion in front of your current customers as they browse Facebook, while also providing a great opportunity for that sale or promotion to get shared.  For example a current customer might like your update, and it could hit their friends’ news feeds, which can provide even more exposure and opportunities to land new customers.

2. Engagement
Even though the unpublished post is technically an ad, it still looks and works like a typical page post update.  That means users can like, share, and comment on the post.  And yes, users often do like and comment on unpublished post ads.  Remember, the unpublished post ad is hitting users’ news feeds (both desktop and mobile), so there is a strong chance they will be exposed to your ad.   And if it’s crafted well, then there’s a chance that a certain percentage of that audience will engage with the post. It’s a great way to engage your current customers, while also engaging similar people (via a lookalike audience).

3. Page Likes
Gaining more page likes is an added benefit to using this approach.  Sure, you want people to click through to your sale landing page and buy, but you probably also want more page likes (so you can reach more people with your organic status updates down the line).  I’ve seen unpublished post ads work extremely well for gaining more page likes (across industries).  For example, a recent campaign I launched increased page likes by 7% during a one week period.  Not bad, when you take into account the other benefits from running the campaign (like exposure, sharing, engagement, and sales – which I’ll cover next).

4. Sales (and other important conversions)
Using this approach can yield a low CPA, high ROAS method for increasing sales for specific promotions.  I’ve run campaigns where the CPC was under $0.40 per click, and depending on the specific campaign, return on ad spend (ROAS) can be extremely strong.  For example, 2000 clicks at $0.40 per click is $800.  A conversion rate of 2.0% and an average order value of $75 would yield $3000 in revenue and 275% ROAS.  That’s just a small and quick example, but unpublished page post ads could yield a shot in the arm pretty quickly.

And from a B2B standpoint, with average order values typically much higher than B2C, the ROAS could be even greater.  Even a handful of sales could generated thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars in revenue.  For example, a recent campaign I launched for a client focused on items starting at $1000 (and some were up to $5000 per item).  Even one sale at $5K based on the campaign I mentioned before would yield a strong ROAS.

And let’s not forget other important micro-conversions on your website.  For example, newsletter signups, which can be a great driver of revenue for any ecommerce provider, app downloads, requests for more information, etc. all fall under this category and can start forging a relationship between prospective customers and your business.

What’s the Downside?
OK, I love using this approach, but social advertising brings some unique challenges with it.  Since what we’ve covered is an actual page post, and not a straight ad, users can interact with it.  That means both positive and negative interaction can occur.  For example, you might have some unhappy customers post their negative feedback in the unpublished page post ad.  How you deal with that situation is for another post, but I always recommend addressing the problem directly (in the post).  But again, there are several situations that can arise, and I’ll try and address them in a future post.  Just keep in mind that users can comment, and those comments might not always be positive.

The Power of Unpublished Posts, Custom Audiences, and Lookalikes
After reading this post, I hope you better understand the power of using unpublished posts along with custom audiences and lookalike audiences.  Unfortunately, the features and functionality I covered in the post are not readily apparent to many Facebook advertisers.  And that’s a shame, since they can be extremely effective for businesses looking to engage current customers and new audiences, while also increasing sales.  I recommend testing this approach soon to see if it can be effective for your business.

You can start today. Create a custom audience, create a lookalike audience, and use Power Editor to create unpublished post ads.  You may never look back.  :)

GG

 

Filed Under: ecommerce, facebook, social-advertising, social-media, tools

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