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

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Google's December 2021 Product Reviews Updates (PRU)

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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

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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The Link Authority Gap – How To Compare The Most Authoritative Links Between Websites Using Majestic Solo Links, Semrush Backlink Gap, and ahrefs Link Intersect

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Link Authority Gap

While helping companies that have been heavily impacted by Google’s broad core updates, the topic of “authority” comes up often. And that’s especially the case for companies that focus on “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) topics. For example, sites that focus on health, medical, financial, etc. all fall under YMYL.

If you’ve read my posts about broad core updates, then you know that Google is taking many factors into account when evaluating sites (and over a long period of time). It’s one of the reasons I recommend taking the “kitchen sink” approach to remediation where you surface all potential issues impacting a site quality-wise, and work to fix them all (or at least as many as you can). For example, improving content quality, user experience, technical SEO problems causing quality problems, the site’s advertising setup, affiliate setup, and more.

And for sites that cover YMYL topics, it’s important to understand that they are held to a higher standard. Google wants to surface the most authoritative sites for sensitive queries (for topics that can impact the health, happiness, financial status, etc. of a user). And that’s one area where authority comes into play.

“Authority” can be a nebulous topic, so I’ll just focus on one aspect for this post – which are links. Danny Sullivan (pre-Google) actually wrote a good post about the subject where he interviewed Paul Haahr, distinguished engineer at Google. In that post, Danny explained how a mixture of factors are used to measure “authority”, with PageRank being the “original authority metric” (links from across the web). So links are not the only factor contributing to authority, but they are important. Instead, there’s a bucket of signals Google is using. By the way, Paul is one of the smartest guys at Google from a ranking perspective. I’ve always said that when Paul talks, SEOs should listen. :)

PageRank, the original authority metric.
Google calculating authority.

In addition, Google has explained that PageRank, or links from across the web, is one of the most well-known factors when evaluating authority. That’s from a whitepaper Google published about fighting disinformation across the web.

Google, PageRank, and E-A-T

Google also explained in the whitepaper that when it detects a YMYL query, then it gives more weight in its ranking system to factors like authoritativeness, expertise, and trust. So those links and mentions are even more important for YMYL queries/topics.

Google, PageRank, E-A-T, and YMYL

Going even further, Google’s Gary Illyes explained at Pubcon in 2017 that E-A-T is largely based on links and mentions from authoritative sites. Here is a tweet from Marie Haynes after Gary explained this at Pubcon:

But there’s more…. In 2020 Bill Slawski covered a super-interesting patent that discusses expertise and how Google might be categorizing sites to determine which set of sites should even be considered for ranking (for certain types of queries). By the way, that sure sounded a lot like what happened with the Medic Update in August of 2018 (when many health and medical sites saw extreme volatility). As part of that patent, E-A-T was mentioned with a focus on “authority” (which we know includes links and mentions from authoritative sites).

As you can see, links are important and can provide a strong signal to Google about the authoritativeness of a page and website. And as Gary Illyes once explained, that includes mentions on well-known sites (and not just links).

A Link Authority Gap Analysis: Comparing The Most Powerful Links Between Sites
Based on what I explained above, it can be important to understand where powerful links and mentions are coming from (both to your site and to your competitors). And that’s especially the case if you focus on YMYL topics. Therefore, I find it’s always interesting to compare link profiles, understand the differences in links from authoritative sites, and identify gaps in your own link profile in order to have a solid understanding of your current state.

The tough part for site owners is understanding that there’s no quick fix to a situation where your competitors have a clearly stronger link profile from an authority standpoint. You can’t just go out the next day and gain links from CNN, the CDC, The New York Times, and other authoritative sites. Note, as I explained earlier, rankings (and “authority) are not just about links, so this isn’t a binary rank-or-not-rank situation. But again, the right links can be a strong signal to Google about the authoritativeness of a piece of content, or a site overall.

For example, it’s not easy to earn links from the following domains…

Majestic Solo Links

Also, from a link earning perspective, you typically need to build a strong content strategy, social strategy, and possibly digital PR strategy to help earn links naturally over time. And that takes time… it’s not something you can do quickly (if done naturally). And if you find a large gap from a link authority standpoint, it’s definitely not a reason to spam every news publisher in the world to try and gain links. That typically won’t work well and could backfire big-time.

Peeling back a link profile to reveal “link authority gaps”:
In this post, I’m going to explain how to quickly surface the most authoritative links pointing to a competitor when those same sites don’t link to your own site. In other words, finding the authority gap between sites. The post isn’t about doing a deep dive into a link profile, which can also be beneficial. Instead, it’s focused on quickly identifying important gaps from an authority standpoint.

Again, this is a nuanced topic and just because one site has links from X domain doesn’t mean that’s why it is ranking above you. But, the link authority gap can give you a pretty good view of why a site may be seen as more authoritative than another. In addition, you can learn a lot about the type of content earning those links and possibly identify content gaps on your own site.

Below, I’ll cover how to run a quick link comparison using three tools:

Solo Links in Majestic:
I love Solo Links and it has definitely flown under the radar for a really long time. It compares the top 500 referring domains for two different websites (ordered by Majestic’s Trust Flow metric). I have found it to be a strong way to surface the most powerful domains linking to one site, and not another. And no, Google doesn’t use Trust Flow or any third-party metrics from the various tools. It’s just Majestic’s internal metric for estimating quality based on being closely linked to “trusted seed sites”.

Just enter the two domains you want to compare and click the magnifying glass. You’ll see a Venn digarm representing the overlap, and the gaps, between both sites. Below the Venn diagram, you’ll the referring domains listed, the number of links, and you have the ability to quickly view the links. For example, if you click the link count, you will see the actual links along with supporting information (like anchor text, if it’s nofollow, when it was first seen, etc.) It’s not perfect (no tool is), but it can sure get you moving in the right direction when trying to determine the link authority gap.

For example, here’s a gap analysis for a powerful site in the health niche compared to a smaller, less authoritative site. You can clearly see the differences in the Venn diagram and then in the referring domains list.

Solo links for health sites venn diagram
Solo links for health sites, referring domains

A quick note to Majestic:
Please add the ability to export all of the links in bulk and not just the domains. It would be great to simply click “export” and get all of that data in one shot. It’s a bit cumbersome now to get that data out of Solo Links since you can only export links for each domain and not all of the domains listed at one time…

Exporting in Majestic Solo Links

Backlink Gap in Semrush:
Similar to Solo Links, Semrush’s Backlink Gap tool enables you to enter up to five domains to start comparing link profiles. It doesn’t just focus on the top links, but the data is presented based on Semrush’s Authority Rank metric (AR). And just to reiterate, Google does NOT use AR or any other third-party metric when determining rankings… It’s just an Semrush-specific metric.

After entering at least two domains, you have options for viewing the links pointing to the competition, but not your site, or vice versa. Again, it’s not perfect, but can help you start to understand powerful links leading to your competitors that you don’t have.

Backlink Gap in Semrush

Note, the default view is to list the referring domains (without showing the links). To view the actual links leading to your competitor’s site, you can click the arrow to the right of the referring domain in the chart. It’s not the most intuitive way to find the links, but they are there. :)

Viewing links in Semrush Backlink Gap

Link Intersect in ahrefs:
Another tool that has flown somewhat under the radar is ahrefs Link Intersect Tool. It enables you to enter up to four competitor domains and view gaps in your own link profile (ordered by Domain Rank, a metric created by ahrefs). And once again, Google does not use any third-party metrics like Domain Rank, Authority Rank, Domain Authority, etc.)

Like the other tools I mentioned, the link intersect tool can shed some light on authoritative links pointing to the competition that you don’t have. For example, what are those sites linking to content-wise, do you have content like that on your own site, what can you build that’s even better than that, etc.?

To use the tool, simply enter a competitor’s domain (or several) and then your domain in the “but doesn’t link to” field. The tool will find links leading to the competition, but not to your site. The list of referring domains will be ordered by ahrefs Domain Rank. In order to view the actual links per referring domain, just click the number in the column for each competitor. You can see information about that link, including the anchor text, the url that’s linking to the site, whether the link is nofollow, if the link was found in the content, etc.

ahrefs Link Intersect Tool
Referring Domains in ahrefs Link Intersect Tool
Exporting links in ahrefs Link Intersect Tool

You can also export the list, but just like Majestic, you can’t export all links in one shot. You can just export the referring domains in one shot… So you’ll have to export links per referring domain, which can be tedious. So just like my note to Majestic, I have the same for Ahrefs! Please add the ability to export all links from the Link Intersect tool in one shot! That would be a great addition.

Exporting domains in ahrefs Link Intersect Tool

Tips and recommendations when evaluating the link authority gap:

  • “Authority” is Not binary: Links (PageRank) is just one factor. Sure, it’s an important factor, but just one. Google has explained it uses a bucket of signals to determine authority. While you are analyzing the link authority gap, just understand that the links alone might not be the reason a competitor is outranking you. It’s great to see the gap, and can be important for forming a long-term strategy to improve authority-wise, but it’s not a rank-or-not-rank situation.
  • Understand the Search competition versus just the competition: Make sure you are comparing to your actual competitors in Search (who you are competing within the search results) and not just which sites you think are the top competition (outside of Search). Your goal here is to understand the link authority gap between your site and sites outranking your for target queries.
  • Mine the gaps, create a plan: Identify gaps in your link profile from authoritative sites, understand the content that gained those links, determine if you have content covering those topics, and figure out ways to produce killer content that can earn links like that (or even better). Don’t just try to match what your competitors are doing. Try to outdo them.
  • Have patience… building authority is a long-term process: Understand that earning powerful links from authoritative sites is a long-term process. You cannot change the situation overnight… That might be frustrating, but it’s true. Understand what the competition is doing to earn those links, figure out gaps on your site, and build a killer content strategy to earn amazing links over the long-term. Once you start earning those links, you’ll appreciate that it takes time, since it can build a natural layer of protection for you (until others start going through the same process, put the work in, etc.)

Summary – Understanding the link authority gap can be enlightening, but you must execute.
By using the process I documented in this post, you can quickly start to understand the most authoritative sites linking to your competition that don’t link to your site. And that “link authority gap” can be important. But don’t stop once you uncover the gap. You need to execute based on your analysis in order to make an impact. So… what are you waiting for?? The data awaits.   

GG

How to identify ranking gaps in Google’s People Also Ask (PAA) SERP feature using Semrush

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When performing a competitive analysis, it’s smart to run a keyword gap analysis to determine the queries that competitors rank for that your site doesn’t rank for. It can often yield low-hanging fruit that your content team can execute on. As part of that process, it’s also smart to analyze Google’s People Also Ask (PAA) SERP feature for queries your site already ranks for, or doesn’t rank for (to determine what those additional queries are and which sites are ranking for them). I find this step is skipped often for some reason and it can also yield powerful findings that you can start to execute on quickly.

In this post, I’m going to walk you through the process of identifying ranking gaps in People Also Ask (PAA) using Semrush, which provides outstanding functionality for mining PAA data.

What we’re going to accomplish:
For this tutorial, I’m going to filter queries leading to a site by top ten rankings and then layer a secondary filter for surfacing queries where a People Also Ask module also ranks (but the site doesn’t rank in the default PAA listings). In other words, you rank in the top ten, but you don’t have content ranking in PAA for those queries for some reason. I’ve found that can yield very interesting findings that sites can execute on pretty quickly.

For example, in the screenshot below, a site ranks in the top ten for 3,359 queries when it also does not rank in the default People Also Ask (PAA) module:

Viewing Google ranking gaps in people also ask via semrush.

Step-by-step instructions for identifying PAA gaps via Semrush:

1. First, fire up Semrush and enter the domain name you want to analyze.

Enter domain name in semrush.

2. Access the Organic Research reporting.
Click Organic Research in the left-side navigation, which will bring us to a powerful set of features for analyzing the search performance of the domain, subdomain, directory, or url you enter.

Viewing Organic Research reporting in Semrush.

3. View all rankings for the domain via the Positions tab.
Click the Positions tab, which will yield all queries that a site ranks for in the top 100 listings (based on Semrush data).

Viewing the positions tab in Organic Research in Semrush.

4. Filter by top ten results:
Next, we are going to filter the results by queries where the site ranks in the top ten (so these are queries where the site ranks very well already, but might not have content that ranks in People Also Ask). I’ll cover the second part of this step next, but start by filtering by queries ranking in the top ten by clicking the Positions tab and then selecting Top 10.

Filter by top ten rankings in Semrush.

5. Layer a secondary filter for PAA:
To complete this step, we want queries ranking in the top ten, but where the site doesn’t rank in People Also Ask (PAA), which can provide a great opportunity to fill gaps content-wise. To view these queries, click “SERP features”, then “Domain doesn’t rank in” and then select “People Also Ask”.

Add a filter for when a site doesn't rank in people also ask via Semrush.

6. Analyze the data:
Now that you have two filters selected, you will be presented with all of the queries where the site ranks in the top ten but doesn’t rank in the default PAA module. When you scan the list, definitely spot-check the live search results to see which questions are listed in People Also Ask, which sites are ranking there, the content ranking for those queries, etc. Again, you can identify content gaps, format gaps (like video), and more. It’s a quick way to help your content team identify opportunities (and some gaps you find might lead you to face-palm). :)

Final report showing ranking gaps in People Also Ask via Semrush.

7. Export the data:
You can always export the results if you want to use that data in other programs like Excel. You can export the data in Excel or CSV format.

Export ranking data in Semrush.

And there you have it. A quick and easy way to identify ranking gaps in PAA via Semrush. It only takes a few minutes to run, and you’ll have a boatload of PAA data to go through (where your site ranks, but not in PAA). By the way, if you’re looking for other posts I’ve written about Semrush tools, then check out The Link Authority Gap which shows you how to compare the most authoritative links between websites.

PAA Gaps – Final tips and recommendations:
Before I end the tutorial, here are some final notes and recommendations based on helping clients go through this process over time. Semrush is like a Swiss Army Knife for SEO research, so make sure you are getting the most of out the tool.

  • Live graphs – Remember that the graphs in Semrush are live graphs, so they change based on the filters you select. Therefore, you can see trending over time for ranking (or not ranking) in PAA when you already rank well in the organic search results. It’s a cool way to visually see your progress.
  • Advanced filtering – Use advanced filtering in Semrush to fine-tune your analysis. For example, combine filters like search volume, keywords, directory, subdomain, urls, etc. You can filter the data multiple ways in Semrush (and combine those filters for advanced reporting). Play around there… you might find some great combinations that surface important data.
  • PAA by country – Run this analysis by country! Just change the country you are analyzing in the reporting, and voila, you have a fresh set of queries where your site doesn’t rank in PAA.
  • By device – Be sure to check both mobile and desktop data. Similar to country, just select desktop versus mobile in the filters to see each resulting dataset. You might find some differences there.
  • Spot check the results – Make sure you are spot-checking the actual SERPs. PAA can obviously change (and Semrush isn’t always perfect), so make sure you really aren’t ranking in PAA for those queries. Then form a plan of attack once you identify the gaps.
  • PAA formats – Keep an eye on the format of content ranking in People Also Ask. As I mentioned earlier, video could be ranking there as well. Understand the types of content Google is ranking based on query and choose the right formats for the job.
  • View historical rankings – You can easily change the dates via Semrush! For example, you can look back in history and run this analysis for previous months. Have you improved, declined, or remained stable? How has Google changed with regard to PAA for those queries?

Summary: Identifying PAA Gaps Via Semrush can be powerful.
It’s hard to overlook People Also Ask when an analyzing the SERPs and the feature often contains important questions that people are searching for based on the original query. By using the process I detailed in this tutorial, you can surface and export queries where your site already ranks in the top ten search results, but doesn’t rank in PAA. In my opinion, it’s a great way to identify low-hanging fruit that your content team can dig into quickly. You never know, you might find some quick wins… or many of them. Have fun.

GG

What happens to crawling and Google search rankings when 67% of a site’s indexed urls are pagination? [SEO Case Study]

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There has been a lot of confusion and debate over the years about how to best handle pagination from an SEO perspective. It doesn’t help that Google changed on this front, which has led to even more confusion about the best path forward. For example, Google announced in March of 2019 that it stopped supporting rel next/prev for consolidating indexing properties from across a paginated set (and… it realized that was the case for years – just nobody knew).

That shocked many in the SEO community and had site owners and SEOs wondering which was the best way to handle pagination moving forward (if changes were needed at all!) For example, should pagination be indexable, should site owners use “noindex, follow” instead, or should they just canonicalize pagination to page one in the series? Since pagination is present on so many different types of sites, and can lead to a large number of additional pages on a site, site owners and SEOs wanted to address the situation the best they could.

But is that important? Will choosing the wrong path cause serious problems SEO-wise? And what if a majority of your pages indexed are pagination? These are all good questions and I hope this case study will provide at least a few answers based on a client I’m helping with a lot of pagination (comprising 67% of indexed pages). Yes, 67%.

So, did this cause big problems SEO-wise, is Google spending too much of its time crawling pagination that it’s missing fresher, more important content, and are rankings being impacted (GASP)?? Let’s begin.

Google’s stance on handling pagination over the years:
Since I’ve helped many large-scale sites over time with a lot of pagination, I’ve been able to see (and experience) the evolution of how Google handles that pagination. That experience led to me writing a blog post covering how to set up pagination for SEO, which contains all of the latest updates and announcements from Google. And there are several updates I’ve had to cover…

Back in 2012, Google’s Maile Ohye published an outstanding video covering SEO best practices when providing pagination. In that video, Maile explained the various ways you can set up pagination based on content type, including articles split into multiple pages and category pagination (like for e-commerce retailers). In that video she also explained how to use rel next/prev to consolidate indexing properties from across a paginated set. The blueprint that Maile mapped out in that video became the foundation for setting up pagination SEO-wise, and I often referenced that video in my audits, posts, and presentations.

Here is a screenshot from Maile Ohye’s video from 2012 explaining more about rel next/prev for pagination. Note, rel next/prev is not supported anymore for consolidating indexing properties across pagination. More about that next:

Former Googler Maile Ohye's video covering pagination SEO best practices.

Google Nukes rel next/prev (and nobody noticed):
As I mentioned earlier, in 2019 Google dropped a bomb on SEOs and explained that it doesn’t support using rel next/prev anymore to consolidate indexing properties from across a paginated set. And to add insult to injury, they also explained this had been the case for years! It’s worth noting that it’s still good to use rel next/prev for accessibility purposes, but it will have no effect SEO-wise.

As you can guess, SEOs went ballistic (although I think it’s fair to say we’re happy that they told us!) Google realized this out after checking some of its systems and noticed rel next/prev wasn’t being used for indexing and ranking purposes. Whoops.

Google's John Mueller explaining rel next/prev isn't supported anymore.

As someone that has helped many companies set up rel next/prev when using pagination, that last point got me thinking… If rel next/prev hadn’t been used for years by Google, and the companies I’ve been helping didn’t even notice that Google stopped supporting it (rankings were unaffected), then maybe Google was pretty darn good at handling pagination.

In other words, maybe we were getting all bent out of shape for no reason. Again, the clients I helped that had a lot of pagination didn’t see any major movement or drops based on Google removing support for rel next/prev. And that also matches what Google’s John Mueller has been explaining for a while. Heck, he even explained that in the tweet thread from 2019. For example, he said “most seem to be doing pagination in reasonable ways that work…” I’ll cover more about John’s recommendations next.

Google's John Mueller explaining that most sites are doing pagination in reasonable ways.

Google’s John Mueller Peppered With Questions About Pagination:
Ever since Google stopped using rel next/prev to consolidate indexing properties, Google’s John Mueller has been asked many questions about the best way to set up pagination. And John has provided some great advice in his Search Central Hangout videos.

John explained that Google has a lot of experience dealing with pagination (as long as it can identify pagination easily). And since it has a lot of experience dealing with pagination, it really shouldn’t have a big impact on a site SEO-wise. It can just “work”.

Also, John often explains the differences between splitting article content into multiple pages and having category pages that contain pagination (listing pages that lead to other urls). Those are two very different scenarios and can be handled differently from a pagination standpoint, if needed.

He has also explained that for category pagination (like an e-commerce category page), you can have all of the pages indexable (which is preferable), you can use “noindex, follow”, or you can even canonicalize to page one in the pagination. It really depends on how well your content is crosslinked, how important the pagination is for discovery, for passing of signals, etc. You can read my post about pagination to see the latest updates from Google about this.

Here is one of John’s latest videos about setting up pagination covering most of what I just explained (at 13:16 in the video):

It’s also worth noting that Google just published some outstanding best practices for e-commerce SEO (where they cover how to handle pagination as well). In that document, they explain to provide self-referencing canonical tags for each page in the pagination (and avoid canonicalizing to page one in the series). That means all pagination should be indexable.

ecommerce best practices for pagination from Google

Warning: Nuance Ahead! -Two important points for SEOs and site owners about handling pagination:
As with most things in SEO, there is nuance involved with handling pagination. First, the size of your site is important since you don’t want too much pagination to hamper crawl budget. As John explained, if you don’t have hundreds of thousands of pages (or more), then you shouldn’t really have to worry about pagination impacting crawl budget. But if you do have that many pages, then it’s important to make sure Google is focusing crawling on your most important pages. And that might lead to handling pagination differently across a site. More on crawl budget soon in the case study below.

The other thing I wanted to point out is that I’m a firm believer you shouldn’t have excessive pagination per sequence. For example, I would avoid providing thousands of pages of pagination per paginated set (like one category with thousands of pages of pagination). I think it’s fine to have many paginated sets (if needed), but I would only provide a reasonable number of pages per set (which would be based on your site, content, etc.) That number can vary per site, but I wouldn’t overload your pagination with thousands of pages per sequence. I would do what’s best for users and search engines.

For example, here’s a site with close to 3,700 pages of pagination in one category…

Excessive pagination per set.

The Case Study: Background information, pagination setup, and indexing levels.
The site I’m covering in this case study has a crawl footprint of about 200K pages (between indexed and excluded urls). I can’t go into too much detail about what the client focuses on, but you can think of them as a site that provides a wealth of information about categories, organizations, products, and reviews of those products. There is also a blog on the site containing in-depth content focused on their niche.

From a pagination standpoint, there is quite a bit of it across the site. That’s primarily on the category, organization, and review pages. Since there are many products and reviews that aren’t crosslinked well on the site (based on how the business operates), the pagination is important for discovery (for Googlebot and for users). For that reason, we definitely wanted to make sure the pagination was indexable and that Google could follow the links on the paginated urls to the product pages, the review pages, etc.

I’ve been helping this company for a long time and helped them craft their pagination strategy as far back as 2012. They have been using the approach that Maile Ohye described in the video I covered earlier. That’s where each page in the pagination contains self-referencing canonical tags, contained rel next/prev (now deprecated), and provided a strong text navigation to the paginated series at the bottom of each page. Remember, this was the recommended setup for a long time. The site has had this set up for years… and you can learn more about that setup in my post about setting up pagination.

Paginated urls using self-referencing canonical tags.

Indexing Levels: Holy pagination Batman!
Based on how much pagination is on the site, it is currently a large percentage of indexed urls. To be specific, the pagination makes up 67% of total indexed pages. Yes, more than two-thirds of indexed urls are pagination! The horror!! :)

Number of paginated urls indexed.
Total indexing in GSC's Coverage reporting.

These are not necessarily pages that we want to rank in the SERPs (other than the first page in the set), but we definitely want Google to discover all of the destination pages from the pagination. And remember, rel next/prev was supposed to take care of that for us by consolidating indexing properties from across the paginated set and (usually) surfacing the first page from the set in the SERPs. That’s not supported anymore as I covered earlier. More on rankings soon.

Crawl Budget and Crawl Stats
With that many paginated pages on the site being indexed, what do crawl stats look like? Is Googlebot churning through many paginated pages and missing important, fresher pages?

First, crawl budget is really only something that larger-scale sites need to worry about. For example, Google states that sites with 1M+ unique urls or medium-sized sites with 10K unique urls with “rapidly changing content” need to worry about crawl budget.  This site has 18.6K urls indexed and a total crawl footprint of under 200K urls. So, it’s not a small site, but not huge either.  

In addition, it’s important to understand that all pages are not crawled with the same frequency (based on importance). Google’s John Mueller has explained this point many times over the years. So, although there might be a lot of pagination on the site, that doesn’t mean Google will continually crawl all of that pagination instead of your fresher (or more important) content.

Here is John explaining this (at 12:42 in the video):

The site’s new content does get crawled relatively quickly. In addition, checking the crawl stats reporting, you can see that fresher content being crawled recently and pagination does not overwhelm the reporting. So despite the site having 67% of its indexed pages being pagination, it’s fine from a crawl budget and crawl stats perspective (in my opinion). That makes sense based on what Google has explained over the years about crawl budget.

Performance over time. How does trending look?
OK, this is where the rubber hits the road. Is having that much pagination indexed impacting rankings or organic search performance at all?

In a word, nope.

The site’s performance has been extremely stable over years (and through a number of broad core updates). They have seen strong growth over the long-term as well (especially from 2012 when I first started helping them).

Here is the past 16 months of trending from GSC:

Stable trending from Google organic search despite many paginated urls indexed.

Here is search visibility trending over the past two years:

Stable visibility trending despite having many paginated urls indexed.

And here is search visibility trending since 2012:

Strong visibility growth over time despite many paginated urls indexed.

How about pagination ranking in the search results (beyond page one)? Are paginated pages being surfaced in the SERPs and driving traffic?
No, not really. It accounts for a very small percentage of traffic from Google Search. For example, over the past three months, there have been 1.62M clicks from Google web search. Pagination accounted for just five thousand of those clicks.

Pagination accounts for just .3% of total clicks from Google Search over the past 3 months:

Clicks from Google Search to paginated urls.

I think the most important thing to remember for this site is that the various “product” pages aren’t being linked to sufficiently from other areas of the site (based on the company’s business model and how the site needs to be set up). So, the pagination is important for making sure Googlebot can get to many of those destination urls. And that’s why it’s important to make sure the pagination is indexable, that it uses self-referencing canonicals, etc.

Final tips and recommendations for sites with a lot of pagination:
So there you have it. A site with 67% of its indexed urls being pagination and it’s chugging along just fine in the SERPs. I’m not saying this approach is what every site should use, but just like Google’s John Mueller has explained many times, Google has a lot of experience handling pagination. It often just works… To end this post, I’ve provided some final tips and recommendations for sites dealing with a lot of pagination.

  • Pagination setup: Setup-wise, you have several methods at your disposal for handling pagination. The path you choose depends on the type of content you are dealing with and your internal linking structure. See my recommendations above about content split across multiple pages versus listing pages (like categories), and how well those destination pages are linked across the site.
  • Indexable vs. Non-indexable: It’s important to understand that if you noindex pagination, then links on those pages can be dropped by Google over time. So if you want to make sure Google is finding those destination urls via the pagination (and passing signals), I would have the pagination indexable. As this case study showed, it can work very well.
  • Canonicalizing Pagination: If you are canonicalizing all pagination to the first page in the series, it’s important to understand that rel canonical is just a hint for Google. It can still choose to index certain pages if it believes that’s the right thing to do. I have covered this in several blog posts over the years. Don’t assume canonicalized pages are actually being canonicalized. This is one reason I’m not a huge fan of canonicalizing pagination to the root page in the set.
  • Crawl Stats and Log Files: Don’t just check indexing levels. I would check the crawl stats reporting in GSC as well (and log files if you can get them). As I covered earlier in this post, not all pages are crawled with the same frequency. Google can crawl certain urls on your site more frequently based on crawl demand. That means pagination might not be crawled as much as your homepage, important category pages, product pages, etc. Don’t assume that high indexing levels for pagination means there’s a problem. It could be totally fine.
  • Tracking Performance: Make sure you track all of this over time and determine if pagination is causing issues SEO-wise (which I doubt for most cases). Again, Google can handle pagination very well and has a lot of experience doing that (as long as it can identify the pagination easily). Using pagination when it’s necessary is fine (and can be good). I would worry more about the number of paginated pages per set than the total number of paginated pages that are indexed on the site. Like I said earlier, make sure your pagination makes sense for both users and for search engines.
  • Google’s Recommendations: Finally, listen to Google’s John Mueller and read Google’s documentation. Google has a lot of experience handling pagination across sites, and it can often just “work”. I recommend implementing a pagination solution based on your own situation, analyze that setup over time, and make sure it’s working for you.

Summary – Yes, your site can be fine SEO-wise with a lot of pagination indexed.
If you are dealing with a lot of pagination across your site, I hope this case study was helpful. I know there’s been a lot of confusion over the years about pagination and SEO, and especially since Google nuked rel next/prev in 2019. As I explained in this post, Google has a long history of handling pagination and it typically will not cause many problems across a site rankings-wise (as long as it’s set up properly). The approach you take really comes down to your own site, the type of content, and the internal linking structure. And if you end up having a lot of pagination indexed, then so be it. As this case study proved, it can work out just fine for you.

GG

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

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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:
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