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Google Reviews Update April 2023: Not Just for Products

ByNina Clapperton Updated on

In April 2023, Google began rolling out a Product Reviews Update. Within a week, they changed the name from “Product Reviews Update” to simply “Reviews Update”.

I opened up the document about the new ranking system and it became immediately obvious why this change was made.

This change is going to affect every type of blogger, but especially travel bloggers. It’s going to hit travel bloggers who have a niche built around something they’ve never experienced even harder.

So what is this new update and how is it going to affect you?

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Google Search's reviews system explanation from their website about what the reviews system is and how it works.

Google Reviews Update April 2023

Where every other reviews update we’ve seen in the last year has stressed “product reviews” (aka. affiliates), this one is different.

Google says: “The reviews system works to ensure that people see reviews that share in-depth research, rather than thin content that simply summarizes a bunch of products, services or other things.” (I added the emphasis)

They go on to give examples: “Reviews can be about a single thing, or head-to-head comparisons, or ranked-lists of recommendations. Reviews can be about any topic. There can be reviews of products such as laptops or winter jackets, pieces of media such as movies or video games, or services and businesses such as restaurants or fashion brands.”

Where previously these reviews updates went directly for affiliate posts that are selling an item like a laptop or jacket, this one now goes after ANY review.

A review of a location, of a restaurant, of a hotel, of a beach, etc. etc. are all fair game to this update.

It seems Google is finally getting onboard the “don’t write about places you’ve never visited” train.

I’ve seen a lot of people in travel – and generally – getting hit by this update for this exact reason. They have a bunch of posts they either wrote or generated with AI, but they basically just included things from the top 10 results.

There was no original research, no original photos, no EEAT signals.

Some of them had even been to the places, but because they hadn’t signalled this to Google, womp womp they lost their rankings.

Google's crawl for updates showing the April 2023 reviews update released on 12 April 2023 and that it lasted for 13 days and 2 hours.

When Did it Start?

The Google Reviews Update began on April 12, 2023 and finished on April 25, 2023.

However, some sites likely saw fluxuations a bit earlier than this, as Google often starts to leak out bits of the new ranking systems early.

It’s hard to distinguish as there was a core update around the same time, so if you saw a downturn in traffic, it could have come from this, too.

Twitter poll from Aleyda Solis asking people about the impact of the April 2023 reviews update on their blogs. 24.7% say mostly negative impact.

The Update Caused a Lot of Traffic Losses

Twitter, forums, and even my DMs were full of people lamenting the loss of traffic on their blogs.

Some of these people 100% deserved it for sites with 0 originality or personal experience. But some people who had actually done the things on their sites still got hit.

The way to tell if you’ve been hit by an update is mostly guesswork.

Did your traffic and rankings plummet around the time of the update/within the window of it running? If so, it’s probably related.

I say rankings, too, because most people stick with traffic. But if you’re still ranking #1 for all the keywords, it could just be a seasonal dip (it’s rare to be that intense, but it does happen).

Use Google Analytics and Google Search Console in tandem to figure out whether it’s just a traffic lull or actually lost rankings.

Then, start figuring out how to fix it. Sometimes it will take until another update on the same algorithm for you to be out of the Google black hole.

If you did get hit by the April update, what can you do?

The first step is always to wait until it’s complete (I usually give it a week after, even). The algorithm will be in flux, and there is a chance you could regain the traffic without doing anything.

Now if it is still down after the update is over, you know you need to take action.

This is annoying, as Google is probably gonna throw another update at us a week later, but it will still give the effects of this update time to adjust.

Second, do a deep dive content audit.

Are your reviews satisfying Google’s High Quality Reviews guidelines? (or whatever guidelines are most appropriate with the current review.)

Do you show that you’ve actually experienced everything in your reviews? (They claim this is needed, but so far I think we can still get away with just having done a majority of the tours/being an expert at the area to some extent. We’ll see if that stays true.)

Is it clear that you have authority in the niche from EEAT factors across your site?

Do you actually provide helpful content, or just reiterated nonsense from an Amazon page or a Booking.com page?

If the answer is no, you need to fix that ASAP.

The same goes for a core update where you fix your site speed or a helpful content update related to thin content or a spam links update after disavowing some links.

Need Help Updating Posts?

If you’re unsure how you can improve, take a page out of Lily Ray’s book.

She asked ChatGPT to compare two articles (one that had seen an increase in traffic from the update and one that was losing traffic).

ChatGPT explained the key differences in the two reviews, which can be helpful to understand what you’ve missed.

I take this a step further and then use this command:

“Great thanks, ChatGPT! Please edit article 2 to include [list the key differences that this one is missing] to make it more like article 1”

(We all thank ChatGPT right? Or is it just me? I always say please, thank you, and even sorry if I steer it off track with the wrong command.)

How the reviews system works according to Google - screenshot of their Reviews Update page.

The Impact of the Google Reviews Update on my Site

I’ve seen a lovely spike in traffic during this update and the core update.

And I write on places I haven’t been sometimes (although it’s a rarity).

So how did I manage to not get hit by these updates?

I’ll be honest there’s always a bit of luck involved. I’m not some genie who can magically ensure I never get hit by an update, but I never have before cause of my SEO strategies. 

(Yes, sometimes Google does accidentally strike good sites, too. But it mostly goes after the ones not meeting their guidelines.)

Here are some things I did that I think helped (though we can’t know for sure until it’s over):

I probably did benefit too from having so many informational posts on the site and not being 100% affiliate posts. Google does tend to judge those more harshly.

Google Updates are Scary

Updates are definitely nerve-racking because Google is so vague about them. But ultimately they’ve all come down to “do you help people?”

If the answer is yes, 99% of the time you’re fine.

It’s a great example of AI content for AI content’s sake isn’t worth it. You need to do your own research and outlining, otherwise you’re likely to get tanked by these updates.

As someone who has used AI heavily since October 2021, I saw so many people with handwritten content saying I was gonna suffer Google’s wrath.

And I never have.

Why? Because I don’t use AI lazily.

One of the main reasons I started using it is because I spend so much time on research and outlining, that I needed the writing process sped up to amalgamate all of that information faster.

To this day, research takes me far longer than writing a post.

It’ll be much faster if you know every single thing about your topic.

I usually know 70-80%, but still need that last little bit filled in (like who knows the population of Iceland off the top of their head or the exact crate measurements in inches for a dog on an Air Canada plane?).

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Conclusion

Google Updates are just something we have to live with as SEO bloggers.

I know many people who freak out every time one hits. I don’t have enough stress in my body to shell it out on this. It’s busy being used up over my basic social anxiety and panic disorder.

With dozens of updates a year (not all of them major), you won’t have time to work on your site if you’re always worried about the updates.

Instead, work on putting the best content out there the first time, so you aren’t having to play catch up or wait between updates for a fix.

And a quick reminder: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Tiktok all have algorithms that update too. Since you have to post more regularly on them, as well, I find them way more of a headache than dealing with basic Google updates every month or so.

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Nina Clapperton is the founder of She Knows SEO.

She started blogging in 2018 and spent years doing everything “right” while earning $0. Then she stopped guessing and learned how search actually works. She rebuilt her travel site around audience intent and structure and grew to 50,000 sessions in 6 months. Within a year, the blog was bringing in $30,000 months and later crossed 243,000 pageviews.

She took the same audience first SEO approach and built her education business into multiple $100,000 months.

Now Nina teaches bloggers and online business owners how to build search powered businesses grounded in strong positioning, clear structure, and monetisation that actually supports their audience. She covers traditional SEO and AI driven search without the tech bro noise, and she’s known for explaining complex strategy with analogies you won’t forget.

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