There has been a lot of talk about the Google product reviews update and what content ranks well and what content does not rank as well since these updates. Alan Kent from Google offered a nice line on what content stands out for the product reviews update.

Alan Kent posted on Twitter “does the review contribute new information to the body of knowledge about the product?” He added that he “could test a car tire using a machine instead of on my own car.” “But just repeating the specs from the tire website with different words adds nothing,” he said.

Clearly that is not easy to do – but if you truly know the product, you should be able to add a lot above and beyond than just the manufacturer’s description and photos.

Here are the chain of tweets this response was associated with:

Great post. I noticed Very Well Fit has a “product lab” and yet this “review” post is simply product images pulled from Amazon. Guess they didn’t test the sunscreen? https://t.co/Xx6pzJlpYB

— Mike Futia | Stupid Simple SEO (@mikefutia) May 5, 2022

Another way to think about it is does the review contribute new information to the body of knowledge about the product? I could test a car tire using a machine instead of on my own car. But just repeating the specs from the tire website with different words adds nothing.

— Alan Kent (@akent99) May 5, 2022

Can you write content about products like this without having that product on hand?

Forum discussion at Twitter.