If you publish reviews of anything (gadgets, restaurants, hotels, software, films or local services), the April 2023 reviews update is the Google change to watch right now. Google started rolling it out on April 12, 2023. It takes the old product reviews system and applies it to reviews on almost any topic, not just products.
The short answer: Google now wants every review on your site to show real experience, original research and honest analysis. Thin summaries of other people’s opinions are at risk, whatever the subject. Below I explain what changed, who is likely affected, and what I would check first.
What Is the April 2023 Reviews Update?
The April 2023 reviews update is the first update to Google’s newly renamed reviews system. Until this week, it was called the product reviews system. Google first launched it in April 2021, and it only looked at reviews of physical products and similar things you could buy.
With this update, Google dropped the word “product”. The system now looks at reviews of products, services, businesses, destinations, media such as films and video games, and other things people review.
Here is what Google confirmed on April 12:
- Start: April 12, 2023, around midday US Eastern time, posted on the Search Status Dashboard.
- Scope: reviews about products, services, businesses, places, media and other topics.
- Languages: English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Russian, Dutch, Portuguese and Polish. This is the same language list Google added in February.
- Status: still rolling out at the time of writing.
Google also updated its documentation. The old page about the product reviews system now redirects to a page called Google Search’s reviews system and your website. The writing guidance was also rewritten so that it talks about “reviews” in general, not only products.
How It Fits With Earlier Product Reviews Updates
This system is not new. It has had several named updates since 2021:
- April 2021: the first product reviews update, English only.
- December 2021: the second update, with more guidance on proof of testing.
- March, July and September 2022: three more updates to the same system.
- February 2023: the system expanded to the ten extra languages listed above. I covered it in my post on the February 2023 product reviews update.
So the core idea has not changed. What changed is the reach. If you run a travel blog, a restaurant guide or a software comparison site, this is the first time this system clearly applies to you.
What Changed: From Product Reviews to All Reviews
The biggest change is in who is now in scope. Google’s documentation says reviews can be about any topic. It gives examples such as laptops, winter jackets, films, video games, restaurants and fashion brands.
It also says the system covers the same formats as before:
- A review of a single thing.
- A head-to-head comparison of two options.
- A ranked list of recommendations, such as “best hotels in Lisbon” or “best project management tools”.
In my experience, the ranked list is where most thin content lives. Many “best X” pages are built from spec sheets and other people’s star ratings, with no first-hand view at all. Those pages were already at risk for products. Now the same risk applies to “best things to do in” pages, “top 10 dentists in” pages and software round-ups.
Sites That Are Newly Exposed
Based on Google’s examples, these are the types of sites I would expect to feel this update for the first time:
- Travel and destination blogs with hotel, tour and city reviews.
- Restaurant and food guides that rank places to eat.
- Software and SaaS comparison sites that review tools and apps.
- Film, TV, book and game review sites.
- Local “best of” directories that rank service businesses like plumbers, lawyers or gyms.
- Finance comparison pages that review cards, banks or insurance providers.
Product review and affiliate sites stay in scope, as before. If you were hit by an earlier product reviews update and have not fixed the root problems, this update will likely look at you again.
What the Reviews System Does Not Look At
This part causes a lot of confusion, so I want to be clear. The reviews system looks at first-party, standalone review content. That means articles, blog posts and pages written to give a recommendation, an opinion or an analysis.
Google says it does not evaluate third-party reviews. That includes user reviews in the review section of a product page or a service page. So:
- Customer reviews on your ecommerce product pages are not what this system judges.
- Reviews people leave on your Google Business Profile are not part of it.
- Review stars in search results (review snippets from structured data) are a separate topic.
Google also says that product structured data can help it understand that a page is a review. But it does not rely only on structured data to find reviews. Adding or removing review markup is not a way to opt in or out.
If you run a local business and you are worried about your Google reviews, this update is not about them. It is about publishers who write reviews.
How to Tell If the April 2023 Reviews Update Affected You
The rollout has only just started, so it is too early for firm conclusions. Updates like this often take a week or more to finish. The February update took about two weeks. I would not make big changes based on the first few days of movement.
When the rollout ends, here is how I would check impact:
- Note the dates. Mark April 12 as the start date in your analytics and in Search Console. Wait for Google to confirm the end date on the Search Status Dashboard.
- Compare like for like. In the Search Console Performance report, compare a week after the rollout ends with a week before April 12. Use the same days of the week.
- Filter to review pages. Add a page filter for your review sections, such as URLs that contain
/reviews/,/best-orvs. Compare them with the rest of your site. - Look at queries, not just pages. Check whether drops are on review-intent searches like “best”, “review”, “vs” and “worth it”.
- Rule out other causes. Check for tracking problems, site changes, seasonality and indexing issues before you blame the update.
Keep in mind the March 2023 core update only finished at the end of March. If your traffic moved in mid-to-late March, that is more likely the core update. If review pages moved from April 12 onwards, the reviews update is the more likely cause.
When I check updates like this, I always split pages into review content and non-review content first. If both groups dropped by a similar amount, the cause is probably not the reviews system.
What Google Wants From a Review
Google’s guidance on writing high-quality reviews was rewritten to cover all reviews. The main ideas are the same ones review sites have been hearing since 2021. Here they are in plain words.
Show That You Actually Used It
Google asks for evidence of first-hand experience. That can be your own photos, video, audio, or links that show your use of the thing you reviewed. This ties directly to the “Experience” part of E-E-A-T, which Google added to its quality rater guidelines in December.
For a product, that might mean photos of the item in your home. For a restaurant, photos of the dishes you ordered and a note on when you visited. For software, screenshots from your own account, not the vendor’s marketing images.
Share Real Knowledge and Measurements
Google wants reviews to show expertise and to share numbers where they help. For a laptop, that might be battery life in your own tests. For a hotel, it might be how far it really is from the station on foot. For a SaaS tool, how long setup took.
Compare and Explain the Trade-Offs
Good reviews explain what makes something different from its competitors. They talk about benefits and drawbacks based on your own research. They also say who each option suits best.
A practical example: instead of “This hotel has great amenities”, write “The pool is small and gets busy in the afternoon, so families may prefer the hotel down the road. Couples who want a quiet room will like the top floor.”
Explain Your “Best” Picks
If you call something “best overall” or “best for beginners”, Google wants you to explain why, with first-hand support. Ranked lists should also have enough useful content to stand on their own. They should not just be a list of links to your single reviews.
Be Helpful to the Buyer
Google also suggests:
- Focusing on the factors that matter most to people deciding.
- Explaining what changed from an earlier version, where that applies.
- Linking to other useful resources, yours or other sites.
- Thinking about links to more than one seller, so readers can choose where to buy or book.
Affiliate links are fine. Google does not treat them as a problem on their own. The problem is a page whose main purpose is the link, with little real review content around it.
What I Would Do Right Now
You do not need to wait for the rollout to end to start improving your content. Good reviews will help you with this system, with core updates and with the helpful content system. Here is the order I would work in.
- List every review page. Export all URLs that are reviews, comparisons or “best of” lists. Include non-product topics like travel, restaurants and software.
- Sort by value. Use Search Console clicks and revenue to find the pages that matter most. Start there, not with the long tail.
- Score each page honestly. Ask: did we use or visit this? Do we show proof? Do we compare options and explain trade-offs? Would a reader learn something they can’t get from the brand’s own website?
- Add real evidence. Add your own photos, test results and notes from use. If you never tried the thing, be honest about how you researched it, or consider whether the page should exist.
- Rewrite thin “best of” lists. Give each pick a clear reason, real pros and cons, and a “best for” note backed by experience.
- Merge or remove weak pages. If you have many near-identical reviews with nothing original, merge them into fewer, stronger pages, or remove them.
- Show who wrote it. Add author names and short bios that explain why that person is qualified to review the topic.
In my experience, step 4 is where most sites struggle. It takes real time and money to test things. But that is exactly why Google rewards it: it is hard to fake at scale.
Mistakes I Would Avoid
- Adding fake “hands-on” language. Writing “we tested” without any proof does not help, and it can damage trust with readers.
- Using stock or manufacturer images as proof. They show nothing about your own experience.
- Making every review longer. Google’s guidance focuses on quality and originality, not word count. Padding a review does not make it better.
- Rewriting pages in a panic during the rollout. Daily ranking changes in the first week are often noise.
- Deleting pages based on a few days of data. Wait until the update is complete and you can compare clean date ranges.
How Long Recovery Can Take
Google has said that if you improve your content, you may see recovery after some time. With this system, that has usually meant waiting for a later reviews update, because the system has been refreshed in named updates every few months.
So my honest view is this: fix your content now, but expect it to take more than a few weeks to see the full effect. Rankings can also move for many other reasons, since the reviews system is only one of Google’s many ranking systems.
I also would not plan around exact dates. Google does not announce the next reviews update in advance.
Reviews Update vs Helpful Content and Core Updates
It helps to know how this update differs from the other big Google changes:
| Update | What it looks at | Who it mainly affects |
|---|---|---|
| Reviews update | First-party review content: single reviews, comparisons and ranked lists | Sites that publish reviews on any topic |
| Helpful content update | Content made mainly for search engines rather than people | Any site with a lot of unhelpful content |
| Core update | Broad changes to how Google judges overall quality and relevance | Any site in any niche |
The good news is that they all point the same way. A review written by someone who really used the thing, with honest pros and cons, should do well across all three.
Final Thoughts on the April 2023 Reviews Update
The April 2023 reviews update takes a system that review sites already knew and applies it to almost every kind of review. If you write about hotels, restaurants, software, films or services, you are now in the same position product reviewers have been in since 2021.
My advice is simple. Let the rollout finish, measure your review pages separately from the rest of your site, and spend your effort on proof of real experience. As a next step, go through your top ten review pages this week and ask whether each one shows something only you could know. If you want more background, my post on the February 2023 product reviews update covers how this system has worked so far.
