Good morning search marketers, how much do you trust Amazon reviews?
Recent reports claim that a majority of Amazon reviews for specific categories are fake, and now Consumer Reports has released the results of its own investigation that claims "review hijacking" — when a seller of one product is able to associate positive reviews from another, unrelated product with their own — has become widespread. According to Consumer Reports, a noticeable percentage of review hijacking originates in China, or with Chinese sellers.
"Fake review generation and other review-fraud tactics are a kind of blackhat SEO for Amazon, which helps those products gain search visibility and consumer credibility," writes Search Engine Land Contributing Editor Greg Sterling, "As Amazon has become the leading destination for product search, the incentives to cheat have only grown for black hat sellers."
Yelp, a company built on crowdsourced user reviews, is rolling out new features aimed at helping it offer better recommendations and personalized search results. Soon, users will be able to select preferences and favorites, starting with their dietary and lifestyle options. The app will prompt a series of questions for users, asking, for example, if they may be gluten-free or vegetarian, or if they have lifestyle characteristics, like being a pet owner or homeowner, that might affect what content they should receive. Yelp will then use the responses to fine-tune search results for the user going forward.
Get ready, there are some changes coming to the Google Search Console API. It will no longer support the "Is Install," "Is App Universal" and "Is Opened" APIs and the Sitemaps API will no longer populate the indexing status of submitted sitemap files in the "Indexed" field. Google said it is still committed to the Search Console API and is working on updating it to the new Search Console. For now, Google recommends app developers transition to Google's Firebase platform for the reporting that is no longer available in the Search Console API.
Keep reading to see why data cleanliness and accuracy is a top priority for brands at the local level, and what Google says about sponsored content and structured data.
Amy Gesenhues,
Senior Reporter
