Good morning Search Marketer, how much do you trust user reviews?
"There's no review website that doesn't have fake reviews," said Curtis Boyd of review fraud prevention company Objection.co, adding that "The problem is everywhere and there are varying levels of sophistication." Boyd said that, while the fake review problem is much worse than most people know, Yelp and TripAdvisor are generally better at minimizing it. Google's Local Guide program has been infiltrated by review farms and the issue is also rampant on Amazon, especially in categories such as Bluetooth-enabled products, home fitness and kitchen products. What may (perhaps not) be surprising is that some business owners can get addicted once they start buying fake reviews.
Google's Question Hub, a tool for identifying content gaps, is now being tested on COVID-related search queries originating in the U.S. First launched in India, Indonesia and Nigeria last year, the Question Hub is a way for searchers to let Google know when they haven't been able to find the content they're looking for. Publishers in the U.S. pilot can access the questions via Google Search Console and use it to inform their content strategy. It'll be interesting to see how publishers take advantage of this feature if and when it receives a wider rollout.
Should Google be pausing algorithm updates to make things less stressful for SEOs? That depends on how you're ranking right now, our own Barry Schwartz joked with Google's Daniel Waisberg. All joking aside, our panel of experts, as well as members of Google and Bing's search teams, say that if updates can provide more relevant results and help combat misinformation, then it's just as important as ever that search engines continue updating their algorithms.
Mark your calendar for this Friday, 2 p.m. EST: Live with Search Engine Land is back! This week, we'll be focusing on content marketing: the new challenges we're facing as the pandemic sways user behavior, what brands should be communicating at this point, how engagement has changed and more. If you've got questions, send them to me ahead of time (gnguyen@thirddoormedia.com) or feel free to post them as you tune in live.
Keep on reading for a Pro Tip about getting over creative content creation blocks, as well as your daily Search Shorts and more.
George Nguyen,
Associate Editor
