The review sentiment represents the prevalent opinion, but is it an indicator of rank? This chapter will look at the arguments and the evidence.
The sentiment of reviews reflects the general opinions of customers who write reviews about a company’s services as well as services.
The sentiment of the person can be positive or negative. It is considered by certain people to impact the search results of a company.
There’s reason to be concerned about these claims because it could expose businesses to negative SEO-related attacks if rankings are reduced due to bad reviews.
However, there’s a concern that companies artificially inflate their ranking by using fake reviews.
Review sentiment influences the behavior of consumers and affects measures like conversion rates.
Does it influence Google’s rankings in search engines?
Let’s look at the arguments and evidence that review sentiments as a factor in ranking.
The Claim: Review Sentiment Is A Ranking Factor
Review sentiment is often mentioned when discussing Google ranking factors. Some claim that a positive review can increase rankings, while negative reviews can hurt rankings.
There are several motives for these assertions.
A famous and commonly mentioned evidence of “evidence” is the correlation between highly ranked websites and companies with positive reviews.
Sentiment analysis is part of SEO software. It could be the basis for determining that the sentiment of reviews impacts the search engine results.
The Search Engine Journal’s Roger Montti published an article providing more information about where the assertions around sentiment are derived and why they are still in use.
In addition to the information mentioned in the article by Social Media Agency Convex Interactive, Google’s Search Quality Rater guidelines play a part in making review sentiment an ongoing topic for SEOs.
Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines
Google confirms that the sentiment of reviews is a factor that affects ranking in its guidelines for the Search Quality Rater.
Section 2.6 of these guidelines inform Google’s Quality Raters of the things to look out for when evaluating the reputation of a content or website creator.
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There are many suggestions for checking review sites to learn more about a company’s reputation. Click here https://redwingnews.com/
A few have drawn conclusions about the reviewer’s sentiment as a factor in ranking from the information above.
However, Search Quality Raters are a separate entity that has had no direct influence on rankings in search engines. The rules they follow don’t reflect the algorithm used by Google as ranking factors.
Quality Raters collect feedback on Google’s search results to ensure that the pages displayed in SERPs are of a certain quality threshold.
One way to determine the quality of a website is by analyzing the credibility of the site that it’s hosted.
Headlines relating to this section from the Quality Rater guidelines circulated in 2017 following Google’s Gary Illyes addressed an event about reputation analysis.
Many in attendance misinterpreted his comments and inaccurately reported that Illyes claimed that reputation can affect a site’s ranking on search engine results.
But, Illyes was only discussing how Quality Rater guidelines work.
While customer reviews are an integral part of research on reputation, the guidelines recommend using them with a certain amount of suspicion.
It is good news that Google is providing clarity regarding this issue and clarified that it is a factor in ranking.
The Evidence For Review Sentiment As A Ranking Factor
Research could attempt to establish that review reviews are an important ranking factor by demonstrating an association between reviews by customers and the rank of a site’s website within search result pages.
We’ll only review the proof, and Google has repeatedly said that the review’s sentiment isn’t an important factor in ranking.
Google’s Gary Illyes swiftly denied the allegations on the internet following his conference speech which we referred to in the earlier section.
Not only does Google not use sentiment as an element of its ranking system, but its algorithms aren’t even able to recognize the sentiment.
Google’s Danny Sullivan confirmed this in the year 2018.
Google cannot use sentiment to determine rankings if it doesn’t know what sentiment is.
That ought to suffice to end the speculation about reviews’ review ratings as a factor. However, theories continue to be discussed.
In 2021 Sullivan was asked if any changes had occurred since his last comment. Google recognized sentiment.
The sentiment is not yet considered by Google’s algorithm.
Review Sentiment As A Ranking Factor: Our Verdict
Review sentiment has been established as not a factor in ranking organic search results. However, we acknowledge it’s an important factor in local search ranking.
This has been the case since Google’s inability to discern its users’ moods were notoriously made a target.
In 2010, a business was causing a lot of anger to customers to the point where they would post negative reviews.
It was done to ensure that the hyperlinks from reviews helped push the company’s website higher in the search results.
Google did not recognize that people who linked to the company’s website were saying negative things about the company. Google only identified the hyperlinks.
Since then, Google has become more adept at making sure that websites don’t get paid for ripping off customers, yet Google’s attitude towards sentiments remains.
Review-related sentiment has a direct impact on other aspects of marketing online. However, ranking in search engines is not an example.
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