Google confirmed that the November 2023 reviews update is now complete. This update, announced on November 8, 2023, rolled out over a 29-day period.
No more announcements. This will be the last time Google will confirm an update to the reviews system/algorithm. “We’ll no longer be giving periodic notifications of improvements to our reviews system,” the company said. A total of 8 reviews updates have been confirmed by Google since the first reviews update launched in April 2021.
What is new. Although Google won’t confirm updates going forward, updates are happening at a “regular and ongoing pace,” according to the company. That makes it sound like the reviews update is now a more real-time update. So changes to your rankings, for better or worse, may be reflected with this reviews system in more real-time than in batches.
This update is a global update that impacts sites in these languages: English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Polish.
November core update overlapping. Google simultaneously rolled out the November 2023 core update, which was completed on November 28. Sites may see an impact from both the core update and the reviews update. It may be hard to know which update impacted your site.
Previous reviews updates. Here are all the previous reviews updates:
- April 2021 reviews update, April 8, 2021
- December 2021 reviews update, December 1, 2021
- March 2022 reviews update, March 23, 2022
- July 2022 reviews update, July 27, 2022
- September 2022 reviews update, September 20, 2022
- February 2023 reviews update, February 21, 2023
- April 2023 reviews update, April 12, 2023
- November 2023 reviews update, November 8, 2023
Why we care. If your website publishes any type of review content, this will be an important update to watch. Check your rankings to see whether your organic traffic improves, declines or stays the same.
Going forward, it may be difficult to know if this reviews updates, which will be ongoing and undisclosed, has impacted your site.
For more details about this update and tips on how to recover, see our original story here.
