In the Google SEO Office Hours last February 18, a user asked if user reviews or comments for a product or article are a ranking factor.
John Mueller did not directly provide an answer as to whether reviews or comments are a ranking factor, he did provide some insights on the use of reviews and comments on a page.
Mueller stated that comments or reviews are useful parts of a page in that oftentimes, people will write their comments or reviews in their own words. These user-provided content give search a little bit more information about the page and how they can show the page in the search results. From that point of view, comments or reviews are a good thing to include on a page.
However, finding ways to maintain them can be quite tricky as some people spam the comments section with all kinds of things. If you can find a way to maintain comments on a web page that provides a little bit more context and can help people who are searching in different ways to also find your content, then it would be helpful.
While Mueller did not directly state that it is a ranking factor, having comments and reviews on a page may help increase relevancy for a page, depending on the comments that are provided by the users. I’d say it would be a good practice to show comments though it would be best to moderate them and only approve comments that are relevant to the content. This would also help in moderating spam comments like those that are adding comments to link to their site or page, or to comment about their products which are more often than not, scams.
With regards to reviews, it is also good practice to show reviews for the products as this can help people decide whether to purchase the product or not. Note though that product reviews need to be real reviews and to avoid showing only high rating reviews. Artificially inflating reviews by only showing high ratings are now being tagged as a deceptive practice by the FTC.
Check out the SEO Office Hours episode here:
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