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Google’s review-type changes may cause confusion in your Search Console
Google are known for making substantial changes to their platform on a regular basis without really warning users of what the exact changes may be, and one of the latest changes to Search Console could leave some webmasters scratching their head for the sudden performance drop.
It looks as though the tech wizards at Google have been making some changes to the way results are ranked and shown, and as a result, some webmasters have been left confused. A recent update has, in the words of Google themselves, caused some review-type results to show as product-type results. This move happened unannounced, and seems to have caught many by surprise.
To piece together what Google has told us, product-type results are more valuable as they are richer in the kind of data searchers are looking for. By upgrading these results in their update, Google is aiming to help data-rich pages rank higher. However, this has changed how the results show in Google Search Console, which led to some bemused social media postings over the past week.
Google has since clarified that overall search numbers have not been affected by the change, it’s simply a change in how they are counted. Further down the line, though, it may well be that this change delivers a positive result for sites that favour more informative content. That said, given the way this news has come out it might be worth some site owners making changes to how they create content.
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