{"id":13223,"date":"2020-08-11T10:53:54","date_gmt":"2020-08-11T10:53:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.improvemysearchranking.com\/?p=13223"},"modified":"2021-12-08T08:11:55","modified_gmt":"2021-12-08T08:11:55","slug":"negative-reviews-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.improvemysearchranking.com\/negative-reviews-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"Google search algorithm may consider negative reviews, John Mueller explains.."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Does a large amount of negative reviews affect the search engine rankings of a website?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Apparently, yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google\u2019s John Mueller recently explained that the Google search engine algorithm might pick up if a website has a lot of negative reviews.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h2><b>Some background info<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You may not remember it but in 2010, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/11\/28\/business\/28borker.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">NYTimes reported<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that an online merchant was ranking highly because the site had lots of backlinks, albeit from angry and dissatisfied customers. This prompted <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/googleblog.blogspot.com\/2010\/12\/being-bad-to-your-customers-is-bad-for.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a response from Google<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and the introduction of \u201csentiment analysis\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The idea for introducing sentiment analysis was to understand the context of links and recognize negative reviews that could harm search engine rankings. In 2010, Google explicitly said that negative comments would become negative votes.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Does it matter now?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recently, John Mueller was asked if negative reviews would hurt a site\u2019s rankings. Here is the question:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIf you have a \u201cbad\u201d reputation online and you see a lot of negative stuff about your company, would that hurt, potentially, your Google ranking for keywords?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Could Google look at that and say, \u2018Oh this is a bad company, we\u2019re not going to rank it as well because they have a lot of negative reviews.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mueller confirmed that if most of the signals are negative, it may have an impact on the website\u2019s search engine rankings. However, he also mentioned that negative reviews are a common thing, and having some negative reviews won\u2019t affect a site\u2019s rankings in the SERPs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to John, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThat\u2019s something where if all of the signals point in that direction [negative reviews], I could imagine that we might pick that up.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But if you\u2019re talking about [that] there are a handful of people that are upset and they\u2019re writing these random things online, and there are lots of people that are happy with your site, and everything is normal, then that\u2019s not something where I would really worry about.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In addition, John Mueller also confirmed that Google still uses the 2010 sentiment analysis algorithm. However, the specifics may have changed with the evolution of technology, and how people interact with online businesses and leave reviews.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Summary<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The takeaway here is that:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The sentiment analysis algorithm still affects, but most likely not in the exact same way it did a decade ago.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Negative reviews are common and should not affect a site\u2019s rankings most of the time.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, if a site has predominantly negative reviews, it may have an effect on search engine rankings.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Does a large amount of negative reviews affect the search engine rankings of a website? Apparently, yes. Google\u2019s John Mueller recently explained that the Google search engine algorithm might pick up if a website has a lot of negative reviews.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":17871,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_oct_exclude_from_cache":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"categories":[33,37,35],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Google Search May Consider Negative Reviews | IMSR<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Does a large amount of negative reviews affect the search engine rankings of a website? Apparently, yes. 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