One SEO professional asked John Mueller in a hangout about product review websites.
They have a blog that’s a fashion ideas blog. Things like outfit ideas, where they show people how to wear certain outfits, how to come up with their new ideas.
It’s purely a blog post article-based website. They are not selling anything. They don’t have any products on their website.
They have been doing quite well on search, trying to give valuable information to their users, per the user intent.
But lately, a lot of people began asking: how can they buy these outfits that they have in their articles?
Since they do not review any outfits like pants or blazers that may be displayed in their articles, they just give ideas on how to wear any outfit.
Their main question is: even if they add affiliate Amazon links, will Google treat this as a classical product review website?
They use affiliate links to help people who may like any outfit to purchase one.
And they are concerned that Google might think it’s a classical product review website, and treat it as such.
John answered that he believes that Google would not differentiate that much with these types of websites.
It’s not that there’s a binary yes/no decision on which type of website something is.
From John’s perspective, it sounds like the professional has two types of things on their website: valuable informative content, along with review content.
John further explained that it’s not a situation where you have to pick one type of site and say “everything on the site is exactly like this, and therefore I need to follow exactly these guidelines.”
In most cases on the web, there is a lot of gray room between the different types of websites.
From Google’s point of view, that’s just fine. That’s expected. Don’t worry too much about whether Google thinks it’s a product review site or not.
Instead, use the information that they give for product review sites. If you think some of that is relevant to your site, perhaps it’s useful to improve.
But there is not really a checklist involved that you have to fulfill for anything that would be classified exactly as a product review site.
This happens at approximately the 4:34 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
All right. My question is regarding like, we have a website that is about fashion ideas, outfit ideas, like how to wear any outfit. It’s purely a blog post article-based website. We’re not selling anything. We don’t have any products on our website.
So we have been doing quite well on search, trying to give valuable information to our users, as per the user’s intent. So a lot of people lately started asking, like how to buy these outfits that we give in our articles. So, since we do not review any outfit like pants or blazer that’s displayed in our article, we just give ideas on how to wear any outfit.
So my question is, will Google treat it as a classical product review website? Because in the picture in the article, we started putting links to our affiliate websites, like Amazon, or other fashion clothing stores, just to help the user, those who like any outfit.
So we give them links that- okay, you can buy these outfits from these sites. So will Google treat it as a classical product review site?
John 5:45
Thank you. Yeah, I don’t think we would differentiate that much with these kinds of websites. And it’s not that there’s kind of like a binary decision on which type of website something is. So from my point of view, it sounds like you have some kind of review content on your pages, it sounds like you have some kind of informational content on your pages as well, you have some affiliate content, and all of these things are fine.
So it’s not not a case that you have to pick one type of website and say, everything on my website is exactly like this. And therefore I need to follow exactly these guidelines. In most cases on the web, there’s like a lot of gray room between the different types of websites. And from our point of view, that’s fine.
That’s kind of expected. So I wouldn’t worry too much about whether Google thinks this is a product review website or not? But essentially, use the information that we give for product review websites, if you think some of that is relevant to your website, and maybe that’s useful to help you to improve.
But it’s not something where I’d say that’s a checklist that you have to fulfill for anything that is classified exactly as a product review website.
