Sometime over this past weekend Google stopped showing any review snippet with either Blended or the Branded One Box Results in the main search results view for many results. It appears that snippets are still visible in restaurants, hotels and possibly other heavily reviewed areas
View from last week (taken 6/23)
Review snippets have also been removed from most typical blended results (again with the exception of restaurants/hotels). This change seems consistent with the recent change to remove the images from the Blended results that occurred earlier in the month and effectively moves more information above the fold. Review snippets were first seen in the Google Blended results tests that ran last summer and were a regular part of the results since the Blended results were formally released in late October of last year. For me, they were a salient feature that dramatically changed the role of reviews in reputation management bringing a “typical review” front and center for all to see. The review snippets were derived via algo and were intended to provide a representative flavor of the review corpus. As in my example above, the snippets were not always accurate. While I don’t think that was a reason in their demise, I am sure some businesses will be grateful they are gone.
Mike, I am still seeing them in some places for example here and here.
Comment by Ted Paff (67 comments) — June 28, 2011 @ 11:05 am
@Ted
It is spotty… probably browser dependent, maybe industry dependent… I thought this morning at 5:30 am that it was universal but at 6:00 I realized not… please keep me posted
Comment by Mike (2500 comments) — June 28, 2011 @ 11:37 am
I see them on AAMCO listings ( the snippets) that is, but that was yesterday. Today is a whole new ball of wax for our friends at Google. Particularly
Well I just checked AAMCO – Brooklyn NY & viola – snippets. Here is the search.
Comment by Joan (2 comments) — June 29, 2011 @ 8:03 am
I have a feeling there may have been complaints – if there is a negative review and it ends up being in the serps it can cause too strong a reaction. Also, some sites are opposed to Google framing too much of their content and putting it in the ‘top 10′.
Comment by Lex (1 comments) — June 29, 2011 @ 9:59 am
[...] or if it is just a test. It is missing owner description, 3rd party review sentiment snippets (also recently removed from many search results), and even the highlighted 3rd party review that was associated with each [...]
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