Do Online Reviews Increase Search Engine Rankings?

[rball1]

Do the mere presence of reviews on product pages increase a page's ranking or standing in the SERPs?

I'm not referring to driving more traffic with a product page because there's more content, long tail keywords, more updates to the page as reviews roll in, etc.

Has there been any study around whether a product page began ranking better by simply adding review functionality?

[rball1]

Thanks for the response Everett. I'm definitely not looking to game the system with empty or fake reviews, that wouldn't be an issue with what I'm working on.

It sounds like your rant you described could fall into what I'm thinking about. With everything else being equal but Page A has review functionality while Page B doesn't, does Page A rank better on that sole difference. One might think so, but like you said, once reviews start rolling in on Page A the weight would definitely (well, at least most likely) swing it's way.

Nate

[Everett]

Nwhite1,

To my knowledge there hasn't been any published study regarding the first-order effect of improved rankings after the inclusion of ratings on a product page.

My guess, and that's all it is, would be that the mere presence of them in-and-of itself would not improve rankings, but there would be several second-order effects, such as those you and the other responses have mentioned. Attempting to game the system by putting up empty reviews or fake reviews just to have something on the page could land you in hot water. Google has been working on the empty review page problem for awhile.

Local business page listings and Google Shopping results are totally different animals though, and the above statement does not apply there:
http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-rank-well-in-google-products-search-a-big-list-of-places-to-get-reviews

I had half a rant on here about machine learning algorithms and how anything from the color of your background to the placement of your home button in the nav could theoretically affect rankings these days, but it seems like you may be after more factual, tested information, not more theories and ideas. The "fact" is I have never seen nor heard of a study that proves the mere existence of product reviews on a product page in-and-of themselves improves rankings, nor can I think of a way to test this without involving a myriad of second-order effects.

[poolguy]

I believe yes.  If you have multiple product reviews that are easily accessible (maybe a link at the top that will shoot you down to the bottom of the pg where the reviews are) to a user that just appeared on your product page, then it could improve visitor performance and decrease bounce rates.  I think simply improving the quality of your page with real, legitimate customer reviews, will increase that pages rankings in the SERPs due to an improved perceived value by the search engines.

Do Bounce Rates increase rankings?  Search reps say "YES" - http://www.seo-theory.com/2012/03/02/the-late-great-bounce-rate-debate/

[A_Q]

Hello,

I'm not sure whether you will rank better in SERPs for including product reviews on your pages but I am sure that if you tag the reviews with properly using microformats and get rich snippets to appear for your pages in SERPs, you are certain to increase click through from SERPs.

This post explains my point in more detail http://www.seomoz.org/blog/schema-examples

Logically though, I'd expect that the reviews would keep your page fresh and add to the relevant content on that page, which should increase rankings in turn.

I hope this helps.

Elias