User Reviews Question

[IOSC]

On my e-commerce site, I have user reviews that cycle in the header section of my category pages.  They appear/cycle via a snippet of code that the review program provided me with.

My question is...b/c the actual user-generated content is not in the page content does the google-bot not see this content? Does it not treat the page as having fresh content even though the reviews are new? Does the bot only see the code that provides the reviews?

Thanks in advance.  Hopefully this question is clear enough.

[Backlinko]

It depends on the way they're displayed, Jeff.

If the reviews are HTML, you bet your butt Googlebot can see them. If it's Java or Flash...that's another story.

Either way, that's not really the fresh content Google's looking for on page in my opinion.

When it comes to freshness, Google wants either a) significant amounts of content added to a site (ie. blog posts) or b) significant updates to existing content.

Either way, these reviews aren't likely to make much of a difference in terms of your rank.

[irvingw]

Run a spider simulator to see what googlebot sees or look at the source code to see if the content is there.

Even if the content being added is not significant, if the content on the pages change often that will keep the bots coming back and respidering more often.

If it's random reviews populating randomly in the header though it won't really help for SEO. You need real reviews on that page that stay there and aggregate in order to help your SEO.

[IOSC]

Thanks for the help Brian and Irving.

In what ways do those reviews help with SEO? Do they help with long-tail KW also?

[Backlinko]

Sure thing Jeff.

They can help in a few ways:

1. They add content to your pages (without you having to pay anything)

2. As you suggested, they can also send you some long tail traffic

3.Google can display the star rating of whatever it is you're reviewing via rich snippets:

http://www.dannyvince.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/engraved-gift-ideas-rich-snippets.jpg

However, they're a double-edged sword. If you're careful about keyword density and other on-page metrics (like I am), letting a bunch of people write the content of your site isn't the best idea.

I'm actually KILLING a competitor's site right now in the SERPs who have mostly UGC/reviews. A lot of this is because my on-page is leagues and bounds above theirs.