--- title: "Merchant reviews update (2010): demoting bad merchants" url: https://seomadman.com/updates/merchant-reviews-update-2010 section: updates language: en published: 2026-09-26T00:00:00.000Z modified: 2026-09-26T00:00:00.000Z author: Adam Hafez topics: ["Ecommerce SEO"] --- # Merchant reviews update (2010): demoting bad merchants ## The short answer On 1 December 2010 Google said it had built and launched an algorithm that demotes merchants providing an extremely poor user experience. It followed a New York Times story about a merchant who claimed customer complaints helped his rankings. Google called it an initial solution, kept the signals secret and gave no impact figure. ## Key takeaways - Google announced the change on 1 December 2010, saying the solution was already live. - It responded to a New York Times story about the eyeglasses merchant DecorMyEyes. - Google said the algorithm caught that merchant and hundreds of others giving a poor experience. - Google rejected sentiment analysis as the fix and did not reveal the signals it used. - Google gave the change no name; merchant reviews update is a label the industry adopted. ## What Google changed On 1 December 2010, Google Fellow Amit Singhal wrote on the [Official Google Blog](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/being-bad-to-your-customers-is-bad-for.html) that Google had "developed an algorithmic solution" which detected the merchant described by the New York Times "along with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide an extremely poor user experience." The algorithm was incorporated into Google's search rankings. Google explained what it chose not to do. It did not block the single offender, because that would not solve the general problem. It rejected sentiment analysis, arguing that demoting pages with negative comments could bury information about elected officials and controversial topics. It also noted that the merchant was not really ranking on links from complaint sites, many of which used rel=nofollow. Google gave the change no name. Merchant reviews update is a label the SEO industry adopted. ## When it rolled out The trigger was a [New York Times story](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html) by David Segal, dated 26 November 2010, about the eyeglasses seller DecorMyEyes. Google's post of 1 December 2010 said the fix was built "in the last few days" and that "the solution is already live." Google did not give an exact launch day, so 1 December 2010, the date of its post, is the first confirmed date. No completion date was stated. ## What is known about its impact Google published no share of queries affected. The only scope it gave was that the algorithm caught the merchant from the Times article and hundreds of others. Google said it could not reveal the underlying signals, data sources or how it combined them, to avoid helping people game the change. ## What site owners should do Google's ranking systems guide does not list this 2010 change as a named system, current or retired, and Google has not said what became of it. Its current guidance covers the same ground: - Earn trust with customers. Google's helpful content guidance asks whether someone researching the site would come away with the impression that it is well-trusted. - Do not try to earn links through bad behaviour or controversy. Google's spam policies define link spam as links created primarily to manipulate rankings. - If you link to a site you do not endorse, qualify the link, as the complaint sites in this case did with rel=nofollow. ## How to check whether it affected you This is historical. Search Console keeps 16 months of data, so late 2010 can only be checked in archived analytics, by comparing Google organic traffic before and after 1 December 2010. The [Google Algorithm Updates timeline](/updates) lists every update with its dates. ## Related updates - The [domain diversity update](/updates/brand-update-2010) was the previous announced ranking change, in August 2010. - The [scraper filter](/updates/scraper-filter-2011) followed in January 2011. ## Frequently asked questions ### What prompted the 2010 merchant reviews update? A New York Times story by David Segal, dated 26 November 2010, about an online eyeglasses merchant who said customer complaints earned him links and search prominence. Google said it then built an algorithmic fix. ### Did Google use negative reviews as a ranking signal? Google said it considered sentiment analysis and rejected it, because demoting pages with negative comments could hide information about elected officials and controversial topics. It did not disclose the signals it used instead. ### How many sites did it affect? Google gave no share of queries. It said the algorithm detected the merchant from the Times article along with hundreds of other merchants it judged to give an extremely poor user experience. ## Sources 1. [Being bad to your customers is bad for business](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/being-bad-to-your-customers-is-bad-for.html) - Official Google Blog (primary) 2. [A Bully Finds a Pulpit on the Web](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html) - The New York Times 3. [Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content) - Google Search Central (primary) 4. [Spam policies for Google web search](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies) - Google Search Central (primary)