One of the websites I deal with allows uncensored reviews of its widgets and widget brands. It's one of the features that the customers love and relish, because it allows them to express their true feelings - unlike some competing websites in the niche that do censor reviews.
In light of Google's algo response to the infamous "Bully Finds a Pulpit On the Web" NY Times article [
nytimes.com ] is it bad to have negative reviews on-site?
Are there certain stop words that Google uses to identify negativity?
Uncensored reviews are ideal for customers, which in theory should be ideal for Google, but their reaction to the NY Times article sounds like it could possibly be impairing rankings. Rankings are somewhat impaired, but that could be due to other factors.
I'm interested in what the WW community thinks.
Aside: I believe new reviews also adds to the freshness of the page content, another reason I'd like to keep them on-page instead of AJAXing them in after page load.
