What changed. Google said, “Google began upgrading some review-type results to product-type results in Search, and has been able to generate some new product-type results.”

Google also added over here, “Google began upgrading some review-type results to product-type results in Search.”

Google’s John Mueller explained:

• “At some point we started showing/counting some product results in search slightly differently, and that ended up with some visible shifts in the numbers in Search Console.”

Search Console report impact. As a result of the review-type changes in Google Search, Google said that some of the Search Console reports may see changes in the reported impressions and clicks. This impacts the performance and rich result reports.

Google explained that with the performance report, “you might see a decrease in your Review snippet impressions (and clicks) and an increase in your Product results impressions (and clicks). This represents both a change in how these items looked in Search as well as where Search Console assigns these impressions and clicks.”

Google explained that with the rich results report:

“impressions (and clicks) on reclassified items will also migrate from the Review report to the Product report over time. Affected sites will see a decline in impressions in the Reviews report and a corresponding rise in impressions in the Products report. Total item counts of each type will not change, however, since Search Console did not reclassify correctly labeled structured data items. This represents both a change in how these items looked in Search as well as where Search Console assigns these impressions and clicks.”

Why we care. If you notice changes in your clicks and impressions related to reviews or other areas, it might be related to this review type change. There was an actual change in how your search results may have appeared in Google Search that results in more or fewer clicks or impressions.