Negative Reviews Dropping from Results?

[animalstyle]

I've got a page with local + review schema that displays user submitted reviews for the content of the page. This page and others like it rank very well, they are in the knowledge graph etc. Recently on a specific page, two reviews came up that were negative and poof, the page is dropped from the main term that its been ranking for since the page went up. It still ranks for the secondary term just like it always has.

The reviews are legitimate, don't use foul or legally risky language or anything, just unhappy reviewers.

Oddly enough, there is another negative review showing on the same result page that I dropped from.

Would this be an automatic slap for some reason? Could the content owner that is being reviewed have reported it or something?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Nobody else has replied so I'll pop in with an untested opinion.

I'd think that negative reviews by themselves would be a negative ranking factor. I'd think having them in combination with a higher multiple of positive reviews would be a positive ranking factor.

It's like YouTube. Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down are both positive ranking signals because they are engagement signals. In isolation, negatives would mean the video unquestionably sucks. But in combination it could mean it's high quality and polarizing (good for engagement and ad revenue). With mostly positive and 1/10th that number as negative, i'd say it's still a positive signal due to it indicating engagement (more potential viewer focus on ads).

Applying that to your case, not sure, no clue. I'd guess it depends on the type of search term and the percentage those negatives represent of all of the reviews on the page.

 

[animalstyle]

Thanks @Ryuzaki that makes sense.

There were previously a handfull of good reviews before the negatives popped up. I've been digging into this a little more and it seems like it might be a location thing because rank tracking shows the term popping up in the 'normal' placing in some cases, and back down in others.