Google announced the April 2023 reviews update on April 12 and marked it complete on the Search Status Dashboard on April 25, 2023, after 13 days and 2 hours. It was the first update released under the renamed "reviews system": Google dropped the word "product" from the system's name and guidance at the same time, as Search Engine Land documented.
The renaming reflected a real scope change. Where earlier product reviews updates evaluated product review content, the reviews system now assesses reviews of anything reviewable: products, services and businesses, destinations, and media such as games and movies. Google's updated guidance says the system evaluates "articles, blog posts, pages or similar first-party standalone content written with the purpose of providing a recommendation, giving an opinion, or providing analysis", and that it does not evaluate third-party reviews, such as user reviews posted on a product or service page. The update applied in the same 11 languages as the February 2023 product reviews update.
The practical takeaway: recommendation-style content outside e-commerce, from travel guides to restaurant round-ups to movie reviews, came into scope for the first time, and review-style pages that moved in the April 12-25 window should be checked against Google's reviews guidance. This update followed the February 2023 product reviews update, the last one to carry the product reviews name.