Getting review stars to display in search results for your website is a clear way to gain a marketing advantage over the competition without review stars. Using RevU can help to achieve review stars in search results.
- Review Stars are a Result of Schema
- Display 1st-party Reviews to Add Schema to your Website
- Widgets Help Achieve Review Stars in Search Results
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Where can I go for Additional Help?
Review Stars are a Result of Schema
To get a star rating to display for a page listing in search results you need schema on that page. Schema helps search engines understand the information that is on a page. Adding “AggregateRating” Schema code to a page can help trigger Google’s bots to display your aggregated rating (review stars) for that page in search results.
RevU takes care of this for you with the Review Widget, Tag Widget, and Review Badge. When used, each tool adds specific schema to your website to help achieve review stars in search results.
Display 1st-party Reviews to Add Schema to your Website
Use the Review Widget, Tag Widget, and Review Badge to display 1st-party reviews and add schema to your website. The widgets automatically mark up 1st-party reviews (feedback given directly to your business by a customer) with schema telling Google and other search engines that this is not only original content but more specifically a “review”. The schema format for your review also includes your business address and your aggregate review score.
The widget injects reviews, your business address, and aggregated scores into your actual web page. Use web tools to view the schema added to your page to see what search engines see when they crawl your page. You will notice that the reviews are shown as part of your page’s HTML/PHP code.
Widgets Help Achieve Review Stars in Search Results
Displaying 1st-party reviews on a site page using the Review Widget, Tag Widget, and Review Badge adds schema to your website and improves the likelihood that review stars (from the aggregate 1st-party review rating) will be added to the listing for that page in search results.
While Google doesn’t release its criteria for showing star ratings, it does appear that they favor pages that also have high page authority. Moz gives some great tips on how to index and rank your content faster.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can my homepage display the star rating in search results?
From our experience and testing, Google will not display a star rating in search results for the homepage of a website, regardless of schema markup or content.
Can I have star ratings appear on all my pages?
We recommend displaying review schema on a handful of pages of the website where their impact will be the highest. If you add review schema to all pages, Google may ignore the review schema on some or all pages.
How can I display a star rating in search results for more than one page of my website?
We offer the Review Widget and two additional options that include review schema markup. The Review Badge can be placed on multiple pages of the website to show off the star rating. The Tag Review Widget can be used to display your aggregate rating and specific 1st party reviews on a product, service or location page.
How many places should I embed the Review Widget on on my website?
The Review Widget should be placed on only ONE page of your website to avoid the 1st party reviews being seen as duplicate content. Google won’t index duplicate content, negating any SEO benefits.
What are the options for displaying review schema on my website while avoiding duplicate content issues?
We offer 3 distinct options for displaying your review content and review rich snippets across your website:
- Review Widget – Should only be used on one page of your website (we recommend a dedicated Reviews page on your website)
- Review Badge – Can be used on multiple pages of the website without duplicate content issues
- Tag Widget – You can set up multiple Tag Widgets that will display only feedback with a specific tag (Example tag: Product A). Each Tag Widget should only be used on one page and we recommend a page specific to that type of product or service
How do I test my website page to know if the review schema markup is being applied?
Test your website using Google’s Structured Test Tool. Please see our Test Your Review Widget for Schema Markup article for more details.
Why did my website page stop showing a star rating in search results?
Google periodically recalibrates their criteria for assigning rich snippet stars to pages in search results.
Usually this recalibration has to do with Google wanting the more prominent pages to show stars. When Google has recalibrated in the past we’ve noticed many sites see their review stars restored.
Who controls the star rating appearing in search results for my website pages?
It is up to Google and the other search engines to apply or remove the star rating in search results. Using structured data enables a feature to be present, it does not guarantee that it will be present.
The Google algorithm tailors search results to create what it thinks is the best search experience for a user, depending on many variables, including search history, location, and device type. In some cases it may determine that one feature is more appropriate than another, or even that a plain blue link is best.
Why doesn’t Google’s Beta Search Console “URL Checker” find the schema markup?
Google’s URL Checker is in beta and renders HTML only, and will not detect JavaScript. We add review schema markup to the website page with asynchronous JavaScript so Google’s URL Checker tool will not detect our schema markup. Please see the user guide View Schema Added to Web Page from Widgets or Review Badge for testing instructions.
Where Can I Go for Additional Help?
Our Customer Success department is ready to answer any questions or assist you with your review stars. Feel free to contact the Customer Success team at [email protected]