Review stars in Google Organic: How is it Done?

standenman · Dec 8, 2017

Would LOVE to reproduce in my market what www.phillipslaw.com has done in SERP for "disability lawyer Phoenix". Any one have an idea, or is it just a fluke?

JoyHawkins · Dec 10, 2017

This can be done with review schema. I use Get Five Stars to get them on clients' sites but they only ever show up on inner pages so unfortunately you cannot get them to show on your homepage.

standenman · Dec 11, 2017

Thanks Joy but I think you misunderstood my question. I am talking about review stars showing in SERP result, like the phillipslaw.com site enjoys in the Phoenix market.

Scott Rawlins · Dec 11, 2017

Joy is correct. They have review schema on that page and the url is pointing to an inner page and not the home page.

JoyHawkins · Dec 11, 2017

Yep, that's exactly what I was referring to.

Kostas Nicolacopoulos · Dec 11, 2017

As Joy and Scott said, the pages that appear in the organic SERP with stars have the review schema implemented. For example if you look at the source code on that page it contains this:

HTML:

<h3>Testimonials</h3>
<div class="schema-review" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Review"><div itemprop="itemReviewed" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Thing">
<meta itemprop="name" content="Phillips Law Group" /></div><div itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><span class="author" itemprop="name">Danitza Gonzales</span></div><span class="review-stars"> ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ </span><div itemprop="reviewRating" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Rating" class="ratings"><meta itemprop="worstRating" content="1" /><span itemprop="ratingValue"> 5</span> / <span itemprop="bestRating">5</span> stars</div><div class="schema-review-body" itemprop="reviewBody">Very good people to work with always kept me updated and got my situation handled!</div></div>

The review can be seen on the sidebar.

You might want to take a look at Google's guidelines for Review Schema or search for schema rating on this forum to find previous conversations.

I hope this helps.

standenman · Dec 11, 2017

Yes I have carefully reviewed the review schema that phillipslaw.com used and have in fact recreated it on my wordpress website. It has not resulted in delicious review stars in organic. Surely this is not all there is to it. I would think every one of you SEOs would be talking about using correct review schema markup, which I have not seen, is that is all that is needed. And why would this markup on the homepage be unsuccessful but on interior page be successful? And surely this markup is not all there is to it.

heckler · Dec 11, 2017

I would think every one of you SEOs would be talking about using correct review schema markup, which I have not seen, is that is all that is needed. And why would this markup on the homepage be unsuccessful but on interior page be successful? And surely this markup is not all there is to it.

It was the new hotness 4-5 years ago. It was abused (like most things) and Google put training wheels on it so that it no longer appeared on a site's index page. I'm sure @Joy could provide more detail, but that's a jist of it.

Just because the markup is there, doesn't mean Google will serve it in the SERP.

You can do a sanity check by doing a site:<your_site> query to see which pages are eligible to show the review snippets, but again, it's up to Google's discretion.

standenman · Dec 11, 2017

So yes question comes full circle now. I think the answer is, yes you would have to have review scheme markup correct to have any hope of this happening, but the review stars in google SERP that lucky phiillipslaw.com has is simply an anomaly (i.e, not worth trying to reproduce?)

Linda Buquet · Dec 11, 2017

standenman said:
Surely this is not all there is to it. I would think every one of you SEOs would be talking about using correct review schema markup, which I have not seen, is that is all that is needed.

Yep we've been talking about it here for years. Use the search box and enter schema stars and you'll fine about 50 posts. Then search for schema reviews and you'll find over 200 posts.

The reason you don't see it discussed much lately is that it seldom works any more.

standenman said:
Yes I have carefully reviewed the review schema that phillipslaw.com used and have in fact recreated it on my wordpress website. It has not resulted in delicious review stars in organic.

See sentence above. A few years ago you'd see 4 out of 7 attys in competitive markets with the stars. But as usual the spammers and scammers ruined it for the rest of us - so it's really hard to get them to show. I know top gurus who tried and tried a couple years ago before Google clamped down and they were usually unable to get consistent, repeatable results.

Plus if it was that easy and everyone was talking about it, everyone would be doing it and no one would stand out more than others.

standenman said:
And why would this markup on the homepage be unsuccessful but on interior page be successful? And surely this markup is not all there is to it.

What everyone above said is true Stan.

Read some of the posts after you do a search here. Just like SEO there are guidelines, pitfalls and ways to get in trouble. Plus just like SEO it keeps changing over time, due to abuse. And like I said now they seldom show. This is the 1st time I've heard of anyone being successful in probably 2 years.

Maybe they are using a new trick? Maybe they got lucky? Not sure.

heckler · Dec 11, 2017

standenman said:
...the review stars in google SERP that lucky phiillipslaw.com has is simply an anomaly (i.e, not worth trying to reproduce?)

I wouldn't call it a anomaly. Do some research. You've got everything you need to make it happen here in this thread. It seems to me like you're just looking for a Do 'this' and get 'this' result type of answer; which is rarely the case for Google.

standenman · Dec 11, 2017

Would be nice to know which direction to turn

thanks for your response.

standenman · Dec 11, 2017

OK. Thanks

JoyHawkins · Dec 11, 2017

What's the link to the page you put it on and the query that you are searching? I'd be happy to take a look and see what is wrong or why it's not showing.

standenman · Dec 11, 2017

OK. Thanks Joy very much. Page is the homepage, https://www.disabilityapproved.com/. Search term: "Dallas Disability Lawyer"

JoyHawkins · Dec 11, 2017

Hey Stan,

As per my previous post, review stars never show on homepages. That's why you don't see them.

standenman · Dec 12, 2017

Well I understand that is what you had said but you had asked for the link to the page where I had put the code. I really feel like I get SEO fraternity snark here. I am done.

JoyHawkins · Dec 12, 2017

Stan,

I wasn't trying to be snarky - sorry if it came across that way.

I wasn't sure if maybe you misunderstood the previous post I made. Review stars never show on homepages so if that's the page that you put them on, you won't see the stars.

standenman · Dec 12, 2017

Curious about the observation here that review stars in organic SERP almost never happens anymore. Just looking at Phoenix legal market I find many.

JoyHawkins · Dec 12, 2017

I wouldn't say it's rare. I see it a lot in the legal space.

I've had no issues getting them to show for any inner page on a site when they're implemented correctly.

It is coding of course so it can vary from site-to-site. This is the tool that you use to see if it's implemented properly: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/

For those that don't feel comfortable with the coding, there are services like Get Five Stars that have it added automatically.

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