Google's New Announcement About Review Schema

[JoyHawkins]

All my Slack channels are already buzzing about this. I'd love to see how you guys interpret this announcement from Google:

That’s why, with this change, we’re not going to display review rich results anymore for the schema types localBusiness and Organization (and their subtypes) in cases when the entity being reviewed controls the reviews themselves.

How do you think that will impact websites using 3rd parties to collect reviews (there are dozens out there) and then including those on their website via a widget that is marked up with schema?

 

[Simon Cox]

First place I came to as soon as I read the post. It is a bit ambiguous.

"Reviews that can be perceived as “self-serving” aren't in the best interest of users. We call reviews “self-serving” when a review about entity A is placed on the website of entity A - either directly in their markup or via an embedded 3rd party widget. "

So my guess is that Schema review markup is going to be ignored unless it comes in via a 3rd party embed (different domain).

Well that will save a lot of mark up work...

 

[davematson]

From a user perspective, I think this is very good.
It's always bugged me that so many sites grab a 5 start review and mark it up on their own page.

If you can still embed a review from a 3rd party site via widget, just not with rating schema, it shouldn't impact the review ecosystem. It'll just make the serps look less spammy. (Assuming I'm understanding how this change will work.)

All my Slack channels are already buzzing about this. I'd love to see how you guys interpret this announcement from Google:



How do you think that will impact websites using 3rd parties to collect reviews (there are dozens out there) and then including those on their website via a widget that is marked up with schema?

 

[JoyHawkins]

So my guess is that Schema review markup is going to be ignored unless it comes in via a 3rd party embed (different domain).

This is what I was thinking as well. I mean it would be pretty easy for them to detect, right?

 

[Simon Cox]

Nothing like a 3rd part embed to slow your site down...

Guess we will have to test when this rolls out. I making some screen shots of different clients with reviews currently in their SERPs for when they ring me to shout at me.

 

[davematson]

It says 3rd party embeds that are self-selected should also not get review markup on your site.

Reviews that can be perceived as “self-serving” aren't in the best interest of users. We call reviews “self-serving” when a review about entity A is placed on the website of entity A - either directly in their markup or via an embedded 3rd party widget.

Making Review Rich Results more helpful

Official news on crawling and indexing sites for the Google index

webmasters.googleblog.com

 

[AaronWeiche]

Marking up 3rd-party reviews on your own/business's site is already against TOS, so I don't see that as the answer. I'm hoping to get some clarity to a few questions. As usual their is a lot left in the gray areas on this update.

 

[AndySimpson]

So no word of "when" this is going to happen, we'll just wake up one morning with schema removed from the serps and the phone ringing from eagle eyed clients #herewegoagain

 

[MeganR]

So, does this suggest a review widget like GatherUp on the site is insufficient? Would a Yelp review widget work--allowing stars to still show up?

 

[gyitsakalakis]

For local businesses, I read this as no self-reviews marked-up period. Put simply, no review snippets for reviews of your own local business on your own site.

Let's see how well the "algorithms" actually work here... If they really wanted to "end this," they should do manual action that impacts rankings.

 

[MeganR]

For local businesses, I read this as no self-reviews marked-up period. Put simply, no review snippets for reviews of your own local business on your own site.

Let's see how well the "algorithms" actually work here... If they really wanted to "end this," they should do manual action that impacts rankings.

Wowzers! It's my understanding that Google does dish out review schema markup penalties (although not often.) Are you suggesting they don't impact rankings?

 

[gyitsakalakis]

Wowzers! It's my understanding that Google does dish out review schema markup penalties (although not often.) Are you suggesting they don't impact rankings?

I've heard tales of impact on rankings, but I haven't seen one myself (would love to hear from others). In fact, I recall johnmu saying no rankings impact somewhere, but maybe I'm remembering wrong. The only "penalty" I've seen is no more snippets.

 

[JoyHawkins]

We've definitely seen schema-related penalties in the last year. It's generally when review schema is present without the physical reviews showing on the page anywhere. Every single one I've looked at simply removes the gold stars in the SERPs and has no impact on ranking.

 

[AndySimpson]

I've heard tales of impact on rankings, but I haven't seen one myself (would love to hear from others). In fact, I recall johnmu saying no rankings impact somewhere, but maybe I'm remembering wrong. The only "penalty" I've seen is no more snippets.

I think they'll just drop it from the serps and show a schema error when you go into GSC...no penalty, it just won't show.

 

[andykuiper]

This is what I was thinking as well. I mean it would be pretty easy for them to detect, right?

Except in this quote, it looks like they are saying:
We call reviews “self-serving” when a review about entity A is placed on the website of entity A - ...via an embedded 3rd party widget.

"...via an embedded third party widget"
leads one to wonder if GMB review widgets, GatherUp review widgets, etc. are allowed? Yikes, this is not very clear.

---> Reviews that can be perceived as “self-serving” aren't in the best interest of users. We call reviews “self-serving” when a review about entity A is placed on the website of entity A - either directly in their markup or via an embedded 3rd party widget. <---

 

[andykuiper]

Except in this quote, it looks like they are saying:
We call reviews “self-serving” when a review about entity A is placed on the website of entity A - ...via an embedded 3rd party widget.

"...via an embedded third party widget"
leads one to wonder if GMB review widgets, GatherUp review widgets, etc. are allowed? Yikes, this is not very clear.

---> Reviews that can be perceived as “self-serving” aren't in the best interest of users. We call reviews “self-serving” when a review about entity A is placed on the website of entity A - either directly in their markup or via an embedded 3rd party widget. <---

*I'm not going to change anything on my or my client's sites till after I hear from the experts later this week at LocalU Advanced in Denver

 

[gyitsakalakis]

*I'm not going to change anything on my or my client's sites till after I hear from the experts later this week at LocalU Advanced in Denver

Yep, I read it as no markup on reviews of your own local business regardless of whether first or third party.

 

[andykuiper]

Yep, I read it as no markup on reviews of your own local business regardless of whether first or third party.

Kinda sucks they won't accept GMB reviews via a widget - IF they trust them (we all don't lol) they should be ok with that.

 

[BrianMacKenzie]

For local businesses, I read this as no self-reviews marked-up period. Put simply, no review snippets for reviews of your own local business on your own site.

Let's see how well the "algorithms" actually work here... If they really wanted to "end this," they should do manual action that impacts rankings.

Basically, the only sites that will show Review Snippets (for schema.org/LocalBusiness and schema.org/Organization) from here on out are 3rd party sites that aggregate reviews and provide schema markup on a page. For example, what BirdEye does.

Does that sound right?

The idea of "self-serving" Review Shippet markup feels a bit contradictory. SEO (for a local business or organization) is self-serving as a practice - we aren't doing it to better Google and increase the profits of Google - we're doing it to increase our client's profits.

 

[AaronWeiche]

I would say that is incorrect.

Google' Review Snippet Guidelines have this item: "Sites must collect ratings information directly from users and not from other sites."

So "repurposing" 3rd party reviews that have been sourced directly by that site and already marked-up at that site ... is not within their technical guidelines for quite some time.