Is this a way to get review star icons for your own site in SERPs?

[Rich Owings]

Just noticed that a local business is getting review star icons in SERPs for their own site (see screenshot). When I looked at the code, I see that their aggregateRating markup is referencing another site (reputation.com). Will that work for other sites or is this just one that slipped through the cracks?

 

[StephanieNewton]

Hey Rich,

It looks like this one just slipped through the cracks and in general, I'd recommend avoiding workarounds. Google usually fills these gaps in eventually and it's better to stay on its good side, after all! That said, you can still use product schema if that applies to yours or your client's business?

 

[Rich Owings]

Thanks, @StephanieNewton. I looked and this does indeed appear to violate Google's guidelines:

If the review snippet is for a local business or an organization, you must follow these additional guidelines:

• Pages using LocalBusiness or any other type of Organization structured data are ineligible for star review feature if the entity being reviewed controls the reviews about itself. For example, a review about entity A is placed on the website of entity A, either directly in their structured data or through an embedded third-party widget.
• Ratings must be sourced directly from users.
• Don't rely on human editors to create, curate, or compile ratings information for local businesses; instead, use critic review structured data.
• Sites must collect ratings information directly from users and not from other sites.

 

[carolyn2]

I understand the aggregated review schema is being ignored - the reason the stars are showing is that if you look at the "aggregateRating": you'll see schema for "review": which has the actual review on the page. The "reviewBody": and all the details - it's below the aggregated code. So in this case the proper use of review schema with the actual reviews is what is permitting the stars to show in the serps.

 

[Georgie May]

Hey Rich,

It looks like this one just slipped through the cracks and in general, I'd recommend avoiding workarounds. Google usually fills these gaps in eventually and it's better to stay on its good side, after all! That said, you can still use product schema if that applies to yours or your client's business?

Hi Stephanie,
What do you think about this example. Similar to what you found but they have markup showing on every page.

 

[StephanieNewton]

Hi Georgie,

It looks like this business is using local business aggregate rating schema. Just from a quick look I'd also speculate that they're not adhering to Google's guidelines because a) it's not immediately clear where the reviews are being sourced from and b) it's not referring to a specific product. But, this is somewhat speculation — I'm by no means an expert in all-things Schema!