Pros and Cons of Adding Local Reviews on National Organic Pages

[Gustavo]

Hello Local Search Forum members. A client of us asked about the Pros and Cons of Adding Local Reviews on National Organic Pages. As far as I know there´s a benefit related to trust, and the potential for increase in conversions. In terms of rankings, as I understand, there´s no benefit at all. I would appreciate your opinions. Thanks.

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

Hi @Gustavo! There has been a couple of recent posts on reviews and the best way to show them on your website/webpages. Also, John Mueller recently chimed in on his thoughts regarding the use of reviews.

Google: Embedding Local Reviews Collected By Third Parties Does Not Help With Web Search Rankings

Google's John Mueller was asked if it would help with web rankings in Google to embed reviews from sites like Facebook, Bing, Google, etc., on your website. John said no, not for web search, and he al

www.seroundtable.com

One thing, is that if you choose to re-publish Google reviews on your website, Google has made it pretty clear that you need the permission of the original Google reviewer before you re-use/publish the review on your website: Using Google Reviews On Your Website

While the article is a few years old, the advice is still solid. It would be great to hear from @mblumenthal if he is aware of any changes to this practice. At least based on at schema best practices, the reviews have to be sourced directly from your website.

Also, if you are just wanting to show reviews on the page but not concerned about schema, that should make things much easier for you. My belief is that having reviews on a webpage is not going to hurt, but like you said, it might convey confidence to the visitor about the quality of the company's product/service. You are also correct, that the consensus is that reviews don't thelp with ranking but if properly marked up it might have the benefit of having a rich snippet in your organic result.

If you are wanting to use schema to markup the individual reviews or aggregate reviews, then there are considerations to make depending on whether the reviews are for a product versus service: Google Updates Rules For Displaying Reviews Rich Results In Search Results

Review Snippet (Review) Structured Data | Google Search Central | Documentation | Google Developers

A review snippet is a short excerpt of a review or rating. Explore this guide to learn about Google review snippets and how to enable rich snippets.

developers.google.com

 

[mblumenthal]

Schema markup is not about ranking better and never has been. Its about showing review stars in the SERPS. Google stopped showing review stars in the SERPS for small businesses several years ago.

But Google handles large national brands differently than local businesses. They have more trust in them and will typically display review stars for them

Here are two searches that show this:
pods reviews has both 1st party and 3rd party reviews in the 1st organic result from their website. this page consolidated reviews from all of their locations

allstate dallas shows the location pages with 1st party reviews. In this case MORE local organic pages show because of the unique content provided by the local reviews

Google has been clear that the schema should refer to 1st party reviews which both of the above do.

 

[Gustavo]

@JeffClevelandTN, thanks, I appreciate your help. I´ll review this.

@mblumenthal thank you.