Review stars in Google Organic: How is it Done?

[Linda Buquet]

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

Oops sorry, ya I see 2 in that market.

I checked "Los Angeles Criminal Attorney" which I thought would have lots of marketing savvy attys. There were none. And I don't see stars that often lately. Not like there was for awhile.

 

[standenman]

And here in fact in my niche market. #7 in search "lupus disability lawyer", #9 in search "multiple sclerosis disability lawyer". Yet this guy has NO GMB reviews! He aggregate review to be "5 out of 5 based on 68 user reviews" which is not true because his reviews on AVVO are not perfect. So it seems Google just let this guy pull the rating numbers out of,,,well the air!

 

[Larry Linson]

I am interested in the subject of this post, but I do not follow this comment:

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

I do not follow what you mean when you say "what pages might be eligible". Are you saying that search will give you pages that it would be most likely that some review schema would produce organic search stars?

Thanks.

 

[heckler]

I am interested in the subject of this post, but I do not follow this comment:

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

I do not follow what you mean when you say "what pages might be eligible". Are you saying that search will give you pages that it would be most likely that some review schema would produce organic search stars?

Thanks.

It will show you pages you've got marked up with the review schema with a snippet that doesn't appear on a normal query. site: queries are treated differently by Google.

It doesn't necessarily mean Google will serve them with the snippet, it just shows which are eligible based on the page content.

 

[MeganR]

I just viewed a webinar that discussed review schema markup and I want a second opinion on one of the suggestions. It conflicts with what I've read on the forums in the past, and I want to make sure that I am implementing the most up-to-date practices for clients.

Webinar: You should only use Google reviews. Don't use third-party reviews.

Is that correct?

I'm relatively new to the forum, so I apologize if this is not the correct place to post. Unsure if I should have started new thread.

 

[JoyHawkins]

If you're trying to stay within the guidelines, you should only markup 1st-party reviews, meaning reviews you've collected on the site. This would mean you should not mark-up reviews from Google or any other 3rd party site.

However, I have found there is absolutely no enforcement of this guideline so marking up 3rd party reviews does work and does get the gold stars.

 

[MeganR]

Thanks, Joy. It's funny you responded because I've always followed your recommendation not to use G reviews for review markup. This webinar states that G guidelines changed in 2016 and supposedly indicates use of G reviews. Never heard that. Just wanted to confirm.

 

[Larry Linson]

If "caught" by Google, would they impose a penalty do you think?

 

[MeganR]

Larry, Google most definitely penalizes sites that violate their guidelines, e.g., putting review markup on every page, and other guideline violations. As Joy notes, it's rarely enforced, but there's always a risk of penalty. And, I certainly wouldn't want my clients yanked from SERPs for a review markup violation.

 

[Eric Rohrback]

Yes, if caught you will get a penalty. It would be in violation of Google's quality guidelines for structured data. The markup would be ineligible to show if that's found. If it's really bad, then you could get a manual penalty.

I haven't seen many sites get hit by this, but it's something to be aware of.