Schema and rankings

[Libkee27]

Has anyone noticed any effect in traffic or rankings after implementing schema? Also, curious to know if google uses them often, not so often, etc.

I have a decent schema in place for over 50 clients, but some clients would like to add more (ratings and video) and I want to make sure that it will be of some benefit before deciding to implement it. Thank you!

 

[Suresh]

Schema is very helpful for the machines as well as the search engines. Schema helps to define what is the page exactly about.

In the local business space, you can actually specify a schema which is not present in the schema.org website. We use the product ontology to inform the search engines about it, By referring to the sub-topics of other vocabularies like wikidata, Geonames, etc.

Overall it's worth every line you code. Learning how to code is way powerful than using tools. With a little bit of learning curve, you can create powerful schema markup, That can help you a lot.

In my findings, Even schema helps a lot in google ads campaigns too. And Some of the agencies mentioned it too, adding schema has improved the shopping campaigns on google.

Hope this helps.

 

[Rich Owings]

Ratings schema, properly implemented, can increase click thru rate. I don't see much direct effect on rankings though.

 

[Yan Gilbert]

I have not seen any direct influence where adding schema directly increases the ranking either.

 

[Matthew Summers]

It's not exactly an amazing change, but it happened exactly when I implemented Local Business schema on the location page in question. However, on the same day I added Local Business schema to another location page - which hasn't seen any such lift.

So... it can help, but won't necessarily.

 

[BrianMacKenzie]

Ratings schema, properly implemented, can increase click thru rate. I don't see much direct effect on rankings though.

I have not seen any direct influence where adding schema directly increases the ranking either.

One of our local clients had a positive upwards swing after adding aggregateRating and localBusiness rating schema. We've witnessed an increased CTR and Impressions, and higher position trends inside GSC. GA also shows a considerable increase in traffic.

I attached 2 screenshots that show the upwards trend for a very small sample size (e.g., exact match comparison and a single page with the schema added).

 

[Ampere]

Ratings schema, properly implemented, can increase click thru rate. I don't see much direct effect on rankings though.

I would like to add this. I already have a couple reviews on the landing pages for the towns that I serve. The reviews are from people in those towns. Is it as easy as putting in some schema code around the reviews?

Just having those 5 stars standing out in the organic results would draw more clicks.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Ratings schema, properly implemented, can increase click thru rate. I don't see much direct effect on rankings though.

This matches my findings as well.

 

[Rich Owings]

I would like to add this. I already have a couple reviews on the landing pages for the towns that I serve. The reviews are from people in those towns. Is it as easy as putting in some schema code around the reviews?

Basically, yes.

 

[Ampere]

Basically, yes.

Do you have a link to a page giving the markup code that you use? I’m seeing some different versions and I’m not sure what is the best

 

[Rich Owings]

https://whitespark.ca/blog/how-to-use-aggregate-review-schema-to-get-stars-in-the-serps/

 

[BrianMacKenzie]

Do you have a link to a page giving the markup code that you use? I’m seeing some different versions and I’m not sure what is the best

Here are some examples. You'll need to fill in the empty data where you see "".

On the page you'd like to see schema markup:

{
  "@context": "http://schema.org",
  "@type": "",
  "name": "",
  "aggregateRating": {
    "ratingValue": "",
    "reviewCount": "",
    "bestRating": "5",
    "worstRating": "1",
    "@context": "http://schema.org",
    "@type": "AggregateRating"
  }
}

On the Reviews page the previous page links to:

{
  "@context": "http://schema.org",
  "@type": "",
  "name": "",
  "aggregateRating": {
    "ratingValue": "",
    "reviewCount": "",
    "bestRating": "5",
    "worstRating": "1",
    "@context": "http://schema.org",
    "@type": "AggregateRating"
  },
  "review": [
    {
      "@type": "Review",
      "author": {
        "@type": "Person",
        "name": ""
      },
      "datePublished": "",
      "reviewBody": "",
      "name": "",
      "reviewRating": {
        "@type": "Rating",
        "ratingValue": "",
        "bestRating": "5",
        "worstRating": "1"
      }
    },
    {
      "@type": "Review",
      "author": {
        "@type": "Person",
        "name": ""
      },
      "datePublished": "",
      "reviewBody": "",
      "name": "",
      "reviewRating": {
        "@type": "Rating",
        "ratingValue": "",
        "bestRating": "5",
        "worstRating": "1"
      }
    }
  ]
}

 

[Ampere]

https://whitespark.ca/blog/how-to-use-aggregate-review-schema-to-get-stars-in-the-serps/

Thank you, I will review that when I get home!

Here are some examples. You'll need to fill in the empty data where you see "".

On the page you'd like to see schema markup:

~

On the Reviews page the previous page links to:

~

Thank you for the info. Forgive me, but I am not understanding the two pages that you mentioned.

What I have now is a few town based landing pages with 2 5-star reviews at the bottom of each. I would like those landing pages to show the 5 stars in the Google organic results.

 

[wilhatfield]

Schema helps plenty, however G was pretty good at knowing what your pages were about before you add in schema so, you may not notice a difference and think it does nothing. However, on new sites I have noticed it does a really good job at saving time. I suppose it provides a shortcut to the ranking algorithms making it easier for it to get from A to Z, by bypassing some of the routes in-between. imho