Update to Google Reviews & Ratings Schema Guidelines

[Linda Buquet]

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Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable shared a minor update I wanted to let you know about.

He reports that on March 9th, Google updated the review-specific usage guidelines and policies for reviews and rating rich snippets.

<a href="https://www.seroundtable.com/google-updates-reviews-ratings-rich-snippets-19983.html">Google Clarifies Reviews & Ratings Rich Snippets: Can't Be Category Based, Must Be Item Based</a>

Here is the additional text added to the page:

Review and rating markup should be used to provide review and/or rating information about a specific item, not about a category or a list of items. For example, "hotels in Madrid", "summer dresses", or "cake recipes" are not specific items. See also our structured data policies for multiple entities on the same page.

Here is a link to the actual Google guidelines for Reviews and Ratings Structured Data.

Thanks Barry!


We've had some other good review news this week, so if you missed it check out:

<a href="http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-reviews/29105-review-gif-share-their-best-google-reviews-gif-jiffy.html">Review Gif - Share their Best Google Reviews in a Gif in a Jiffy!</a>

<a href="http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-reviews/28925-local-review-sites-your-side-phil-rozek.html">Which Local Review Sites Are on Your Side? by Phil Rozek</a>

<a href="http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-reviews/29148-google-reviews-trouble-triggering-review%3D1-more-review-options-inside.html">Google Reviews: Trouble Triggering &review=1? More Review Options Inside</a>


Image Credit: Chris Gregory, one of my training clients and a member here.

 

[Chris_Gregory]

Thanks for the mention Linda.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Did I miss something? I Authorship showing again?

Or is he in your circles and that's why it's showing?

 

[Chris_Gregory]

Hi Joshua,

Authorship photos aren't back. Linda grabbed a picture from an old blog article that showed both authorship and review snippets when Author photos were appearing. The changes mentioned in the guideline changes have more to do with reviews. Ignore the authorship photo =)

 

[Linda Buquet]

Yep sorry for the confusion.

I just quickly search for local review schema or something and came up with that image.

It was a quick post and quick image grab and I knew it was from an old post. Was just trying to show stars in the SERPs. Didn't realize at the time it could be confusing.