Review Schema

As of September 2019, Google will no longer display rich review snippets for “self-serving” reviews for businesses and organizations (the LocalBusiness and Organization schema types).

Google considers reviews as “self-serving” if the entity itself has chosen to add the markup to its own pages, about its own business or organization.

Do you need to remove self-serving reviews from LocalBusiness or Organization? No, you don’t need to remove them. Google Search just won’t display review snippets for those pages anymore.

Reference: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/09/making-review-rich-results-more-helpful.html

By implementing Review Schema on a web page, you give that page the opportunity to show review stars in the SERPs like this:

One study showed that by getting review stars to show up on your own website results, “can boost CTR by as much as 35%”.

PRO TIP: GatherUp is a third-party review software that does this for you! They mark-up your first-party reviews with Schema so that you don’t have to mess with any code.

Here’s a JSON-LD example for marking up two first-party reviews on a web page along with the aggregate rating.

<script type="application/ld+json">
 "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "LocalBusiness",    
  "name": "BUSINESS NAME",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
		"streetAddress": "STREET ADDRESS",
		"addressLocality": "CITY",
		"addressRegion": "STATE ABBREVIATION",
		"postalCode": "ZIP CODE"
	},
	"telePhone": "PHONE NUMBER",
	"geo": {
		"@type": "GeoCoordinates",
		"latitude": "LATITUDE",
		"longitude": "LONGITUDE"
	},
  "url": "URL",
  "logo": "LOGO URL",
  "image": "IMAGE URL",
  "priceRange" : "$-$$$",
  "aggregateRating": {
    "@type": "AggregateRating",
    "ratingValue": "PUT A SINGLE DIGIT, WHAT THE AVERAGE RATING IS OVERALL (1-5)",
    "ratingCount": "PUT A SINGLE DIGIT HERE, HOW MANY REVIEWS TOTAL ARE ON THE PAGE"
 	 },
  "review": [ 
    {
    "@type": "Review",
    "author": "REVIEWER ONE NAME",
    "datePublished": "YEAR-MONTH-DAY (xxxx-xx-xxxx)",
    "reviewBody": "THE REVIEW CONTENT THAT REVIEWER ONE LEFT",
    "reviewRating": {
      "@type": "Rating",
      "bestRating": "5",
      "ratingValue": "PUT A SINGLE DIGIT, WHAT THE AVERAGE RATING IS (1-5)",
      "worstRating": "1"
    }
    },
        {
    "@type": "Review",
    "author": "REVIEWER TWO NAME",
    "datePublished": "YEAR-MONTH-DAY (xxxx-xx-xxxx)",
    "reviewBody": "THE REVIEW CONTENT THAT REVIEWER TWO LEFT",
    "reviewRating": {
      "@type": "Rating",
      "bestRating": "5",
      "ratingValue": "PUT A SINGLE DIGIT, WHAT THE AVERAGE RATING IS (1-5)",
      "worstRating": "1"
    }
    }
  ]
}
</script>

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