Review Schema

⚠ Note: In the past, an entity like a business or an organization could add review markup about themselves to pages on their website. with the goal of having review stars show up in Google’s SERPs. That markup could have been added directly by the entity or embedded through the use of a third-party widget.

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:

schema-review-stars

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/