Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Do ratings/reviews show up in Organic Search Results anymore?
-
I read about using schema or h1review to add markup that would get an individual person's review to show up in organic search, but it was from 2013. I did a few queries for keywords in my area, and none of the results had this. Then I did some queries for generic things like "best pizza in Tampa" and "coffee in tampa" and they didn't have it either. So, is this still something that can be done or not?
- I do see it when a review site like yelp comes up or in ads, but I'm specifically talking about organic search results from our website.
Thanks,
Ruben
-
Hi Ruben,
Back in 2014, Google stated that they don't want markup on testimonials on your website. You can read about this here and figure out how you'd like to proceed, given this policy:
This caused quite a bit of talk at the time, and I don't believe all sites are complying, but important to know.
Regarding third party reviews you are republishing on your site, I have not seen individual reviews coming up with stars on them for some time, but this seems to change so frequently. For example, up until recently, I was seeing Facebook listings coming up in Google's SERPs with stars on them. Now, that appears to have changed. So, I'm not sure what, if anything, you could do right now to get individual reviews posted on your website to show up with stars in the SERPs.
If anyone has seen a different pattern, please do share with Ruben!
-
Well we have both on our site. Some are pictures of hand written notes, and others are screenshots of reviews from places like google + and avvo. So, I can do either.
- Ruben
-
Hi Ruben,
Just to clarify, are you talking about testimonials you've collected from clients and have published on your website or are you talking about 3rd party reviews you've collected from other platforms and are re-publishing on your website?
-
I have been seeing review stars more and more for local organic positioning. When I click-through to see how they're getting those reviews, for the most part they are employing some kind of plugin that regenerates their Google Plus reviews (I question how legitimate most of these reviews are [especially for small businesses], but that's neither here nor there), or the reviews from a well-known aggregator (Health Grades or Demand Force, for example).
-
I agree with Josh on this one. There needs to be some reason Google should believe that the ratings on your site are legitimate. I can't be certain that third party sites like Yelp or Google+ are the source of that social proof, but it seems both plausible and fairly easy to detect for Google. It would be a sound place to start.
-
We are collecting reviews using ShopperApproved. When I do searches for many of our product queries the yellow stars and ratings scores appear beside our listings in the organic SERPs. Our listings in the SERPs look great compared to our competitors, and the results since getting those stars to appear have been kickass. If I was in a business like yours I would get in touch with ShopperApproved and ask them to start a service named "Client Approved". I believe that their model could be used to allow accountants, attorneys, etc. to collect reviews on the same platform, but just branding it as "client" instead of "shopper".
ADDED: SA has a widget that you can copy/paste into the code of your website and it will display random reviews, 4/5 star reviews or hand selected reviews. I believe that this social proof from past customers has really increased sales. We are showing random reviews rather than hand-picking.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Any Success Getting Fake 5 Star Google My Business Reviews Removed From Competitors?
Hi, I am working on a competitor who is obviously building up fake reviews using a 3rd party service. I need to build more evidence. A majority of his reviews on Google My Business, they are done by reviewers with very few reviews (no profile pic), and that seem to review 3-4 companies in the Chicagoland area the exact same day. This happens again and again. It started about 1.5 years ago. Before that everything looks normal. Any idea how much proof I need to actually get those reviews and/or his company removed? I am working on getting access to a private group on Facebook where he talks about it. Thanks in advance!
Reviews and Ratings | | vetofunk1 -
How to Remove Online-Only / B2B Yelp Listing
I advise a regional company on their online marketing efforts. They provide a service across a very large area, and they only have one corporate office. Their product is purchased online, and there is no face-to-face interaction with customers. Customers do not conduct business at their corporate office. Yelp says they are primarily intended for the review of local businesses and their guidelines for adding a business state that they are "l__ess interested in showing online-only, business-to-business (b2b), and direct-seller businesses" and that "if a business page you add is not eligible to be listed on Yelp, it will not be part of our directory". Our business doesn't meet this criteria. So my question is how I would go about requesting that our Yelp remove our listing due to ineligibility? I found an article on Whitespark that discusses this topic and they show some clear examples of online-only businesses that had their Yelp listings removed. Unfortunately, that article doesn't offer an insight on how to go about the process of requesting/triggering removal. Does anyone have experience on how to go about this? Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Reviews and Ratings | | UMoveFree0 -
How many Google reviews can I collect at once?
I work for a University with 10,000+ students and alumni that could submit reviews. But how many reviews should I be collecting at one time? I don't want to overload the reviews and put up a red flag in Google...any insight on how much is too much?
Reviews and Ratings | | GabeGibitz0 -
How does decimal rounding of reviews to stars work in ios appstore? Starting from which average review score to get full 5 star rating?
How does decimal rounding of reviews to stars work in ios appstore?
Reviews and Ratings | | lcourse
Starting from which average review score to get full 5 star rating? Duolingo has a 5 star rating, but I doubt that they really have an all time review average larger than 4,75. In the google playstore their average of the android version is 4,6. Does anybody know how apple calculates the star ratings or has an URL reference where this is explained?0 -
Rich Snippets (Rating stars) not showing up on website in search results
Hello, I have All in One Schema.org Rich Snippets plugin installed on my WP websites for the star snippets to show up in google search results. I used the Item Review property in this plugin for the homepage and under Reviewer’s Name (added name of author), Item to be reviewed (added brand/business name) and Your Rating (of course 5 :)). Now, the problem occurring is that instead of stars showing up in search results, the date when the respective page was published is showing up in search results. This is happening with all the websites I added plugin in. Am I doing something wrong or what is happening. Please help as i want those stars to show up on the websites. Please help me with any plugin or useful info that can help me with this. Thanks!
Reviews and Ratings | | BrianBotts.0 -
Moving my photography business to another state. Is it possible to transfer Google My Business listing WITHOUT losing my Google Reviews?
A friend of mine is transitioning her photography business to another state. She moved about 5 years ago and consequently lost all of her Google+/Yelp reviews. Having reviews as a photographer is EXTREMELY important for her business reputation. She doesn't want this to happen again. Is it possible to change the location of a Google my Business page and keep the existing reviews? Thanks
Reviews and Ratings | | RosemaryB0 -
How can I avoid duplicate content when building a review widget?
My website has a profile page for each of the home improvement contractors who signs up. They accumulate reviews on those pages. I want to build a review widget to display our reviews on our contractors' websites. How can I avoid duplicate content issues for the reviews? Example of a profile page with a few reviews: http://www.thehomefixers.com/members/425/waterheaters-plus-llc.php
Reviews and Ratings | | menachemp0 -
Migrating Reviews from Old SIte
We recently changed our Website to Word Press and I would like to move the old reviews to the new site. I am concerned Google might not understand the reviews showing up all of a sudden. The old reviews were on a sub-domain (store.domain.com). I will be able to match the dates and text as well as names. Any advice or Best Practice on this? Thanks!
Reviews and Ratings | | Chris6610