Review Schema Dropped Off A Cliff!?
-
Hello everyone,
I recently implemented some review schema for my website which looked to be successful as my review stars were appearing in organic rankings with no problem! Yay! However... I've just checked in on where we are with these and they have literally dropped off a cliff and I have no idea why.
See image attached with the graph that shows our reviews looking great in July/August then dropping off w/c 26th August. I literally have no idea why this has happened. The Schema Markup Tool shows no errors or issues with the markup either.
Can anyone advise?
-
Hi Virginia,
Looks like, yes, there are problematic practices going on here. I'm not an expert schema diagnostician, but I can offer you two suggestion that I believe should help.
-
Read fully through this article on schema markup best practices: https://whitespark.ca/blog/how-to-use-aggregate-review-schema-to-get-stars-in-the-serps/
-
If you get lost, hire David Deering's company TouchPoint Digital - http://www.touchpointdigitalmarketing.com/ - for some consulting. He's an absolute expert and can help you get your schema into guideline compliance.
I hope these resources are useful to you!
-
-
Looking into the guidelines further, I'm wondering if it's because I don't link through to checkatrade in my reviews. The other issue I'm having is the product in question are conservatory roofs. These are not products you can review on an individual item basis, as it's just one product (in two colour variations) but we don't have these all listed on the website. Instead, the reviews are about our customer service, building work and overall product review. To make this easier, this is our website: https://www.greenspaceconservatories.co.uk/ you'll see that we have info pages about our product, but we don't have product reviews. Just service reviews. Is this potentially causing a problem as well?
-
Overall traffic hasn't dropped, but organic dropped on 29th July from peaking at 232 down to 108 visits per day - which is when the Schema seems to have suddenly disappeared. But I'm guessing the drop in organic is because of the drop of visibility on the review schema, so not sure that helps me figure out what is going.
-
Hi Miriam,
Hmm maybe we have? I've put the schema markup on all pages - including the homepage - I couldn't see anything anywhere that said I couldn't do this? The platform that we have taken the reviews from has been from something called Checkatrade, but we don't reference that in the markup at all. We have the reviews dotted around the site and reference one or two on most landing pages, hence why we put the review markup across the site. We do have a testimonials section on our site which has more reviews on it, but these are added in via HTML as opposed to a widget pulling from the third party site (like the other dotted around the site). I can't see why this would be an issue though? Do I need to have links pointing back to the Checkatrade website for all reviews on the site for Google to validate my reviews?
Let me show you the markup and see if you can spot anything in there that I'm not seeing.
-
Have you also seen any impact in traffic during the same timeframe?
-
Hi Virginia,
Could you have done something to violate guidelines, like using schema markup on your website to mark up third party platform reviews or putting schema review markup on your homepage?
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
-
Reviews for Plastic Surgeons and Other Businesses where Anonymity is preferred
Howdy, fellow mozzers. I would like to hear some thoughts on how to go about review generation for industries, where anonymity is preferred - like plastic surgery, DUI/DWI law, even intimate-related stores etc. Far not everyone would want to have their profile attached to a plastic surgery procedure, especially in private areas; or have their face by a review about them getting out of jail for drunk driving etc. We have clients in those industries and many clients of theirs would love to leave reviews, as long as they don't have to login with Google or other accounts. We sure use those testimonials on the website, but, again, faceless testimonials can look fake. Any advice?
Reviews and Ratings | | DmitriiK1 -
Google Removed All Anonymous Reviews from GMB Listings with No Warning
I just saw that Google is no longer accepting anonymous reviews for businesses, and in fact have REMOVED all current anonymous reviews. This just happened in late May, but I'm pretty surprised there hasn't been any talk about this, it's a pretty big deal. Before I knew this I called their "specialists" to ask why we lost so many reviews. I specifically asked if Google had changed their review requirements that would result in old reviews being removed. She said no. She's either not well informed or just lied. https://orthopreneur.com/anonymous-google-reviews-disappeared/ My company just lost 20+ positive reviews. Anyone else hurting from the change and finding solutions?
Reviews and Ratings | | HammerandHand1 -
Paid review service stars in search ads - why is that allowed?
I'm looking at paid review services like Trustpilot, FeeFo and others. I'm told I can filter out bad reviews, which I can't do with my Google Certified Stores reviews. I'm struggling to understand why Google include these in the reviews it uses for the star ratings in search ads. I know it's a different thing, but surely these reviews are in breach of the rules that Google apply to their own "My Business" reviews? They talk about "Conflict of interest: Reviews are most valuable when they are honest and unbiased" here: https://support.google.com/business/answer/2622994?hl=en Does anyone have a take on whether Google will drop these as the momentum builds in collection of their own reviews? Thanks, Paul
Reviews and Ratings | | PaulS710 -
How to get the most reviews for in home service providers?
Most of my clients go to the clients home to provide their service. For example a plumber or a bed bug extermination. Most of my clients find it hard to ask for and get reviews even though they do a great job. Is there an app or anything else out there that makes the process easier and gets better results than just asking? Are there any review aggregator applications? Maybe an application that a client can write a review in one location and the review is pushed out to multiple sites like Google My Business or YP?
Reviews and Ratings | | PSLab0 -
Schema Markup Ratings Not Showing Up in SERPs
Hello, I started using the Rich Reviews plugin for WordPress to display ratings and reviews starting on May 27th, but the ratings are not showing up in SERPs yet. Does anyone know why this might be? The link to the website is below. And when I run it through the Structured Data Testing Tool there are no errors. holtscarpetcleaning.com https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/?url#url=http%3A%2F%2Fholtscarpetcleaning.com%2F Thanks, Jennifer
Reviews and Ratings | | Jennifer_Hoffman0 -
Why does Google return 1 star reviews in local listings as the "most helpful"?
I have a client who has recently received two 1 star reviews on Google local (unhappy customer and unhappy customers boyfriend). This is affecting an otherwise flourishing business as these two 1 star reviews are displayed prominently when you search for the brand in Google. They have since received more positive reviews, however Google insists on displaying, what they term, the "most helpful" reviews first. Why are these 1 star reviews deemed "most helpful"? In all honesty, they aren't even really that helpful, with the latter verging on slanderous. We are in the process of reporting this one as it personally attacks a member of staff, however, whilst we tentatively wait weeks for a response, I wondered if anyone has any idea on how G decides which reviews are "most helpful"? When there is no option for other users to rate these reviews as helpful (such as on play store).
Reviews and Ratings | | Silkstream0 -
Started using a 3rd Party Review Company for our Website. Do we need to show the reviews or is a widget (badge) with a link back to review company sufficient enough from an SEO ranking point of view?
Hi All, We have started to use a 3rd party review company and now have the choice of either implementing their re-supplied widgets (Java ) on our site showing customer reviews or use their an API to get this information. The widgets (Java) , would be loaded once the page is actually loaded so I am not sure how and if google will read this information if at all? If we use a widget then we won't be able to implement it with Schema.org although we will be able to use rich snippets to it will appear on any PPC (once we have had 30 reviews). If we go down the API route, it's more expensive for us but we can use the review schema.org for this. Does anyone have any experience of what works best for them ?.. We have a choice of having a widget showing latest reviews or just a badge (which is actually a link to the review site showing our reviews). From an SEO point of view, is one better than the other ? Does google actually read the content of the review or is the link back to the 3rd party review company sufficient enough to help with rankings etc. Am I correct in assuming that by linking to a 3rd party review company and showing our reviews on our site , this will help with rankings as even though the content in the reviews doesn't really say much ,. I did see it was a ranking factor on the survey but not sure how google uses this. ? I've read up some information on reviews etc but wondered what the general consensus was with what others found works best for them Any help greatly appreciated Pete
Reviews and Ratings | | PeteC120 -
Using structured data for reviews - for negative or warnings.
We all use review markup today and we use it linearly as only a vote up or down. My question is around a site that will judge the negative impacts of given chemicals introduced into certain waterways. (Sorry, I must protect the client so I cannot give out all the info; I hope this is enough for a reasonable understanding.) Is there anyone who has ever used or is aware of any markup that does not result in a star? So, if we use the current system, we end up where a bad chemical gets a ton of single stars. In essence what we are measuring is degrees of Positive. With four stars there is no zero positive, but 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% (Ok unless it is aggregated). I want to be able to show degrees of negative and obviously stars would be confusing. So, have a symbol that connotes a negative (skull and crossbones, X, !!, etc.) and the more of these someone marks shows more displeasure or more danger. Are there any ideas for this or any occurrences already on the Internet you may be aware of? Preference would be to be able to at some point have search engines show them as snippets. Thanks to all you Mozzers, Robert
Reviews and Ratings | | RobertFisher0