AggregateRating JSON-LD help needed

[TimAkers]

Hey all,

Working with gydeandseek.com and trying to get 5-star reviews to show up at a SERP Feature on some of their pages. Everything validates using the Structured Data Testing Tool, yet we are not seeing anything in search. We have had this SERP Feature show up in the past.

Here is a sample page - https://gydeandseek.com/budapest/gabriella

Hoping the greater consciousness (aka you) can help us figure out what we are doing wrong here. Or if it is just Google deciding not to display the aggregateRatings in search. Other clients who use this markup have it show up pretty quickly, trying to figure out why it isn't here and generally stumped.

Thanks,

• Tim

[Everett]

Tim,

It is tough to say where to start on that page if you're going to provide recommendations on how to get the review to show up. I guess I'd start by marking up the single review / rating itself on the page in JSON-LD, as well as the aggregateRating. The review should be about that specific guide, not the company as a whole. Make sure that the review and rating are both viewable on the page, definitely not a thousand pixels off-screen, and preferably without JavaScript rendering. If JS has to be rendered client-side (as is the case of everything but the Facebook pixel in the Noscript tag) then make sure the page can be rendered by Google. As of now, it does not appear to be (see cache link below), but the "Fetch and Render" tool in Search Console is a better way to know for sure.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:GVg0uOtMoUQJ:https://gydeandseek.com/budapest/gabriella+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-b-1-ab

[TimAkers]

Thank you for your reply, really helpful.

The developer piece isn't really up to me, so trying to guide that team in the right direction as best I can.

• Tim

[Everett]

Using display:non and positioning an element 9999 pixels off the page is a pretty old-school tactic to hide content from users, but to show it to Google.

type="radio" name="rating" id="rating_1" value="1"

When you say you have "other clients" who use this markup, are they using the same site template and code? The page doesn't pre-render for Googlebot, and even when it does render there is that spammy-looking positioning of the star ratings.

The JSON-LD may be valid, but it seems confusing to me. The aggregate rating is based on a single rating, but I don't see the single rating. Further, the rating is supposed to be for the Guide, Gabriella, but the review description is about the website/brand. I think those two entities need to be marked up separately. Typically, the "brand/organization" entity is marked up on the homepage, about page, press, etc... and other pages that are specifically about the brand, as opposed to repeating Organization schema on every page.

My advice: Hire a new web developer.

{"@context":"http://schema.org","@type":"Service","url":

"https://gydeandseek.com/budapest/gabriella","aggregateRating":

{"@type":"AggregateRating","ratingValue":5,"reviewCount":1},

"name":"Gabriella Andronyi","brand":{"@type":"Brand","name":"Gyde & Seek","logo":

"https://gydeandseek.com/static/img/favicon.png"},"areaServed":"Budapest","description":

"Looking for a brilliant guide with a delightful sense of humor? Meet Gabriella...

","serviceType":"guide"}

[effectdigital]

I'd say that it's because the 5-star rating (as far as I can see) doesn't appear on or is not visible on the active page.

You have two competing forces here. Google's data and web-crawling teams push people to use JSON-LD. There's no argument that it feeds data to Google faster! A lot of the more recent documentation from Google's WebMaster tutorials does in fact push people towards the JSON-LD implementation

On the other hand, you have Google's anti-spam team. From their POV the JSON-LD implementation isn't so rosy. They used to purport the benefits of the Microdata implementation and with good reasons. With Microdata you have to physically have something visible on the page and then you wrap the schema around it. This stops people from feeding false-information to Google (which is far, far easier with the JSON-LD approach)

I have found that stuff marked up with Microdata is often far more likely to render in Google's SERPs (and far less likely to gain "rich snippet spam" penalties) than the JSON-LD stuff. It may feed the data slower, but the way it is structured forces people to deploy it in a more (yet not always wholly) legitimate manner

Basically Google is internally conflicted on which implementation is best. There are undoubtedly use-cases for JSON-LD where you actually just can't use Microdata, and in some of those instances it's legitimate to deploy JSON-LD instead (but you have to be really damn sure in terms of what you are doing!)

Sites have external metrics associated with them like authority and trust. If a site is highly regarded and trusted by Google, they may be willing to swallow the JSON-LD implementation method as it benefits their web crawlers. On the other hand, if a site is less known or has a history of shady practices, Google will often deny the JSON-LD implementation (or give the site using that implementation a penalty of some kind)

Remember, just because something is technically 'valid', that does not mean it's a legitimate implementation (which conforms to Google's guidelines) and it doesn't mean that Google will listen to the directive