Will there be an SEO impact if I switch my rich snippets from reviews to votes?
-
So, we currently have rich snippets showing for reviews on our site. We've made some new product pages that have reviews on them, but they are hidden behind a tab. Because of this our rich snippets haven't been showing in the serps, so we've been looking for a way to get them showing for these new pages. What we've found is that we can change the rich snippets from reviews to votes, which will show an aggregate score on the page, and this will get the snippets appearing in serps again as votes.
What we're concerned about is, if we make this change to these new pages, they will automatically change everything on our review pages and all snippets on our sites will change from reviews to votes (not just the new pages). What we want to know is, if we make this change do you think that we may see a negative seo impact (aside from maybe having a lower CTR)?
Thanks!
-
No. it will not affect your organic rankings on Google if you change from reviews to votes. Keep the tab, but add the aggregated ratings on the page. It will be a snapshot of the reviews. and link the snapshot with the tab as well.
Reviews are always better than votes because reviews keep your visitors engage and build trust of your site. They spend time in analyzing/reading the reviews which help them make a decision. Reviews increases your time on site. For example I want to buy shoes and visited a shoe website. I see votes, some are positive or negative but I don't know what's positive / negative about them. But if I get reviews I can specifically see the pros/cons, I get a better insight before coming to a buying decision.
Rich Snippets can have a huge impact on your website’s performance. However I don't see them helping rankings directly but indirectly they help a lot. It can help you see:
1. Better clickthrough rates from search results
2. More qualified traffic and better conversion ratesThey also help you communicate a clear, unique value proposition and establish a competitive advantage.
Google’s ultimate objective is: to create the best search experience for users, so they can find the best, most relevant results. The better Google Search is able to help its users find the best search result before they click through (to ensure that each click is the correct one), the better the experience for their users.
Hope this helps you
-
Great, thanks for the help though!
-
Ok. Well, to answer your original question I don't think the semantic markup will negatively impact your rankings, but it's not the ideal implementation (the rich snippets will say "votes").
-
Yeah, we're definitely not being deceptive, we have a tab that says Reviews which open up when a user clicks on it. We've tested in with this tool but it says it won't show because the text/reviews are hidden to the user, which is why we tested it with a the vote aggregate data and this was the only way we could get it to show...
-
As long as you aren't being deceptive about it, it should still work.
Just put your code into the rich snippet testing tool and see if the semantic markup is implemented properly.
-
We put the new pages up about 6 or 7 weeks ago, so it has been some time now. From looking at the google help page it states under the Aggregate reviews section for count,
"The total number of reviews for the item on your site. Note: Whenever you include
count
, the page must also contain review markup for each reviewed item.count
should only include reviews on your own site."and for vote:
"Specifies the number of people who provided a rating with or without an accompanying review. A page must specify at least one of
count
orvotes
."I could be interpreting this wrong, but I understood it to say that if we're using count for reviews, the reviews need to be visible. If we use votes, they reviews don't need to be visible on the page.
-
How long did you test the aggregate ratings for? It can take a while for Google to catch up. I don't see why votes would work but ratings wouldn't.
-
We've already tried using the aggregate rating on the page from the reviews, but when we do this the snippets won't show in the serps... We also have the option of redesigning the new pages, but it would be an absolute last resort due to lack of resources at this stage.
-
Why would you want to use votes? If the reviews are on a separate tab, why not just include the aggregate rating on the page itself, in order to get the rich snippets showing? You may also be able to implement the tabs in such a way that you still get review snippets.
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
-
Will canonical solve this?
Hi all, I look after a website which sells a range of products. Each of these products has different applications, so each product has a different product page. For eg. Product one for x application Product one for y application Product one for z application Each variation page has its own URL as if it is a page of its own. The text on each of the pages is slightly different depending on the application, but generally very similar. If I were to have a generic page for product one, and add canonical tags to all the variation pages pointing to this generic page, would that solve the duplicate content issue? Thanks in advance, Ethan
Technical SEO | | Analoxltd0 -
Will blocking the Wayback Machine (archive.org) have any impact on Google crawl and indexing/SEO?
Will blocking the Wayback Machine (archive.org) by adding the code they give have any impact on Google crawl and indexing/SEO? Anyone know? Thanks! ~Brett
Technical SEO | | BBuck0 -
Mobile SEO for mobile site
Hey there! I own a desktop website and just now finishe building a mobile site ( not a responsive design one) and I wish to start ranking my site on mobile serch result page. due to the automatic redirection from desktop website to the mobile site im confused: where should link to in order to SEO my mobile site? should i link to domin.com and assume the link juice is passing on? or should i link to m.domim.com?
Technical SEO | | logophone0 -
Google local / Rich snippets in multiple locations
Hi All, Something i'm trying to understand about Google local but cant find precise info about what we are thinking of doing. We are located in City A, but also provide our services in almost every city in our country. We broker the service to branches that don't have their own local websites and want to take advantage of being listed in each city by marking up the address of each branch on each of our specific branch pages. All our pages are currently marked up using the physical company address. Would their be any issues marking up separate branch pages to the corresponding branch address, and then taking advantage of Local results in many areas around the country? In other words, Is it possible for a single website to mark up separate pages for different locations and take advantage of local results for each? Thanks in Advance Greg
Technical SEO | | AndreVanKets0 -
The impact of mulstisite wordpress on seo
hi there, i would talk about a specific topic: The impact of mulstisite wordpress on seo Do you think that penalize seo activity ? i make you an example : a wordpress network of sites, domain based let the possibility to manage two domain on a single wp install, but even if the domains are separete, how does google see them, as separate or as a sigle domain?
Technical SEO | | guidoboem0 -
Which Wordpress Framework for Best SEO
Which wordpress framework would you use for SEO. From what I have had a look at: Thesis is good but you cannot use other SEO plugins with it such as yoast SEO as it is not compatible Genesis or woo framework are good and a plugin like yoast SEO works well with them. What are your thoughts?
Technical SEO | | VivaArturo1 -
SEO Info Bing - Logo and Name
I was reading the "How Search Engines Work" which is chapter 1 of the Beginners Guide to SEO by SEOMOZ. Came across an interesting point: "Don’t put the text that you want indexed inside images. For example, if you want your company name or address to be indexed, make sure it is not displayed inside a company logo." Surely most people will alt text their images with keywords or am i missing something here?
Technical SEO | | stefanok0 -
Does changing nameservers negatively impact SEO?
Had to redirect the nameservers to the hosting account in order for the domain email addresses to work. Since then, search results have dropped from the first page to second and much lower with the same keywords. Does that make sense? Another change was redirecting approx 10 parked domains to the main site, was that a mistake?
Technical SEO | | reeljerc0