I added a WP Customer Reviews plugin but nothing seems to appear on Google search

[captainjoe]

Hi,

I've added the wordpress Wp Customer Reviews plugin to a my client's website and we brought some past clients to put on reviews in order to empower the hReview factor.

Google as scraped the website several times since but we don't see any change in the organic serp.

Can you please tell me if I've done something wrong or I forgot something?

That's the website - Capital Garage Door

Thanks!

[gowebsol]

Hi Schlomi.

I'm Joey, one of the developers of WP Customer Reviews. I apologize for not seeing this earlier, but I'm glad I stumbled on it and very happy to help.

Your question is one we get a lot. Carson sums it up best when he says you are at Google's mercy - they decide, and it's not just about the formatting of your snippets. You can see just how "hit and miss" it is by looking at the serps when you search on "powered by wp customer reviews"

https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&q=%22powered%20by%20wp%20customer%20reviews%22&oq=%22po&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j0l4.1099j0j4

As you can see, 20-25% of the listings have star ratings in the results. I'd love to see more, but it shows what's out there. The best thing you can do to improve your chances of ratings showing up in search is to upgrade - I see you are using version 2.8, which is several versions behind. We overhauled the plugin in September, which included improvements to the rich snippets.

As an internet marketer, the intent of WP Customer Reviews was to get user generated content onto sites and have the ratings show up in SERPS. It does the job, but like always, Google decides what shows up.

Thanks for using the plugin. If you have some ideas for improvements, drop me a line.

[Carson-Ward]

Unfortunately, Google has been scaling back reviews quite a bit. We have several sites where we used to show up with star ratings on every page. Now we're lucky to get them to show up at all.

I have noticed it relies a lot on the query. If you are trying to rank for local queries where Google pulls in a local pack, for example, they're really not likely to show your stars. Maybe this is to prevent confusion. Maybe it's to help themselves on Google Maps.

Try doing a site: search with the exact URL. In my experience it's most likely to show up in low-competition searches, and nothing is less competitive than a site: search with your own site. For example https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.shopperapproved.com does seem to pull in stars.

The good news: what you have is working.

The bad news: you're at Google's mercy as to when your snippets will pull in. Page and domain authority (in Google's eyes) does seem to play a part, and the query will change things up. My advice is always to implement it, continue marketing, and wait for Google to realize you're really an awesome company/site with reviews worth highlighting.

Unfortunately, there's no magic number of reviews or count of links. It just depends on competition in the SERP.

[captainjoe]

Thanks for the answer Blakewenloe

It does have a rich snippet code that's why I'm wondering why it doesn't show anything.

Can anyone tell how much time/reviews you need until Google starts showing the ratings on serp?

[blakewenloe]

Does the plugin include Google rich snippet code? If it's just a Wordpress review plugin without google's rich snippet code, Google isn't (as far as I know) going to display the reviews in the serp. Also, I notice that the reviews don't show the "gold stars" for the homepage (most of the time) but do for the subpages. I searched the "garage repair in victoria, va" keyword and it showed the stars from the actual google reviews.

Here's a free plugin that includes the rich snippet: https://wordpress.org/plugins/rich-reviews/

ShopperApproved has ridiculous pricing but it works well: http://www.shopperapproved.com/

There may be better options out there, but this should get your started. Good luck!