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.
Is it against google guidelines to use third party review sites as well as have reviews on my site marked up with schema?
-
So, i look after a site for my family business. We have teamed up with the third party site TrustPilot because we like the way it enables us to send out reviews to our customers directly from our system. It's been going great and some of the reviews have been brilliant.
I have used a couple of these reviews on our site and marked them up with:
REVIEW CONTENT
We work in the service industry and so one of the problems we have found is that getting our customers to actually go online and leave a review. They normally just leave their comments on a job sheet that the workers have signed when they leave. So I have created a page on our site where we post some of the reviews the guys receive too. I have used the following:
REVIEW TITLE
REVIEW
Written by: CUSTOMER NAME
Type of Service:House Removal
Date published: DATE PUBLISHED
10 / 10 stars
I was just wondering I was told that this could be against googles guidelines and as i've seen a bit of a drop in our rankings in the last week or so i'm a little concerned. Is this getting me penalised? Should I not use my
reviews referencing the ones on trust pilot and should i not have my own reviews page with rich snippets?
-
Personally I would doubt that you would get penalised for it especially as these are genuine reviews. We use a similar tactic here and post individual user reviews gathered locally on site and then also feature aggregate review for an overall score located on a third party site.
As you are using TrustPilot which is a Google Partner for reviews, I would imagine this will only benefit you in the long run, but check with them about featuring their logos on your site. Some review sites are quite particular about how you display their logo/artwork and may also require a link back Due to TrustPilot being a Google Partner, you also have the added benefit of having star ratings in any Google Adwords activity you may be doing, thus helping to further increase their positive impact on CTA's and conversions when landing.
Hope that helps. As per Robert, just make sure you get your schema correct to ensure accurate portrayal of the review data so it is picked up.
Finally, there is a chance that you will get your review snippet on Google, but this is not guaranteed even if your schema markup 100% correct.
Good luck
Tim
-
Don't know what the "digital marketing" person was thinking, but no you won't get penalized.
If you are hoping to get an aggregate review snippet, make sure the schema is correct. You are showing a rating scale of 10 and Trust Pilot uses 5 stars (as do most). Here is the markup from a markup generator where product is 'example product' scale is 5 and schema is markup. I arbitrarily used 4.8 as the aggregated rating (as if you had 10 reviews, eight of which are 5 and two are 4 totaling 48).
example product
Rated 4.8/5 based on 10 reviewsAgain, be careful of copyrights when moving the actual review content.
Best
-
Hey Robert,
Thanks for getting back to me. Sorry just to clarify, the trust pilot reviews i display are purely aesthetic i haven't marked them up with schema. I've just got a couple of reviews and then put the little widget next to them to show our ranking.
I then have a separate 'customer reviews' page where i list the reviews sent back to us via our feedback forms. I've also stated that all reviews can be verified with signed documents should anyone wish to see them for any reason. It's these reviews i've marked up with schema which i'm hoping will, when enough are uploaded mean i can get the google stars below our name?
Do you think i'll be penalised for this? Someone i know in digital marketing told me i would but i can't see why?
-
BearPaw,
There is nothing in the guidelines about showing reviews on your site that you have brought in from other sites. What I would caution against is that if you are going to do this, you need to be fully disclosed on the site. If you are only bringing in the best reviews, I would certainly create some sort of disclaimer to say some reviews are left off. Also, on your schema you are showing a rating value of 1 -10 and Trust Pilot uses a 1-5 system.
I do not know if TrustPilot has a copyright on their reviews but if they do you will be violating that and probably their user agreement. Remember, they make money handling the reviews for you and being the purveyor of review rankings. I am not sure I would use the person schema on the reviews, but I can't think of a reason not to either. Another issue around that is even if they left the review for your product, be careful with posting something and attributing it without permission.
So, those are more cautionary items than rules.
Best
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
-
Do Wordpress sites outrank SquareSpace?
I was a big fan of Wordpress. I used it for 10 years. However, because I run a very small business, the constant upkeep needed on WP in the end started to frustrate me in the end, so I moved to SquareSpace. However, I am beginning to question my decision, as one of my sites is struggling really badly, and I mean badly. The other sites are okay. So I started asking around, and most people are saying there shouldn't be a difference. A few people have said their Wordpress sites always outranks their SquareSpace sites. Then I read what Rand Fishkin said in the below Twitter thread, now I am even more confused. I am very reluctant to move to Wordpress, its just so much hassle. But at the same time, if a site doesn't get much traffic then it's useless. https://twitter.com/drew_pickard/status/991659074134556673 https://twitter.com/randfish/status/991974456477278209 Please let me know your thoughts and experience.
Web Design | | RyanUK0 -
Hiding content until user scrolls - Will Google penalize me?
I've used: "opacity:0;" to hide sections of my content, which are triggered to show (using Javascript) once the user scrolls over these sections. I remember reading a while back that Google essentially ignores content which is hidden from your page (it mentioned they don't index it, so it's close to impossible to rank for it). Is this still the case? Thanks, Sam
Web Design | | Sam.at.Moz0 -
Average Time to Conversion on Site
I am curious to know if there is a way to view or calculate the average time it takes site visitors to convert per session. For example, based on a current website design, the average time on site might be 3 minutes and the number of conversions might be 100. is there a way to say that for the current website design, it takes 3 minutes for the average site visitor to submit a web form? Then, as I redesign the site, my goal would be to improve the average time to conversion by making the web form more accessible and require less information within the form itself. I don't think this is currently possible in GA. Has anyone figured out a way to accomplish this by use of traditional tracking tools? Or, am I facing having to code my site to record each visitor's time on site from the second they enter and then stop the clock when they submit the form?
Web Design | | dsinger0 -
Accordion Fold Ups Bad For Google
http://fandicoach.com/products Right now I have these accordion things on the website. Are they bad for google in terms of being an SEO best practice? I want to avoid doing anything black hat. Thanks!
Web Design | | OOMDODigital0 -
Will google penalize a website for using a table layout?
I just got a new client today and his entire website layout and structure is using tables instead of divs. This client is on a tight budget and wants to avoid unnecessary hours for re-coding the website, but at the same time he wants me to improve his SEO organically. This is the first time I've been asked to do work on an existing website that uses pure tables for the entire layout and I'm wondering if this effects the SEO in any way. So my question is, will tables effect rankings and SEO in any way?
Web Design | | ScottMcPherson0 -
From Google Sites to Wordpress - Anyone Ventured this SEO terrain?
We have a few sites in Google Sites - and they are ugly! We have a majority (40+) of websites in Wordpress. But we have a few websites just stuck on Google Sites, and since Google won't let you fully edit the HTML, add scripts, or implement any technology since 2000, we want to move. The sad problem - the Google sites are ranking well. We rank well in Manhattan, Atlanta, Dallas, and Philadelphia. The problem is - the sites do not give much room for growth - and the bounce rate is high because they are so ugly. Has Anyone moved from Google sites to Wordpress? Should we just stay with Google and bite the ugly bullet? My fear is that these sites will not allow for growth. It is hard to update them and even harder to make them look nice. To get a sample - beware: www.counselingphiladelphia.com Even another reason to leave: The slider is non-semantic and terrible SEO. Google won't allow a slider script with tags and a hrefs, so the only way to implement a slider is through a Google Docs Presentation that keeps sliding. I know - terrible SEO (#donthate) but we needed something. Any advice and thoughts would help! Thanks Mozzers!
Web Design | | _Thriveworks0 -
Separate .mobi site or make .com site mobile friendly?
Our website now has enough mobile traffic to justify going mobile friendly, which it is not at this time. I am in favor of making a separate .mobi site designed specifically for mobile phones and smart phones for several reasons. It is cheaper, faster, and easier to accomplish. I think our mobile users will have a good experience though obviously not as much info as our full site. I would use ourdomain.mobi with link or a redirect for mobile users from from the main site. My top three choices for implementing that are http://allwebcodesign.com/setup/mobi-templates.htm#detailsarea
Web Design | | zharriet
Template that can be viewed by mobile or desktop. http://www.onbile.com/ http://www.networksolutions.com/mobile-website/index.jsp Does this seem like a good solution?1 -
Site-wide footer links or single "website credits" page?
I see that you have already answered this question before back in 2007 (http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/2163), but wanted to ask your current opinion on the same question: Should I add a site-wide footer link to my client websites pointing to my website, or should I create a "website credits" page on my clients site, add this to the footer and then link from within this page out to my website?
Web Design | | eseyo0