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
-
Can I safely asume that links between subsites on a subdirectories based multisite will be treated as internal links within a single site by Google?
I am building a multisite network based in subdirectories (of the mainsite.com/site1 kind) where the main site is like a company site, and subsites are focused on brands or projects of that company. There will be links back and forth from the main site and the subsites, as if subsites were just categories or pages within the main site (they are hosted in subfolders of the main domain, after all). Now, Google's John Mueller has said: <<as far="" as="" their="" url="" structure="" is concerned,="" subdirectories="" are="" no="" different="" from="" pages="" and="" subpages="" on="" your="" main="" site.="" google="" will="" do="" its="" best="" to="" identify="" where="" sites="" separate="" using="" but="" the="" is="" same="" for="" a="" single="" site,="" you="" should="" assume="" that="" seo="" purposes,="" network="" be="" treated="" one="">></as> This sounds fine to me, except for the part "Google will do its best to identify where sites are separate", because then, if Google establishes that my multisite structure is actually a collection of different sites, links between subsites and mainsite would be considered backlinks between my own sites, which could be therefore considered a link wheel, that is, a kind of linking structure Google doesn't like. How can I make sure that Google understand my multisite as a unique site? P.S. - The reason I chose this multisite structure, instead of hosting brands in categories of the main site, is that if I use the subdirectories based multisite feature I will be able to map a TLD domain to any of my brands (subsites) whenever I'd choose to give that brand a more distinct profile, as if it really was a different website.
Web Design | | PabloCulebras0 -
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 -
Moving to new site. Should I take old blog posts with me?
Our company website has needed a complete overhaul for some time now and the new one is almost ready to go live. We also have a separate "news" site that is houses around 800 blog posts and news items. (That news site will be thrown away because it's on a completely different domain and causes confusion.) So we have a main site with about 100 decent blog posts and a separate news site with 800 poor posts. I plan on bringing all the main site blog posts over to the new site (both WordPress), but my question is whether or not to bring over the news site posts? All, handful, none? Another issue is the news site doesn't have Google Analytics, so I'm not sure if any posts actually generate traffic, but I can from the main site we do get some referrals from it. As far as quality of content goes, it's poor. Not sure who wrote it all, but it's mainly text press releases that aren't very interesting. Is it worth bringing over for SEO purposes or simply delete the site and create a mass redirect so all of those pages will direct to the new website's blog page? Any help is greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | codyfrew0 -
Interlinking using Dynamic URLs Versus Static URLs
Hi Guys, Could you kindly help us in choosing best approach out of mentioned below 2 cases. Case. 1 -We are using: We interlink our static pages(www.abc.com/jobs-in-chennai) through footer, navigation & by showing related searches. Self referential Canonical tags have been implemented. Case. 2 -We plan to use: We interlink our Dynamic pages(www.abc.com/jobs-in-chennai?source=footer) through footer, navigation & by showing related searches. Canonical tags have been implemented on dynamic urls pointing to corresponding static urls Query 1. Which one is better & expected to improve rankings. Query 2. Will shifting to Case 2 negatively affect our existing rankings or traffic. Regards
Web Design | | vivekrathore0 -
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 -
Should I use the google mod_pagespeed in my apache server?
Anyone already use it? There is some speed benefit? http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/module.html
Web Design | | Naghirniac0 -
How to make Address Text Clickable for Google Map Link for Mobile Device
How do I make the address text on the site a clickable link for mobile devices?
Web Design | | bozzie3110 -
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
