Marking up an iframe with reviews schema. Possible? Ethical?
-
Hey there fellow Mozzers! I work with a broad variety of clients, many of them local businesses, and they in turn sometimes find a vendor that stumps me. This is one of those special cases, where the vendor is doing some shady stuff with reviews schema.
First, they're taking reviews from third party sites and filtering them to only show 4 and 5 star reviews (red flag #1), then they're asking us to post them to the website (red flag #2) and finally they are marking them up with schema (red flag #3).
If this were my vendor I would have fired them when they started telling me Google doesn't care, doesn't enforce the guidelines, and all that other nonsense, but hey, I'm not the client and I have to make good for them. I did flat out refuse to place these reviews as they asked, but they came back with a "solution", that I'm not sure I trust.
They're telling me they can't remove the schema (red flag #4), but they can iframe it onto the website. Their logic, which is wrong, is that Google can't/doesn't crawl iframes so therefore the reviews can be displayed without any negative consequence.
I obviously have some ethical concerns with this, but I have to provide the service to my client whether or not they share my values. However, I can object on professional grounds if I think they will take on undue risk. My only problem here is that I have no documentation for how this proposed solution would work. Working through this logically still leaves me with a gap, and that's where you folks come in!
A) We know that Google crawls iframes
B) We know that Google can apply schema within iframes (works with YouTube embeds)
C) We know that content within an iframe is technically on another website, so it doesn't normally apply to your website
D) I don't know how specifically reviews schema would interact with an iframe
E) I don't know if this would result in Google triggering an alarm and blocking the businessI'm hoping you guys can help me figure this out. Ethics aside (making me cringe to type that) is this technically feasible without risk, or would this still be a risky move?
For the record, another client tried filtering their reviews while marking up with schema against my recommendation and got caught, and received a penalty alert. They were removed from results until the problem was fixed.
-
Thank you, I have advised my coworkers and our client that we will not be implementing this solution as it stands on the website. I normally bring a lot of hard data with me when I need to fight back against something like this, but was a bit short this time around. I just may frame your description for assessing risk and hang it up over my desk. Cheers!
-
I would say this is pretty risky. One barometer I have for penalty risk is "if a human quality reviewer looked at this, would they see something amiss?" and in this case, someone who knew what they were looking for would sniff this out as shady right away. I also think the combination of signals you're describing are easily machine-readable to an extent that a penalty trigger would definitely be possible.
I also don't understand the logic the vendor is using here. If Google can't crawl schema in an iframe, why include the schema at all? It's not like users are going to see it or get anything from it. There's no point in having schema if it's not machine-readable, so why do it at all?
James has a good point that reviews are actually more trustworthy when they include some negative ones. Users are smart enough, and used to reviews enough, at this point to be able to tell when they're only being shown the positive reviews - so including only 4- and 5-star reviews is probably hurting their credibility with customers, as well as with Google.
I don't have any data on how Google specifically treats markup within an iframe. I have heard that you are only at risk for a penalty if you're receiving the reviews rich snippet, so that's one thing I would look for - but again, if they're not trying to get reviews snippets, why do any of this in the first place? If they're a small enough business with low enough traffic, this is the kind of thing that could fly under Google's radar for a long time, but as you've already experienced, recovering from a penalty is a lot harder than never engaging in shady practices in the first place.
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
-
Why would the review count be different between the Ad and the Organic result?
A client inquired about this after finding that their review count was different on their Google Ad that appeared in the map pack compared to their organic result right below it. I am stumped so any thoughts or reasoning as to why this is the case would be appreciated. See attached screenshot! Lptujep
Reviews and Ratings | | BrianAutoshopSEO0 -
What do the symbols in the profile avatars in Google listing reviews mean?
A client of mine noticed that some of their customers that leave GMB listing reviews have special symbols in their profile avatars (please look at the attachment). Is this a sign of a influencer? Has anybody else noticed this? r6mhX
Reviews and Ratings | | BigChad20 -
How many Google reviews can I collect at once?
I work for a University with 10,000+ students and alumni that could submit reviews. But how many reviews should I be collecting at one time? I don't want to overload the reviews and put up a red flag in Google...any insight on how much is too much?
Reviews and Ratings | | GabeGibitz0 -
The relationship between Google Reviews and SEO?
I have recently started working with a client with bad reviews on Google (2.1/5). Apart from the fact consumers are likely to see these reviews and decide against buying the service the company offers (causing a decrease in traffic), are there any other negative effects on the SEO?
Reviews and Ratings | | sophiecrosby970 -
Does Google's 3rd Party Reviews Guideline Update make Review Aggregators Obsolete?
Good day!We are concerned about Google's updated Guidelines in ratings and reviews, specifically as quoted in the SEO Roundtable: "The new guidelines specifically disallows you from using 3rd party reviews, found on other sites, and marking those up on your site."https://www.seroundtable.com/google-updates-reviews-markup-guidelines-22608.htmlThe Guidelines are here https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/reviews#local-business-reviewsWe enlist the use of a 3rd party aggregate for one of our client's (service business). Since, in effect, it is a 3rd party review site, and what the shortcode does is copy reviews from that third party site and mark them up on the client website. What do you guys know about this update, and what are is your take on what the update says and how it relates to a 3rd party review aggregators? Thanks!
Reviews and Ratings | | LinkRightMedia0 -
How to address reviews that show up in Google but come from a business's own website?
One of my clients has a competitor who has a fairly poor reputation based on reviews on Google and Yelp. But, this competitor allows people to review them on their own website, and their "4.8" rating based on 250+ "reviews" show up in search engine results. I assume they are using schema markup to encourage that. My question is whether there is anything we can do to report this to Google, or otherwise make sure the general public is not fooled by these reviews?
Reviews and Ratings | | irapasternack2 -
Yelp to Show Evidence of "Review Fraud"
I just came across this post on SELand: http://searchengineland.com/yelp-adds-link-to-evidence-of-review-fraud-222740 Has anybody noticed this on their/a client's Yelp page? I'm curious to know what percentage of listings have received this type of flag. What are your thoughts on this new implementation?
Reviews and Ratings | | JimmyPage1 -
Too many reviews too quickly?
Is there any sort of guideline on this? Right now, we have very few google reviews. However, I've cross referenced a list of our happiest clients with people who have g+ accounts. There are at least 12 clients, I feel strongly would write us g+ reviews if I asked them to. I want to just get the word out today, but I'm worried if 8-12 reviews in a week would red flag us. I've heard that getting too many reviews to quickly can be a problem, but I'm thinking that more like 100 than 10, but I have no idea. Most of my competitors don't have any reviews, and the most any of them have is 10. I don't know if that matters at all either in terms of triggering a red flag. I'd appreciate whatever insight you all could give. Thanks, Ruben
Reviews and Ratings | | KempRugeLawGroup0