Structured data for rich snippets

[Scott-Copywriter]

Hi folks.

I'm currently helping to establish a product review system with structured data to grab those elusive rich snippet ratings in Google's SERPs.

But we're left with a decision which I'm frankly not sure about, and no one else seems to be sure about either.

Right now, the tool wraps markup around the total review number, rating system and aggregate rating.

However, there's also the option to wrap markup around the individual reviews, review names, review bodies and review ratings too.

Some sites do this, whilst others don't. Whilst it would make sense to wrap those too, I want to avoid it unless it would help with the rich snippets being enabled, as we can hopefully factor these reviews into the page's unique content to help with SEO. What we don't want is for the review markup around those to cause Google to ignore this content as irrelevant - unless it does help increase the likelihood of rich snippets.

But perhaps more confusing is that Google's own markup examples for product pages don't include markup for individual reviews. Just the aggregate rating:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/products

That's fine, but I would have thought that it would be easier for Google to verify the authenticity and validity of reviews for rich snippets if the reviews themselves were also marked up and identified.

If anyone has any experience with these, I'd appreciate your thoughts.

 

[Elliottc26]

Identifying individual reviews for single products (itemReviewed), by the person (author), rating (reviewRating), and text (reviewBody) is good (for single testimonial); Aggregate Rating (average overall rating for product) alone is enough to show the 5* rating rich snippet in the SERP results for said page.

So, use Review schema for individual ratings to identify author and their comment and rating, and use Aggregate Rating to show the overall average rating of single product / service. Both will trigger snippets.

= this is the result of Aggregate Rating on its own

 

[UKSBD]

Ideally you have both, individual reviews and an aggregate rating.

AggregateRating is about the most abused mark-up out there though as that is what produces the stars.

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

Identifying individual reviews for single products (itemReviewed), by the person (author), rating (reviewRating), and text (reviewBody) is good (for single testimonial); Aggregate Rating (average overall rating for product) alone is enough to show the 5* rating rich snippet in the SERP results for said page.

So, use Review schema for individual ratings to identify author and their comment and rating, and use Aggregate Rating to show the overall average rating of single product / service. Both will trigger snippets.

= this is the result of Aggregate Rating on its own

Sometimes it isn't enough on its own though. Not these days. Unfortunately, many businesses got in early when the rules were more relaxed and have managed to keep their rating snippets. People trying to gain them more recently, however, are finding it more difficult.

Ideally, I'd like to keep the independent review structured data off, so the reviews can build up the content on the page for SEO reasons. I have a feeling that if the reviews are marked up as so, Google will factor them in with less weight.

But at the same time, if marking up individual reviews improves the chance of gaining the snippets, then it would be worth doing as that's the priority.

I just have a feeling that the basic markup on its own, such as aggregate rating, is too easy to manipulate, and Google are on to this. It almost seems like a waste of time building genuine reviews, unless Google have algorithms which search out the reviews even without the markup around them. Again, no one really knows for sure.

I've seen sites with snippets which just have the aggregate rating marked up, and sites with snippets which have everything marked up, including the independent reviews. I'm aware it's probably best practice to mark up everything, but the question is whether it would improve the chance of the snippets appearing or have some other positive effect.

And just to add a twist to the tale, even Google's own product page markup examples don't have each review marked up.

 

[UKSBD]

Ideally, I'd like to keep the independent review structured data off, so the reviews can build up the content on the page for SEO reasons. I have a feeling that if the reviews are marked up as so, Google will factor them in with less weight.

You can do both.
Just put the reviews on as plain text without any mark up and them use JSON to mark them up separately.

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

You can do both.
Just put the reviews on as plain text without any mark up and them use JSON to mark them up separately.

Good idea.

 

[Elliottc26]

Well

Sometimes it isn't enough on its own though. Not these days. Unfortunately, many businesses got in early when the rules were more relaxed and have managed to keep their rating snippets. People trying to gain them more recently, however, are finding it more difficult.

Ideally, I'd like to keep the independent review structured data off, so the reviews can build up the content on the page for SEO reasons. I have a feeling that if the reviews are marked up as so, Google will factor them in with less weight.

But at the same time, if marking up individual reviews improves the chance of gaining the snippets, then it would be worth doing as that's the priority.

I just have a feeling that the basic markup on its own, such as aggregate rating, is too easy to manipulate, and Google are on to this. It almost seems like a waste of time building genuine reviews, unless Google have algorithms which search out the reviews even without the markup around them. Again, no one really knows for sure.

I've seen sites with snippets which just have the aggregate rating marked up, and sites with snippets which have everything marked up, including the independent reviews. I'm aware it's probably best practice to mark up everything, but the question is whether it would improve the chance of the snippets appearing or have some other positive effect.

And just to add a twist to the tale, even Google's own product page markup examples don't have each review marked up.

You add Aggregate as a sum average of all the user ratings a product or service receives so as long as you base the data on something credible then you'll be fine.

I use the coding within html and JSON script and have not seen any difficulties as yet. Adding both aggregate and reviews is my point and as long as it's implemented correctly this will be advantageous.

There's not really any great complication to it. Overthinking is as bad as not thinking at all - just add the schema if you want rich snippets to help improve CTR.

They may not appear for every single search query but checking site pages for domain in search will tell if they're working.

 

[ChrisGoodfellow]

Slight aside here, but if anyone would be interested in writing an article for UKBF on using rich snippets please drop me a PM.