Stars in the SERPs why do Google show them?

[UKSBD]

I've been running some little tests in the past few weeks which shows just how easy it is to get the 5 stars showing next to your listing in Googles results.

More and more people seem to be doing this and the way things are going we will end up with the top 10 results all having 5 stars showing in the SERP

Why do Google show these stars when they are so meaningless?

 

[sess4561]

This is something I really don't know much about, but keen to find out about how it works. Can you give me some details about your experiment?

 

[OldWelshGuy]

it is micro formatting (if you refer to the orange stars), or is using ASCII or hex code if you are referring to the balck stars in the description element

 

[Curious]

I've got them microformats on the homepage of our site - you're right it's ridiculously easy to get them. I just marked up some Trustpilot reviews we had from a trial with them, so we show actual score, number of reviews and the stars - hoping that the obvious honesty with them implies trust. It was very tempting to not be quite so honest though..

 

[UKSBD]

I've got them microformats on the homepage of our site - you're right it's ridiculously easy to get them. I just marked up some Trustpilot reviews we had from a trial with them, so we show actual score, number of reviews and the stars - hoping that the obvious honesty with them implies trust. It was very tempting to not be quite so honest though..

You don't even have to do that.

You can just ask 1 person to provide a review with 5 stars then say you have 5 stars and get them showing legitimately.

(in fact you don't even need 1 review you can just say you have, but that's a bit dodgy)

It's so simple to game, it's just a matter of time before the top 10 results will have 5 stars showing unless Google scrap the whole system.

 

[UKSBD]

This is something I really don't know much about, but keen to find out about how it works. Can you give me some details about your experiment?

If you want to do it semi-legitimately
Set up your places listing, get 1 5 star review, then use microdata aggregate rating to say you have a 5 star rating based on 1 review.

If you can't be bothered with the places listing just ask someone to give you a 5 star review paste it on your site so it looks good, and use that
(make it a genuine review though, ie. only ask someone who you know will give you 5 stars)

It really is that pathetic.
Why Google show the stars is a joke.

 

[JenniB]

You don't even need to try and game it - Google seems to try and pull positive reviews where it can. I've seen a lot of companies that I know have a lot of 1 star reviews all over the web and yet Google chooses to mostly list the highly positive ones, even though most of them are much older.

 

[UKSBD]

You don't even need to try and game it - Google seems to try and pull positive reviews where it can. I've seen a lot of companies that I know have a lot of 1 star reviews all over the web and yet Google chooses to mostly list the highly positive ones, even though most of them are much older.

It's probably not that Google isn't pulling in the negative reviews.

It's the fact webmasters who know how to game the system just use microdata to make Google shows the 5 star reviews.

If a site has 5 bad reviews from one source, the webmaster can choose to ignore that source and pull in from a source that just has good reviews.

I can have 5 stars showing one day and one star showing the next day


If Google don't do something about this soon the top 10 listings could all have 5 stars next to them.

 

[Andrew Baker]

I'm sure it's well on their radar, Google (& Bing) are putting a considerable emphasis on schema.org and they won't want this to be viewed as fair game.

My prediction is we'll see a number of algo tweaks in the coming months that will key in several checks alongside the schema mark-up code used, especially for reviews.

As you say, otherwise it will become meaningless to the user experience.

 

[Curious]

I'm sure it's well on their radar, Google (& Bing) are putting a considerable emphasis on schema.org and they won't want this to be viewed as fair game.

My prediction is we'll see a number of algo tweaks in the coming months that will key in several checks alongside the schema mark-up code used, especially for reviews.

As you say, otherwise it will become meaningless to the user experience.

I was contemplating linking to the page they came from where I've marked them up, so that it would be obvious where they came from. Perhaps that mightn't be a bad idea then..

 

[UKSBD]

I was contemplating linking to the page they came from where I've marked them up, so that it would be obvious where they came from. Perhaps that mightn't be a bad idea then..

Yes, that's why I suggested you use the reviews gained by your places listing and then link to that.

 

[Curious]

Yes, that's why I suggested you use the reviews gained by your places listing and then link to that.

Of course - sorry I'm obviously being a bit dull! Makes sense they'll probably like to use reviews from their own properties.

Top man - cheers.

 

[UKSBD]

Of course - sorry I'm obviously being a bit dull! Makes sense they'll probably like to use reviews from their own properties.

Top man - cheers.

Yes, but if they reward a site by displaying 5 stars in the SERPs based on just 1 review on Places there is something drastically wrong with the system.

Everyone will be doing it, which will make the stars pointless, it will get to the stage where the site with just one star stands out more

 

[Stationery-Direct]

Sorry to sound thick, we have over 100 reviews on trustpilot and would also like the stars to show next to our PPC campaign or just in the standard SERPS if possible, how do I even do this? Last time I asked I was told that I had to have received some reviews via googles market place or something, is that still the case?

 

[UKSBD]

Sorry to sound thick, we have over 100 reviews on trustpilot and would also like the stars to show next to our PPC campaign or just in the standard SERPS if possible, how do I even do this? Last time I asked I was told that I had to have received some reviews via googles market place or something, is that still the case?

The review can be from Bob next door if you have the microdata format right. http://schema.org/AggregateRating

 

[Simmy28]

I always wondered where the reviews came from. I just thought it was something google picked up on review sites. One of my competitors has got these reviews showing in SERPS, but has no google places reviews and only a few reviews on other websites, yet showing a score of 4.5 out of 35 reviews. If you can get these reviews by just inputting code then its a joke.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

I always wondered where the reviews came from. I just thought it was something google picked up on review sites. One of my competitors has got these reviews showing in SERPS, but has no google places reviews and only a few reviews on other websites, yet showing a score of 4.5 out of 35 reviews. If you can get these reviews by just inputting code then its a joke.

you can, and it is

 

[RevaxMedia]

it's called rich snippets and very easy to implement.

 

[Simmy28]

I just don't get it, what is the purpose of showing such information in the serps, especially when any website owner can have them by just inputting code? If anything it is deceiving to users. If i had not known and came across a product or service showing a high number of positive reviews, i would use them as apposed to ones that don't. I would understand if it was something Google picked up on review sites.

 

[UKSBD]

It really is pathetic, Google should remeove all stars as once more people know how to do it every site will have 5 stars next to their name.

 

[UKSBD]

Just to add

It's worse when directories do it.

They may have 10 listings on a page and Google just picks up 1 of the reviews and displays the stars for that one.

If you do a search for one of the other 9 businesses listed and the directory is ranking it can show the review stars for a completely different listing.

These stars are one of the worst things Google has done for a long time, they've been with us for 12 months or more but Google don't seem to care.

 

[RevaxMedia]

You do have to submit rich snippets to Google however it has increased our CTR / Clicks when implementing them.

 

[UKSBD]

You do have to submit rich snippets to Google however it has increased our CTR / Clicks when implementing them.

What do you mean by "have to submit" ?

You can let them know you are using them, but from my experience they display equally as well on sites that you haven't told Google your using rich snippets on as those you have.

 

[RevaxMedia]

What do you mean by "have to submit" ?

You can let them know you are using them, but from my experience they display equally as well on sites that you haven't told Google your using rich snippets on as those you have.

Pretty much all of our rich snippets have been live within 24 hours opposed to the <1 Month waiting time estimated by Matt Cutts from crawling "detection".

 

[UKSBD]

Pretty much all of our rich snippets have been live within 24 hours opposed to the <1 Month waiting time estimated by Matt Cutts from crawling "detection".

From what I can gather that's the same for any site, next crawl and they are picked up (whether it's a site you have registered with them or not)

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Yep, jsut force a refresh in WMT and you are sorted.

 

[RevaxMedia]

We initially tried that but it took longer, perhaps a coincidence regarding crawler, we also figured with it being a newish concept (when we first started doing it) it would be censored more so we went down the channel of submitting the form via Google, maybe when we do it again we will try both to see which works faster.

It's a bit of a bummer in Wordpress as we can't find the plugin which will allow the "Author Tab" or submit multiple rich snippet Reviews.