Can You Use Review Schema for a Business

For a while at present, local businesses have been able to push boilerplate star ratings from reviews nearly their businesses to their organic SERP results using review schema markup on their websites, simply that is all prepare to modify.

Google have appear via their webmasters blog that they will will no longer display these star ratings as Review Rich Results from the schema types LocalBusiness and Organization in cases where the subject of the reviews and the website on which they appear are the same.

sel-serving review schema

Citing the perception of "reviews of a concern on the business organization' own site" every bit 'self-serving', Google's intention is to reduce what it calls "invalid or misleading implementations" of review schema markup.

Every bit part of this modify, they're purportedly trying to make Review Rich Results "more helpful and meaningful" by reserving them for a select group of schema types and sub-types (which you tin can view on the original post).

Woah, woah… schema what now?

If you lot're completely new to schema markup (or structured markup), a lot of what follows isn't going to make a lot of sense. Go read Martha van Berkel's first-class piece on schema markup for local businesses and we'll meet y'all dorsum here in a moment.

Dorsum with usa? Corking.

When will this change happen?

It's only only been announced and we've not started to see the changes nonetheless, but based on how quickly announced updates get rolled out, I'd judge nosotros'll kickoff to see it touch SERPs as early as next week.

But I could be completely incorrect! If you're reading this soon after publication and have already seen stars disappear before your eyes, exit us a annotate below!

Should I remove business reviews from my site?

No, this action from Google simply ignores schema markup attached to reviews for the business organisation on the business concern website; it'southward not an activity against reviewsper se.

It's nevertheless great practise to collect and display reviews on your website, as information technology'southward a form of social proof that builds trust in your business. All that changes here is that the average star rating that might take sat next to your link in organic SERPs will disappear.

While that in itself is a pain, when you consider that this volition theoretically happen for every local business, it's only a removal of a competitive advantage. The people who really need to take action to communicate the change are the local SEOs whose hawkeye-eyed, self-Googling clients may well have already spotted that their SERPs are suddenly less star-studded than before.

Will my 3rd-party reviews widget yet push star ratings to SERPs?

Co-ordinate to Google, no. While the reviews themselves might alive on a different, administrative and trusted domain (due east.g. TripAdvisor, Trustpilot, etc.), Google's statements strongly suggests that this markup volition be ignored, too; a statement recently confirmed by Google's John Mueller:

I double-checked to make sure 🙂 — that'southward incorrect. Regardless of how the reviews are embedded on your site (widget or not), if information technology's for your own LocalBusiness/System, they would be considered self-serving and non be shown.

— ? John ? (@JohnMu) September 17, 2019

Regardless of where the reviews live and where the widgets are from, if the entity being reviewed is the same entity that the website is virtually, review schema markup for LocalBusiness and Organization will exist ignored .

Will this bear upon my rankings or crusade a penalization?

We have information technology on very good authority that using review schema markup on LocalBusiness and System schema types will not negatively affect rankings or cause penalties. This change will simply crusade the Review Rich Result (star rating) to no longer appear in search results.

Check out this thread on the Local Search Forum for more than.

What about Product schema?

That's a very good question! The community's still waiting for a response from Google on this one, just I would similar to remember that exactly the same principle applies, otherwise it'southward a little unfair.

If you're a ceramicist, to use an instance from Claire Carlile, technically you lot could even so aggregate individual product reviews for each product, use review schema markup on the Product schema type and see the average star rating pushed to SERPs featuring your product pages.

While this would be okay by Google's new guidelines, information technology would present the same ethical dilemma, considering the person responsible for choosing the widget or aggregating the reviews is the aforementioned person making and selling the product, making information technology a "self-serving" use of review schema markup.

And at that indicate, at that place's no stopping usa! Are Amazon products appearing with star ratings in SERPs not "self-serving" (in that they're presented to convince a searcher to visit and buy)?

If I've directed a film, built the website for it, and tagged upward aggregated reviews with review schema markup on the Movie schema type, is that not also "self-serving"?

The answer to the question of review schema markup on the Products schema blazon will give us a good idea of where this goes adjacent. I can see Google'due south reasoning backside the current move, but I remember they need to be careful not to open a can of worms: SEOs are very practiced at finding ways around restrictive updates like this.

We'd love to hear what you lot think

This is very much an ongoing update and, equally usual with Google, there are plenty of questions left unanswered (for example, whether review schema to LocalBusiness or Organization holds any value at all if the star rating isn't displayed in SERPs).

Let usa know in the comments below or tweet the states @bright_local what you think of the update, what other questions you have, and if yous've started to see the update have an impact.

Jamie heads up BrightLocal's content squad, ensuring we produce insightful articles, research and resources that enable businesses and SEOs to get even better results in local search.

Schumann Dreff1937