Online reviews are customer ratings of a business or product, shown in Google as stars with text. For SEO two areas matter. Reviews in a Google Business Profile feed into local rankings. Review markup on your own website determines whether star ratings can appear in search results.
Reviews and local ranking
Google names the number of reviews and the review score as signals of prominence, one of three local ranking factors besides relevance and distance. Google does not publish how heavily they count. Percentages from agency blogs lack a source.
Rules for reviews
Google Maps policy requires content based on a real experience. Fake engagement, paid reviews and reviews from people with a conflict of interest are not allowed. Merchants must not offer incentives such as payment, discounts or free goods or services in exchange for reviews. They also must not discourage negative reviews or selectively solicit positive ones. Asking customers for reviews that reflect a genuine experience, without incentive, is allowed.
The FTC advises consumers to watch for bursts of reviews in a short time and notes that fake positive reviews sometimes avoid the top rating to look more believable.
Stars on your own site
Google supports Review and AggregateRating markup. For businesses there is a restriction. If the reviewed entity controls the reviews about itself, its pages that use LocalBusiness or any other Organization type are not eligible for the star review feature.
Example
{
"@type": "Review",
"itemReviewed": {"@type": "Product", "name": "Example product"},
"reviewRating": {"@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": "4"},
"author": {"@type": "Person", "name": "Anna K."}
}
Markup like this for a product with real customer reviews is possible. For the company itself, the restriction above applies.
Common mistakes
- Asking only satisfied customers for reviews. Google Maps policy lists discouraging negative reviews or selectively soliciting positive ones as a violation.
- Offering something in return. Payment, discounts or free goods or services in exchange for a review, or for changing or removing a negative one, are not allowed under the policy.
- Marking up your own reviews for stars. If the reviewed business controls the reviews about itself, pages with
LocalBusinessor any otherOrganizationmarkup are not eligible for the star feature. - Aggregating reviews from other websites. Google’s review snippet guidelines say not to aggregate reviews or ratings from other websites.
- Marking up reviews that are not on the page. The marked-up review content must be readily available to users on that page.
- Marking up reviews for a category or a list. The information should be about a specific item.
Sources
- Prohibited and restricted content: fake engagement, incentives, conflict of interest – Google Maps contribution policysupport.google.com
- Tips to improve your local ranking on Google – Google Business Profile Helpsupport.google.com
- Review snippet structured data – Google Search Centraldevelopers.google.com
- How to evaluate online reviews – FTCconsumer.ftc.gov
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