Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Review Schema Dropped Off A Cliff!?
-
Hello everyone,
I recently implemented some review schema for my website which looked to be successful as my review stars were appearing in organic rankings with no problem! Yay! However... I've just checked in on where we are with these and they have literally dropped off a cliff and I have no idea why.
See image attached with the graph that shows our reviews looking great in July/August then dropping off w/c 26th August. I literally have no idea why this has happened. The Schema Markup Tool shows no errors or issues with the markup either.
Can anyone advise?
-
Hi Virginia,
Looks like, yes, there are problematic practices going on here. I'm not an expert schema diagnostician, but I can offer you two suggestion that I believe should help.
-
Read fully through this article on schema markup best practices: https://whitespark.ca/blog/how-to-use-aggregate-review-schema-to-get-stars-in-the-serps/
-
If you get lost, hire David Deering's company TouchPoint Digital - http://www.touchpointdigitalmarketing.com/ - for some consulting. He's an absolute expert and can help you get your schema into guideline compliance.
I hope these resources are useful to you!
-
-
Looking into the guidelines further, I'm wondering if it's because I don't link through to checkatrade in my reviews. The other issue I'm having is the product in question are conservatory roofs. These are not products you can review on an individual item basis, as it's just one product (in two colour variations) but we don't have these all listed on the website. Instead, the reviews are about our customer service, building work and overall product review. To make this easier, this is our website: https://www.greenspaceconservatories.co.uk/ you'll see that we have info pages about our product, but we don't have product reviews. Just service reviews. Is this potentially causing a problem as well?
-
Overall traffic hasn't dropped, but organic dropped on 29th July from peaking at 232 down to 108 visits per day - which is when the Schema seems to have suddenly disappeared. But I'm guessing the drop in organic is because of the drop of visibility on the review schema, so not sure that helps me figure out what is going.
-
Hi Miriam,
Hmm maybe we have? I've put the schema markup on all pages - including the homepage - I couldn't see anything anywhere that said I couldn't do this? The platform that we have taken the reviews from has been from something called Checkatrade, but we don't reference that in the markup at all. We have the reviews dotted around the site and reference one or two on most landing pages, hence why we put the review markup across the site. We do have a testimonials section on our site which has more reviews on it, but these are added in via HTML as opposed to a widget pulling from the third party site (like the other dotted around the site). I can't see why this would be an issue though? Do I need to have links pointing back to the Checkatrade website for all reviews on the site for Google to validate my reviews?
Let me show you the markup and see if you can spot anything in there that I'm not seeing.
-
Have you also seen any impact in traffic during the same timeframe?
-
Hi Virginia,
Could you have done something to violate guidelines, like using schema markup on your website to mark up third party platform reviews or putting schema review markup on your homepage?
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
-
What is the best practice way to attribute a Google Review?
An example might be a local directory site, where multiple businesses are featured. To flesh out the respective business profiles, Google Reviews are included. Copying/pasting would be the definition of duplicate content. I wonder though if hyperlinking to the review itself would be enough? For a random example: "you literally have never had better ice cream. cutest shop in charleston sc" - Mandee Jalbert, Google Review Google doesn't appear to have a review embed option- am I wrong? If not, would the above attribution via the "Google Review" hyperlink be sufficient to head off any potential dings for duplicate content? Thanks! Stephen
Reviews and Ratings | | PerfectPitchConcepts
Thanks for your thoughts! I feel like this might make for a good presentation at our SoundBoard conference someday soon.0 -
Any experiences with Reviews.io?
Hello, We have used Trustpilot.com for a few years in the past. Service was reasonable and they did what they were supposed to do. However, due to their price and requirement for a full-year payment upfront we stopped using their review collection service. Is someone using Reviews.io? They are included in Google Review Partners, which seems to be very encouraging:
Reviews and Ratings | | the-global-communicator
https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2375474?hl=en Also, they have a decent price for their intermediary package (about $ 89/month) and don't require a yearly contract like Trustpilot and some others. Any experiences you could share about Reviews.io will be appreciated. Luciano, The Translation Company Group0 -
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 -
Does anyone use an embeddable Google review widget?
Currently, I use an embeddable Yelp review widget on my site. The widget I use has been helpful, but is no longer actively maintained and I'd prefer to show Google reviews instead. Does anyone have a recommendation for a widget to embed Google reviews?
Reviews and Ratings | | Dions0 -
Do ratings/reviews show up in Organic Search Results anymore?
I read about using schema or h1review to add markup that would get an individual person's review to show up in organic search, but it was from 2013. I did a few queries for keywords in my area, and none of the results had this. Then I did some queries for generic things like "best pizza in Tampa" and "coffee in tampa" and they didn't have it either. So, is this still something that can be done or not? I do see it when a review site like yelp comes up or in ads, but I'm specifically talking about organic search results from our website. Thanks, Ruben
Reviews and Ratings | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Is there a better way to wrap schema on a testimonial page? Example website shown
Hi, Hopefully someone can help my dilemma! I am trying to wrap review schema (schema.org/review). However, it's stumping me because of our WordPress theme "Flawless." If any are familiar with this particular theme you'll know that there is the normal visual/text portion of the page-editing portion of WordPress, but there is also a page-building section which is unique to Flawless. In this instance, a Testimonial "Content/Post Type Item" has been used. This was where the page was constructed and wherein the problem lies. If I wrap schema around it like I normally would, the page distorts on the front end and becomes a garbled mess. I've been trying to solve the problem and the closest I've gotten has been to copy the source-code of the Flawless themed Testimonial Content/Post Type Item into the "Text" portion of Wordpress to replicate the Flawless page-builder. I thought "yay! I can wrap schema around this for sure!" but I'm still encountering some problems. If I'm using the structured data markup helper from Google, and copying and pasting the HTML I'd like (with the corresponding schema "header") I get an error on the Structured Data Testing Tool saying "Incomplete schema data." I've tried looking for plugins that would help me, but all that I've seen adds duplicate content to the page. If there's a way to wrap review schema on this page—it would make my day! Thanks for the help!
Reviews and Ratings | | Shawn1240 -
Migrating Reviews from Old SIte
We recently changed our Website to Word Press and I would like to move the old reviews to the new site. I am concerned Google might not understand the reviews showing up all of a sudden. The old reviews were on a sub-domain (store.domain.com). I will be able to match the dates and text as well as names. Any advice or Best Practice on this? Thanks!
Reviews and Ratings | | Chris6610 -
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
