Are you here because you got a message from Search Console? Check our troubleshooting resources.
A review snippet is a short excerpt of a review or a rating from a review website, usually an average of the combined rating scores from many reviewers. When Google finds valid reviews or ratings markup, we may show a rich snippet that includes stars and other summary info from reviews or ratings. In addition to the text of the review, a rating is an evaluation described on a numeric scale [such as 1 to 5]. Review snippets may appear in rich results or Google Knowledge Panels. You can supply ratings for the following content types [and subtypes]:
- Book
- Course
- Event
- How-to
- Local business
- Movie
- Product
- Recipe
- Software App
Google also supports reviews for the following schema.org types [and their subtypes]:
Does your site provide reviews about other employers? Use EmployerAggregateRating structured data.Does your site review claims made by others? Use Fact check structured data.
How to add structured data
Structured data is a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content. If you're new to structured data, you can learn more about how structured data works.
Here's an overview of how to build, test, and release structured data. For a step-by-step guide on how to add structured data to a web page, check out the structured data codelab.
Examples
There are several ways you can add Review structured data to a page:
- Add a simple review.
- Nest a review into another schema.org type using its review property.
- Add aggregate ratings. You can omit the rating for an individual review if your marked-up content contains both an author and a review date. For aggregate reviews, you must supply the average rating for the rich snippet to display.
- Nest aggregate ratings into another schema.org type using its aggregateRating property.
Simple review
Here's an example of a simple review.
Legal Seafood { "@context": "//schema.org/", "@type": "Review", "itemReviewed": { "@type": "Restaurant", "image": "//www.example.com/seafood-restaurant.jpg", "name": "Legal Seafood", "servesCuisine": "Seafood", "priceRange": "$$$", "telephone": "1234567", "address" :{ "@type": "PostalAddress", "streetAddress": "123 William St", "addressLocality": "New York", "addressRegion": "NY", "postalCode": "10038", "addressCountry": "US" } }, "reviewRating": { "@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": "4" }, "name": "A good seafood place.", "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Bob Smith" }, "reviewBody": "The seafood is great.", "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Washington Times" } }
Legal Seafood
Legal Seafood
Here's an example of a review that's nested in a Product. You can copy and paste the example to your own HTML page.
The Catcher in the Rye { "@context": "//schema.org/", "@type": "Product", "brand": { "@type": "Brand", "name": "Penguin Books" }, "description": "The Catcher in the Rye is a classic coming-of-age story: an story of teenage alienation, capturing the human need for connection and the bewildering sense of loss as we leave childhood behind.", "sku": "9780241984758", "mpn": "925872", "image": "//www.example.com/catcher-in-the-rye-book-cover.jpg", "name": "The Catcher in the Rye", "review": [{ "@type": "Review", "reviewRating": { "@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": "5" }, "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "John Doe" }, "reviewBody": "I really enjoyed this book. It captures the essential challenge people face as they try make sense of their lives and grow to adulthood." }, { "@type": "Review", "reviewRating": { "@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": "1" }, "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Jane Doe" }, "reviewBody": "I really didn't care for this book." }], "aggregateRating": { "@type": "AggregateRating", "ratingValue": "88", "bestRating": "100", "ratingCount": "20" }, "offers": { "@type": "Offer", "url": "//example.com/offers/catcher-in-the-rye", "priceCurrency": "USD", "price": "5.99", "priceValidUntil": "2020-11-05", "itemCondition": "//schema.org/UsedCondition", "availability": "//schema.org/InStock", "seller": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "eBay" } } }
The Catcher in the Rye
The Catcher in the Rye
Here's an example of an aggregate rating.
Legal Seafood { "@context": "//schema.org/", "@type": "AggregateRating", "itemReviewed": { "@type": "Restaurant", "image": "//www.example.com/seafood-restaurant.jpg", "name": "Legal Seafood", "servesCuisine": "Seafood", "telephone": "1234567", "address" : { "@type": "PostalAddress", "streetAddress": "123 William St", "addressLocality": "New York", "addressRegion": "NY", "postalCode": "10038", "addressCountry": "US" } }, "ratingValue": "88", "bestRating": "100", "ratingCount": "20" }
Legal Seafood
Legal Seafood
Here's an example of an aggregate rating that's nested in a Product. You can copy and paste the example to your own HTML page.
Executive Anvil { "@context": "//schema.org/", "@type": "Product", "name": "Executive Anvil", "image": [ "//example.com/photos/1x1/photo.jpg", "//example.com/photos/4x3/photo.jpg", "//example.com/photos/16x9/photo.jpg" ], "brand": { "@type": "Brand", "name": "ACME" }, "aggregateRating": { "@type": "AggregateRating", "ratingValue": "4.4", "ratingCount": "89" }, "offers": { "@type": "AggregateOffer", "lowPrice": "119.99", "highPrice": "199.99", "priceCurrency": "USD" } }
Executive Anvil
Executive Anvil
Your content must follow these guidelines to be eligible to appear as a rich result.
Warning: If your site violates one or more of these guidelines, then Google may take manual action against it. Once you have remedied the problem, you can submit your site for reconsideration.Technical guidelines
- Make sure to mark up an aggregate evaluation of an item by many people with schema.org/AggregateRating. Google may display aggregate ratings as rich snippets or, for certain types of items, answers in search results.
- Refer clearly to a specific product or service by nesting the review within the markup of another schema.org type, such as schema.org/Book or schema.org/Recipe, or by using a schema.org type as a value for the itemReviewed property.
- Make sure the reviews and ratings you mark up are readily available to users from the marked-up page. It must be immediately obvious to users that the page has review content.
- Provide review information about a specific item, not about a category or a list of items.
- If you include multiple individual reviews, also include an aggregate rating of the individual reviews.
- Don't aggregate reviews from other websites.
- If the review snippet is for a local business or an organization, you must follow these additional guidelines:
- Pages using LocalBusiness or any other type of Organization structured data are ineligible for star review feature if the entity being reviewed controls the reviews about itself. For example, a review about entity A is placed on the website of entity A, either directly in their structured data or through an embedded third-party widget. For more information, check out our blog post on why we added this guideline and our FAQ about the change.
- Ratings must be sourced directly from users.
- Don't rely on human editors to create, curate, or compile ratings information for local businesses.
Structured data type definitions
You must include the required properties for your structured data to display in search results. You can also include the recommended properties to add more information to your structured data, which could provide a better user experience.
Review
The full definition of Review is available at schema.org/Review.
| author | Person or Organization The author of the review. The reviewer's name must be a valid name. For example, "50% off until Saturday" is not a valid name for a reviewer. This field must be shorter than 100 characters. If it's longer than 100 characters, your page won't be eligible for an author-based review snippet. |
| itemReviewed | One of the valid types The item that is being reviewed. However, if the review is nested into another schema.org type using the review property, you can omit the itemReviewed property. The valid types for the reviewed item are: |
| itemReviewed.name | Text The name of the item that is being reviewed. If the review is nested into another schema.org type using the review property, you still need to provide the name of the thing that is being reviewed. For example: |
| reviewRating | Rating The rating given in this review. The rating can be a nested Rating or more specific subtype. The most typical subtype is AggregateRating. |
| reviewRating.ratingValue | Number or Text A numerical quality rating for the item, either a number, fraction, or percentage [for example, "4", "60%", or "6 / 10"]. Google understands the scale for fractions and percentages, since the scale is implied in the fraction itself or the percentage. The default scale for numbers is a 5-point scale, where 1 is the lowest value and 5 is the highest value. If another scale is intended, use bestRating and worstRating. |
| datePublished | Date The date that the review was published, in ISO 8601 date format. |
| reviewRating.bestRating | Number The highest value allowed in this rating system. If bestRating is omitted, 5 is assumed. |
| reviewRating.worstRating | Number The lowest value allowed in this rating system. If worstRating is omitted, 1 is assumed. |
AggregateRating
The full definition of AggregateRating is available at schema.org/AggregateRating.
| itemReviewed | One of the valid types The item that is being rated. However, if the aggregate rating is nested into another schema.org type using the aggregateRating property, you can omit the itemReviewed property. The valid types for the reviewed item are: |
| itemReviewed.name | Text The name of the item that is being reviewed. If the review is nested into another schema.org type using the review property, you still need to provide the name of the thing that is being reviewed. For example: { "@context": "//schema.org/", "@type": "Game", "name": "Firefly", "aggregateRating": { "@type": "AggregateRating", "ratingValue": "88", "bestRating": "100", "ratingCount": "20" } } |
| ratingCount | Number The total number of ratings for the item on your site. At least one of ratingCount or reviewCount is required. |
| reviewCount | Number Specifies the number of people who provided a review with or without an accompanying rating. At least one of ratingCount or reviewCount is required. |
| ratingValue | Number or Text A numerical quality rating for the item, either a number, fraction, or percentage [for example, "4", "60%", or "6 / 10"]. Google understands the scale for fractions and percentages, since the scale is implied in the fraction itself or the percentage. The default scale for numbers is a 5-point scale, where 1 is the lowest value and 5 is the highest value. If another scale is intended, use bestRating and worstRating. |
| bestRating | Number The highest value allowed in this rating system. If bestRating is omitted, 5 is assumed. |
| worstRating | Number The lowest value allowed in this rating system. If worstRating is omitted, 1 is assumed. |
Monitor rich results with Search Console
Search Console is a tool that helps you monitor how your pages perform in Google Search. You don't have to sign up for Search Console to be included in Google Search results, but it can help you understand and improve how Google sees your site. We recommend checking Search Console in the following cases:
After deploying structured data for the first time
After Google has indexed your pages, look for issues using the relevant Rich result status report. Ideally, there will be an increase of valid pages, and no increase in errors or warnings. If you find issues in your structured data:
After releasing new templates or updating your code
When you make significant changes to your website, monitor for increases in structured data errors and warnings.- If you see an increase in errors, perhaps you rolled out a new template that doesn't work, or your site interacts with the existing template in a new and bad way.
- If you see a decrease in valid items [not matched by an increase in errors], perhaps you are no longer embedding structured data in your pages. Use the URL Inspection tool to learn what is causing the issue.
Analyzing traffic periodically
Analyze your Google Search traffic using the Performance Report. The data will show you how often your page appears as a rich result in Search, how often users click on it and what is the average position you appear on search results. You can also automatically pull these results with the Search Console API.Troubleshooting
Important: Google does not guarantee that features that consume structured data will show up in search results. For a list of common reasons why Google may not show your content in a rich result, see the General Structured Data Guidelines.If you're having trouble implementing or debugging structured data, here are some resources that may help you.
If you're using a content management system [CMS] or someone else is taking care of your site, ask them to help you. Make sure to forward any Search Console message that details the issue to them.