In order to qualify for organic stars, stand out in Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), and increase your Click-through Rate (CTR), it’s important to add schema mark-up to your website. Here's an example of a search result having Organic Stars:
What schema do I need?
As it stands now (after the 2019 Google Schema Update), only correctly marked up Product schema can result in gold star ratings in search results. Within Product schema, 'AggregateRating' is directly responsible for the rating rich snippets in the SERP. If you collect product reviews with us through Feefo on-page integration you do not need to worry about this as we will automatically insert the schema mark-up into your code. If you choose the custom integration route please see further resources on how to pull the data into your code via Feefo API.
"I collect Product reviews through Feefo on-page integration, but I do not have gold star rating rich snippets in the SERP."
This can happen in the following instances:
- More than one Product schema is on the page
- Feefo JavaScript is not firing correctly (or no Product Schema is Inserted)
- The page speed is too slow (Googlebot is not fetching the mark-up)
Let us have a look at each example.
Multiple Schema Issue
Run the page through the Rich Result Test Tool. If you see more than one Product schema set, you need to merge these - We advise merging only two of the Product schema codes. If you have more than one which you (or any 3rd party app/plugin) insert on your page, you will need to decide which one you are leaving and which one will be removed. At this moment, Feefo schema insertion happens automatically on the product pages where on-page integration is used - In future product updates, you may have an option for switching this off.
Therefore you will need to merge Feefo schema with any other set of schema that is present on the page via @id markup. Please add the @id mark-up to your Product schema as per the below code and the two schema sets will be merged. This will allow Googlebot to pick up and 'crawl' both Product schema sets and render them into a nice rich snippet in the SERP. Feefo schema is using the below @id mark-up for all merchants:
"@id": "uri #Product",
Example: "@id": "/products/inokim-quick-3-electric-scooter#Product",
Feefo JavaScript
Feefo JS should be firing correctly on your pages, but at times due to other resources on the page the code can be obstructed by other resources and may not be fired correctly. You can check this through your Search Console.
Press Test Live
Slow Page Speed
If you've checked the above two points, and all looks correct but the desired gold star ratings are still not appearing, make sure that your product actually qualifies for rich snippets, as certain product categories do not qualify for the rich snippets like guns, cigarettes, and products of an adult nature; but if you do qualify and they're still not appearing, we recommend that you check your site speed. This is probably the most complex issue that deserves an article of its own, but the bottom line is that if your site is very heavy on the resources it needs to load, with a lot of 3rd party apps and plugins, Googlebot is not making a full crawl of your resources and indexes it with a partial fetch. This is particularly important as Google announced mobile-first indexing for the whole Web meaning that it is crawling the web with its smartphone mobile bot. This means that your design and SEO optimization now must be done for smart mobile devices.
There are a few resources where you can see how you place on the site/page speed, but we strongly recommend that you start optimizing your mobile speed now, as it will have a positive effect not only on your rich snippets but also on your overall SEO and potentially rankings too. Unfortunately, we will not be able to assist you with your site speed optimization project but there are quite a few agencies out there that can help you to identify and solve this problem.
Site Speed Resources:
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
https://gtmetrix.com/
https://moz.com/learn/seo/page-speed
Where can I find more on Product schema mark-up?
There are several resources that we advise you to check out.
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/product
https://rich-snippets.io/structured-data-generator/
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-structured-data
Schema guidelines:
Always run your page through the testing tool after implementation. If you have errors and warnings (only if AggregateRaring is missing), these could prevent your stars from displaying. In the instance of Errors, your mark-up is wrong and will not be read by Google!
Only add Product schema Schema to individual Product Pages.
Do not mark-up with individual Product schema on your category pages (multiple Product mark-up is OK). Product category pages should not carry rich snippets in SERP as this is against Google’s guidelines.