Will there be an SEO impact if I switch my rich snippets from reviews to votes?
-
So, we currently have rich snippets showing for reviews on our site. We've made some new product pages that have reviews on them, but they are hidden behind a tab. Because of this our rich snippets haven't been showing in the serps, so we've been looking for a way to get them showing for these new pages. What we've found is that we can change the rich snippets from reviews to votes, which will show an aggregate score on the page, and this will get the snippets appearing in serps again as votes.
What we're concerned about is, if we make this change to these new pages, they will automatically change everything on our review pages and all snippets on our sites will change from reviews to votes (not just the new pages). What we want to know is, if we make this change do you think that we may see a negative seo impact (aside from maybe having a lower CTR)?
Thanks!
-
No. it will not affect your organic rankings on Google if you change from reviews to votes. Keep the tab, but add the aggregated ratings on the page. It will be a snapshot of the reviews. and link the snapshot with the tab as well.
Reviews are always better than votes because reviews keep your visitors engage and build trust of your site. They spend time in analyzing/reading the reviews which help them make a decision. Reviews increases your time on site. For example I want to buy shoes and visited a shoe website. I see votes, some are positive or negative but I don't know what's positive / negative about them. But if I get reviews I can specifically see the pros/cons, I get a better insight before coming to a buying decision.
Rich Snippets can have a huge impact on your website’s performance. However I don't see them helping rankings directly but indirectly they help a lot. It can help you see:
1. Better clickthrough rates from search results
2. More qualified traffic and better conversion ratesThey also help you communicate a clear, unique value proposition and establish a competitive advantage.
Google’s ultimate objective is: to create the best search experience for users, so they can find the best, most relevant results. The better Google Search is able to help its users find the best search result before they click through (to ensure that each click is the correct one), the better the experience for their users.
Hope this helps you
-
Great, thanks for the help though!
-
Ok. Well, to answer your original question I don't think the semantic markup will negatively impact your rankings, but it's not the ideal implementation (the rich snippets will say "votes").
-
Yeah, we're definitely not being deceptive, we have a tab that says Reviews which open up when a user clicks on it. We've tested in with this tool but it says it won't show because the text/reviews are hidden to the user, which is why we tested it with a the vote aggregate data and this was the only way we could get it to show...
-
As long as you aren't being deceptive about it, it should still work.
Just put your code into the rich snippet testing tool and see if the semantic markup is implemented properly.
-
We put the new pages up about 6 or 7 weeks ago, so it has been some time now. From looking at the google help page it states under the Aggregate reviews section for count,
"The total number of reviews for the item on your site. Note: Whenever you include
count
, the page must also contain review markup for each reviewed item.count
should only include reviews on your own site."and for vote:
"Specifies the number of people who provided a rating with or without an accompanying review. A page must specify at least one of
count
orvotes
."I could be interpreting this wrong, but I understood it to say that if we're using count for reviews, the reviews need to be visible. If we use votes, they reviews don't need to be visible on the page.
-
How long did you test the aggregate ratings for? It can take a while for Google to catch up. I don't see why votes would work but ratings wouldn't.
-
We've already tried using the aggregate rating on the page from the reviews, but when we do this the snippets won't show in the serps... We also have the option of redesigning the new pages, but it would be an absolute last resort due to lack of resources at this stage.
-
Why would you want to use votes? If the reviews are on a separate tab, why not just include the aggregate rating on the page itself, in order to get the rich snippets showing? You may also be able to implement the tabs in such a way that you still get review snippets.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Are on-site content carousel bad for SEO?
Hi, I didn't find an answer to my question in the Forum. I attached an example of content carousel, this is what I'm talking about. I understand that Google has no problem anymore with tabbed contents and accordeons (collapsible contents). But now I'm wondering about textual carousels. I'm not talking about an image slider, I'm talking about texts. Is text carousel harder to read for Google than plain text or tabs? Of course, i'm not talking about a carousel using Flash. Let's say the code is proper... Thanks for your help. spfra5
Technical SEO | | Alviau0 -
Lost ranking after domain switch
I recently migrated from https://whitefusemedia.com to https://whitefuse.com. The website URL structure and content remained the same and I followed all the best practice guidance regarding checks on the new domain and appropriate 301 redirects. I have seen traffic drop by about 50% and the traffic that is still coming through is mainly coming through links still listed by Google under the old domain (https://whitefusemedia.com). Is this normal? Should I expect to see this bounce back, or is there anything I can do now to regain the rankings?
Technical SEO | | wfm-uk0 -
Will Redirection of Unnatural Links to the New Domain will work?
Hi All, If a website www.mywebsite.com has received 100 unnatural links and because of that rankings are dropped. I want to follow the below strategy to protect my website from these 100 unnatural links. Please let me know if it will work: Buy a new domain www.newdomain.com with new whois record (Not related to www.mywebsite.com ) Do 301 redirection of all 100 unnatural links (Those are pointing to www.mywebsite.com) to www.newdomain (New domain) Do 302 redirection from www.newdomain (New domain) to www.mywebsite.com (Old Domain) After applying the above strategy, will google still consider those 100 unnatural links for Old domain??
Technical SEO | | RuchiPardal0 -
SEO friendldy Site structure?
we are in the process or rewriting all the pages on one of our sites and will be changing some urls around. i was just wondering if dashes or underscores are better in the urls SEO wise? www.site.com/word-word-word/ or
Technical SEO | | 858-SEO
www.site.com/word_word_word/ i personally like the underscores better but some colleagues tell me that dashes are better, any tests out there on this issue?? Thanks0 -
How to best remove old pages for SEO
I run an accommodation web site, each listing has its own page. When a property is removed what is the best way to handle this for SEO because the URL will no longer be valid and there will be a blank page.
Technical SEO | | JamieHibbert0 -
Newly appointed SEO at a small company
Hi. I am new to the world of SEO, and SEOmoz has already taught me a lot. I am a newly appointed in house SEO at www.completeoffice.co.uk. They want to rank for the keyword office interior design, but I noticed that all the keywords they are trying to rank for, there homepage shows up on search results. So I optimised the on page SEO of their website for the specific office interior design page. http://www.completeoffice.co.uk/interiors.aspx. I took it from a grade F to a grade A. Currently they are showing up just outside the top 50 for office interior design, and its the homepage in the google results. Now I have made these changes and on page optimised the SEO for this page to be solely for office interior design keyword will the search results change so that it is the specific office interior design page showing and linking to , or will it always remain the home page. I have optimised many of the other pages in this way so that a keyword will link to the relevant page and rank for that relevant page, rather than get the home page to rank for 30 keywords. Thanks for any help.
Technical SEO | | CompleteOffice1 -
Domain Forwarding and SEO
I have looked around and only saw older and contradicting responses to this question but what effect does having a domain with VALUABLE-KEYWORD.com forward to MAINSITE.com or COMMON-MISSPELLING.com forward to MAINSITE.com in terms of SEO and is it considered spammy or looked down upon
Technical SEO | | treytt0 -
Local SEO Optimization
hi, Looks for advices,tips, links ressource to improve local seo optimisation in google places for domain "google. fr" as website business is in France ! Tks a lot in advance..
Technical SEO | | mozllo0