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?
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
-
Beware of Fishy 4-Star Reviews
Hello to all our folks who market local businesses! I came across something this week that I felt was important enough to share. Hopefully, if you're a Moz blog reader or a Moz Local customer, you're already well aware of the importance of monitoring your Google My Business reviews on an ongoing basis, responding to them as they come in, whether they're positive or negative. And, you know to be on the lookout for spam reviews. But a strange new form of spam seems to be emerging that might be really easy to overlook at first. We're all familiar with the spammer who leaves you fake 1-star reviews for the purpose of harming your brand. But you might not immediately be suspicious of a 4-star review, or even a string of 4-star reviews until you realize your former 5 star rating has been whittled down by a succession of less-than-perfect, fake reviews. The worst thing, I think, about this tactic, is that it can be overlooked. Jason Brown has captured this phenomenon in his recent post: http://reviewfraud.org/4-star-negative-review-attacks/ and I highly recommend reading it and paying extra attention to any 4-star reviews companies you market may be receiving. I'd suggest, if you find this going on with any of the GMB listings you manage, you report it to Jason so that he can continue to track this activity. He's a Google forum TC, and, perhaps, with enough evidence, he might eventually be able to make a case to Google about this practice.
Reviews and Ratings | | MiriamEllis5 -
Purchasing and rebranding practice with bad reviews
An optometrist is looking to buy a practice with really bad Google reviews. They want to rebrand it under their name. This practice has pretty bad SEO as well. What should they do? Should they just mark the GMB page as permanently closed then make a new one under the new business name? Or is that risky or considered spammy since the "new" practice is also an optometrist? Could Google think it is a duplicate or an attempt to trick them?
Reviews and Ratings | | Mike-i0 -
Does Google's 3rd Party Reviews Guideline Update make Review Aggregators Obsolete?
Good day!We are concerned about Google's updated Guidelines in ratings and reviews, specifically as quoted in the SEO Roundtable: "The new guidelines specifically disallows you from using 3rd party reviews, found on other sites, and marking those up on your site."https://www.seroundtable.com/google-updates-reviews-markup-guidelines-22608.htmlThe Guidelines are here https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/reviews#local-business-reviewsWe enlist the use of a 3rd party aggregate for one of our client's (service business). Since, in effect, it is a 3rd party review site, and what the shortcode does is copy reviews from that third party site and mark them up on the client website. What do you guys know about this update, and what are is your take on what the update says and how it relates to a 3rd party review aggregators? Thanks!
Reviews and Ratings | | LinkRightMedia0 -
Local Reviews.
Hi I was wondering if someone can tell me if I understand this correctly or at least my observation has been right? Does Yelp pick up the reviews left of Google and post it on yelp, if you are using the same gmail to log in to both your yelp and google account?
Reviews and Ratings | | LittleDog0 -
Schema.org problems with reviews
Hey Mozzers, Has anyone had problems getting review data to appear in the SERP? Specifically, hotel package reviews. The site I work for sells packages and products, but I'm having off cases where the data is appearing if there is only 1 review present. As soon as it gets multiple reviews the snippet data is no longer showing up. The schema.org markup is testing fine in the structured data testing tool, and when I compare it against competitor sites where the data is appearing, I can't see the difference. I am by no means a veteran SEO, but this doesn't make any sense to me. Has anyone encountered a similar problem? I could really use some help here. One of the pages I am having difficulty with: www.tripcentral.ca/vacations-packages_mexico.html }
Reviews and Ratings | | tripcentral0 -
Have You Influenced Google's "Reviews From Around the Web"?
This seems like a frustration for many who do SEO for local business. The Google Plus aggregation of reviews is vaguely created and out of our control. Or is it? The most I can find about it is at: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3474120?hl=en&ref_topic=6109351 I have clients in the accommodation industry who are reviewed thoroughly on similar sites to one another. Some of these clients have 100+ "Reviews From Around the Web" where as others are stuck at one or two reviews. My thoughts are that the business name, address, and phone details would allow Google to link the review with the local listing. I'm not sure and doubt this is just the case because the low-review listings have consistent NAP details. Have you been able to get reviews aggregating for a local business in their Google Plus?
Reviews and Ratings | | fastrack1 -
Google Reviews
We operate a printing company, and at the moment we have two locations in Houston, Texas. Our newest location just opened and so it has no reviews and no real content on Google +. A very satisfied customer seems to have posted two back to back reviews on the second location and it now seems that location no longer pulls up. It used to be that when you googled our business name that both locations pulled up it seems to pull just first more well established location. The second location can still be found but for whatever reason it no longer shows up with our other results. Should we tell the client to remove one of the reviews? I hope we don't get penalized for this Appreciate your feedback. C
Reviews and Ratings | | RETEX0 -
How to Google Product Reviews?
Hello, I have a client that sells only 1 item. What will be the best way to start getting reviews? I thought about opening a placess account, so the reviews will also start showing on his Adwords campaign. Or can I get products reviews on google+ ? Thanks
Reviews and Ratings | | ogdcorp0