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
-
Will redirecting a logged in user from a public page to an equivalent private page (not visible to google) impact SEO?
Hi, We have public pages that can obviously be visited by our registered members. When they visit these public pages + they are logged in to our site, we want to redirect them to the equivalent (richer) page on the private site e.g. a logged in user visiting /public/contentA will be redirected to /private/contentA Note: Our /public pages are indexed by Google whereas /private pages are excluded. a) will this affect our SEO? b) if not, is 302 the best http status code to use? Cheers
Technical SEO | | bernienabo0 -
Website redesign: impact on SEO rankings?
Hi We're redesigning a website for a client whose SEO rankings are fairly strong, and are driving a good volume of enquiries through their website. We would like to do our best to ensure the redesign has a minimal impact on the rankings but aren't sure if there's anything in particular we should be doing to avert a severe dip in results. The content will be similar on many pages, with the major updates being from 2013 products to the 2014 suite. Layouts and images will, of course be updated, and we're going to do our best to keep the inbound links going to the correct place - any advice here would be much appreciated, too. We'd be really grateful for any suggestions for how to avoid a ranking disaster, and any major pitfalls we should look out for. Many thanks.
Technical SEO | | Kal-SEO0 -
Does bait and switch redirecting affect SEO?
Yeah, the question might be an odd one, but I'm new to SEO. Currently we've been considering creating links to certain pages on our site that instantly redirect to a landing page like this (referring to it as bait and switch redirecting): http://www.ecornell.com/certificate-programs/human-resources-management-training/advanced-certificate-in-strategic-hr-management/crt/ILRASHRC1/?lp=http://info.ecornell.com/executive-certificate-in-hr-leadership%3Fls=xxx%26of=xxx This essentially causes the user to "hop" from the content page directly to the landing page. Now, the content page is indexed otherwise, so I'm wondering if time on page (which is basically 0) or anything else might affect page rank. Also, if this is something we shouldn't do, that'd be great to know too. It feels sort of dirty, but I can't find any resources telling me it's bad, or how it would affect pagerank. I've read about pagejacking, but this doesn't seem to fall into the same category. Thanks! Alan
Technical SEO | | amccarty0 -
301 redirects and seo..
I bought a domain and it has nice traffic. It only has about 5 main pages in php When i got the site i switched to html because php was overkill. I did the 301 and google deleted the php files and replaced with html version when i check site:domain.com It has been about 7 days. I DID NOT use 301 for each of the 5 pages to go php to html instead is used this code RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | samerk
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomain.com
RewriteRule (.) http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RedirectMatch 301 (.).php$ http://www.mydomain.com$1.html So basically if you load php it will load the html version. dog.php > dog.html Is this OKAY? or should it be done differently.... worried! Thanks !0 -
SEO impact of adding a forum module to a site
I help maintain a site and the owners want to start a forum for their club members. This is a site that runs on Joomla, so it's likely we'll use some form of a Joomla module to add the forum functionality. My main question is whether there is anything to be concerned about for SEO purposes when adding the forum. I've never set one up, so I don't know the best practices for forums/discussion boards (although I'm scouring the web for general info). Should it be a subdomain or on the main domain -- or does this not matter? Are there any general setup processes that I should pay attention to for SEO best-practices? This question was mainly about the SEO impact, but if anyone can point me in the direction of forum best practice info as well, It would be appreciated. Cheers!
Technical SEO | | kariel
Kristy0 -
SEO impact of overseas data center
Hi there, I currently host a number of sites from data centers in the UK and Hong Kong but now have the need to develop a site specifically for an Australian audience. While our server in Hong Kong can probably provide an acceptably fast service to Australia i'm concerned that its location outside of Australia will negatively affect our local SEO efforts. Am i right to be concerned about this? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Dave
Technical SEO | | evidentlydavidm0 -
Keyword rich domains
Hi, Our site is beingthere.com.au We are in the business of video conferencing in Australia. I was wondering if there would be any benefit of purchasing keyword rich domains such as www.videoconferencing.net.au www.video streaming.net.au What would be the benefit(s)? And How would I go about using these domains to maximise SEO benefit? Thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | dantmurphy0