Using structured data for reviews - for negative or warnings.
-
We all use review markup today and we use it linearly as only a vote up or down. My question is around a site that will judge the negative impacts of given chemicals introduced into certain waterways. (Sorry, I must protect the client so I cannot give out all the info; I hope this is enough for a reasonable understanding.)
Is there anyone who has ever used or is aware of any markup that does not result in a star? So, if we use the current system, we end up where a bad chemical gets a ton of single stars. In essence what we are measuring is degrees of Positive. With four stars there is no zero positive, but 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% (Ok unless it is aggregated).
I want to be able to show degrees of negative and obviously stars would be confusing. So, have a symbol that connotes a negative (skull and crossbones, X, !!, etc.) and the more of these someone marks shows more displeasure or more danger. Are there any ideas for this or any occurrences already on the Internet you may be aware of?
Preference would be to be able to at some point have search engines show them as snippets.
Thanks to all you Mozzers,
Robert
-
Hello Robert,
That I know of there is no micro-data markup for your specific need. However, you should be able to use the review rating for now. You can show the skull and crossbones or happy faces or whatever you need to show to the user, and then use the Rating or AggregateRating schema to translate that into what Google needs, which is essentially a number range from 1-5. These would show up as starts in the SERPs, but you could show them with whatever icons you like on your website.
-
Hello Fabioricotta
Thanks for the well thought out answer. If we were individually coding each review that would work but we are working with a lot of searcher generated reviews and wanted something that would be recognized by the search engines as well for the review.
I do give you credit for great thinking on this though! Thanks a ton. (Sorry, I went dark for about 10 days and did not answer back.)Robert
-
Hi Robert,
Have you try special characters on meta description? Instead of showing the first 5 letters on your meta description, you can use something like this character "
" to represent your review about it. Does it work?
You can find the complete list of UTF-8 symbols here: http://www.w3schools.com/charsets/ref_utf_symbols.asp
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
-
How to make Google show reviews from Facebook and Google My Business?
I wonder if there is anything I can do to increase the chance that Google shows stars that indicate the average score of our reviews from Facebook or Google MyBusiness for the keywords where we rank nr. 1, for instance our brand name?
Reviews and Ratings | | AudunBK0 -
Any experiences with Reviews.io?
Hello, We have used Trustpilot.com for a few years in the past. Service was reasonable and they did what they were supposed to do. However, due to their price and requirement for a full-year payment upfront we stopped using their review collection service. Is someone using Reviews.io? They are included in Google Review Partners, which seems to be very encouraging:
Reviews and Ratings | | the-global-communicator
https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2375474?hl=en Also, they have a decent price for their intermediary package (about $ 89/month) and don't require a yearly contract like Trustpilot and some others. Any experiences you could share about Reviews.io will be appreciated. Luciano, The Translation Company Group0 -
What hosting provider do you use? I think mine is letting down my SEO!
Hello I am curious to what hosting plans you are using, and what you would recommend. I am currently paying £30 per month for shared reseller hosting with tsohost and having problems every week with my most popular website (1-10k hits a day). website gets internal errors and intermittently goes extremely slow. I have about 10 sites in total most very small traffic. So just looking for something fast, good for WordPress sites and ideally good for migrating over onto. Please let me know your recommendations. My budget is £100 per month, ideally a little less. Thanks! Steven
Reviews and Ratings | | stevenbinks320 -
3rd Party Approved Reviews - Widget or API Feed - Any thoughts ?
Hi Mozzers, We use a google approved 3rd party review company to collect reviews for our branches and now also for our products( this is about to be implemented). We currently use one of their widgets on our site (its javascript) to show the reviews. I don't think google can read this and I don't think we currently, therefore, get any direct seo benefit from it. My questions are as follows : I obviously want to get any SEO benefit from any review text which customers leave but as the data itself is housed on the review site with a widget on my site pointing to it,should I use an API feed as opposed to a widget. If google can read the review text on my page - then surely i should some benefit from it even though, it could technically be classed as duplicate content what are peoples thoughts ? . thanks Pete
Reviews and Ratings | | PeterCol120 -
Spammy Structured Data?!
Help! I woke up this morning to a message from Google that says: "Spammy structured data for http://www.riddelllaw.com/ might be dropped from search results." I am in over my head a bit and not sure what to do. I looked at Webmaster tools and it says something about the author in the testimonials on my page. The testimonials page is just a Wordpress Plugin - Testimonials Showcase. Is the "spammy" result just indicated by errors in webmaster tools? Or could there be something else I am missing? Is this something I can fix on my own or should I hire someone who actually knows what they are doing? Thank you!!
Reviews and Ratings | | bpurdue0 -
Why does Google return 1 star reviews in local listings as the "most helpful"?
I have a client who has recently received two 1 star reviews on Google local (unhappy customer and unhappy customers boyfriend). This is affecting an otherwise flourishing business as these two 1 star reviews are displayed prominently when you search for the brand in Google. They have since received more positive reviews, however Google insists on displaying, what they term, the "most helpful" reviews first. Why are these 1 star reviews deemed "most helpful"? In all honesty, they aren't even really that helpful, with the latter verging on slanderous. We are in the process of reporting this one as it personally attacks a member of staff, however, whilst we tentatively wait weeks for a response, I wondered if anyone has any idea on how G decides which reviews are "most helpful"? When there is no option for other users to rate these reviews as helpful (such as on play store).
Reviews and Ratings | | Silkstream0 -
Reviews Duplicate Issue
Hi, I have one query, Can we use the reviews displayed in one website to other website. I mean I have one product and has different websites for that. Can i use the reviews that i got in one of my website in my other website. Will it bring any duplicate content issue? Also one more question for example, consider i am running a review website, can i list the reviews that has been displayed in different websites to my review websites . Whether it will bring any copyright issue?
Reviews and Ratings | | WebOps-SEO0 -
Embedding reviews on website?
Our company is considering embedding either a live feed of reviews or selected reviews on our website. We're a B2C service business. Our preference would be to embed a live feed of Google+ reviews. I've found conflicting info on whether this will incur a duplicate content penalty from Google. There's a plugin that we could use on our site (built with Wordpress), or we could embed directly from Google+ if it's better for SEO. Thoughts on whether we should embed reviews at all, and if so, the best way to go about it? Thanks!
Reviews and Ratings | | AJ_Tutoring0