Google no longer showing review stars
Google announced they will now be ignoring Local Business and Organisation review schema. This change is universal, and affects every website showing their own reviews, whether directly or via a 3rd party widget. This doesn’t affect the SEO benefits of reviews, nor the onsite uplift in conversions from having relevant, fresh social proof.
2020 UPDATE: We now use our own mechanism to show stars in search results
Ever wondered how some websites get rating stars in the Google search results, like this:
They really make the search result pop off the page, don’t they.
Well research by TrustPilot found that search listings with review star ratings get up to 35.77% more clicks than those without.
That’s 35% more potential customers visiting your website …
You can become eligible – at Google’s sole discretion– for these rating stars by adding something called structured data markup to your website pages, and making sure you follow Google’s technical, content and webmaster guidelines, as well as their structured data policies, to the letter.
The tricky part is keeping abreast of Google’s evolving policies, and ensuring you update this markup regularly as new reviews come in to keep it fresh and relevant.
And, of course, doing this for every page (apart from the homepage) where you want rating stars to appear … because, remember, Google indexes individual pages, not whole websites.
If that all sounds like a minefield and a chore, then you’re right. It is… which probably explains why so few websites have rating stars showing in the search results at all.
The good news is that when you put Trust Vega’s review widget on your website, we do it all for you, automatically.
You simply add our review widget to your website once – after that, we’ll automatically keep it updated for you as reviews for your business roll in.
Why Google loves reviews and rating stars
Adding our reviews to your website can boost your search engine ranking too.
That’s because Google knows that if it can consistently deliver fresh, relevant and useful search results to people … no-one will want to use any other search engine.
And there’s no better way for you to signal to Google that you’re actively in business, serving people at the highest level, than with a constant fresh stream of independently verified reviews.
When you let the Google Stars system push you to top of the search results, you get to let Google refer customers to you all day and night WITHOUT paying a single extra penny in advertising.
If you don’t let Google Stars work in your favour, you’ll just be handing all these same eager customers over to your competitors.
(And isn’t it already hard enough to get new customers without doing that?)
You can’t trick Google though.They’re too smart and too paranoid to risk losing their audience to some scammy website. This means your website is being screened with cutting edge technology designed to protect the user experience.
We ensure your reviews are verified, coded and displayed in a way that gets them noticed sooner than later – often within just a few weeks.
So here’s what all of this REALLY means…
When you let Trust Vega do the heavy lifting, you no longer have to feel like the “slow child in class” because you aren’t at the cutting edge of SEO algorithms, practices, and tech jargon.
Nor do you have to risk being scammed by some self-proclaimed “Search Engine Optimization Guru” or have to spend hours of your time and hard earned money learning the latest techniques or chasing the latest SEO hack to make sure you can get found online.
Instead, you get to sit back while Google does what it does best – helping the cream rise to the top – ultimately giving you more choice over the customers you take on, as well as more free time to spend doing the things you’re passionate about.
Google Stars are just one of the many benefits of using Trust Vega to collect reviews about your business.
Why not get started now, and see for yourself.
