Making Review Rich Results more helpful: Algorithmic updates to improve user experience
Search results that feature review rich results can be a useful tool when searching for products or services. However, invalid or misleading implementations of review rich results can negatively impact user experience. To address this issue, Google has introduced algorithmic updates that aim to make review rich results more helpful and meaningful for users.
One of the major changes that Google has made is to focus on schema types that are most appropriate for displaying review stars. While review markup can technically be attached to any schema type, displaying star reviews for some types may not add much value for the user. With this change, Google is limiting the pool of schema types that can potentially trigger review rich results in search to only those that are most relevant to the user.
The schema types that will now display review rich results are as follows:
- schema.org/Book
- schema.org/Course
- schema.org/CreativeWorkSeason
- schema.org/CreativeWorkSeries
- schema.org/Episode
- schema.org/Event
- schema.org/Game
- schema.org/HowTo
- schema.org/LocalBusiness
- schema.org/MediaObject
- schema.org/Movie
- schema.org/MusicPlaylist
- schema.org/MusicRecording
- schema.org/Organization
- schema.org/Product
- schema.org/Recipe
- schema.org/SoftwareApplication
By limiting the schema types that trigger review rich results, Google aims to provide more relevant and helpful information to users.
Another change that Google has made to review rich results is to disallow self-serving reviews for LocalBusiness and Organization schema types. Reviews that can be perceived as “self-serving” are not in the best interest of users, as they may not provide unbiased and authentic feedback. Google defines self-serving reviews as reviews about an entity that are placed on the website of that same entity, either directly in their markup or via an embedded third-party widget.
To improve user experience and ensure authenticity, Google will no longer display review rich results for LocalBusiness and Organization schema types in cases where the entity being reviewed controls the reviews themselves.
This change may not require site owners to make any immediate changes, as Google will simply stop displaying review snippets for those pages. However, site owners are encouraged to ensure that their structured data matches Google’s guidelines to avoid any potential manual actions.
Wrapping up here, Google’s algorithmic updates to review rich results aim to provide a more meaningful and helpful review experience for users. By focusing on relevant schema types and disallowing self-serving reviews, Google hopes to improve the quality and authenticity of review rich results.
