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Structured Data

Review Snippet

Star ratings shown in a search result, driven by review structured data.

A review snippet is the star rating shown in a search result, driven by Review or AggregateRating structured data. Google requires the rating to be genuinely present and visible on the page and to concern a specific item, not the business in general — self-serving markup on your own site about your own service is explicitly disallowed.

Definition

Review snippets come from AggregateRating (a summary) or individual Review nodes attached to a Product, Recipe, Book or similar item.

The rules matter more than the syntax. The rating must be visible on the page, it must come from real reviewers, and self-serving reviews — a business rating itself or its own core offering — are ineligible. Fabricated ratings are one of the more commonly penalised structured-data abuses.

Why It Matters

Stars measurably raise click-through. That incentive is exactly why the eligibility rules are strict and enforced, and why inventing an aggregateRating risks losing all rich results for the site.

Example

A product page showing "4.6 from 89 reviews", with those reviews on the page and marked up, is eligible. A homepage claiming "4.9 from 142" with no reviews shown is not.

The self-serving rule, which catches most sites

Google does not allow review snippets for a business reviewing itself or its own core offering. A software company marking up a five-star rating of its own software is ineligible, regardless of whether the reviews are genuine.

The markup has to be about a specific item a third party reviewed — a product you sell, a recipe, a book, a course. The distinction is between "customers rated this product" and "we rate our service highly".

This is why so many sites carry aggregateRating that never produces stars. The markup validates, the rich result never appears, and the reason is a policy rather than a syntax error — which is exactly the kind of failure a validator will not tell you about.

Inventing the numbers is worse: fabricated ratings are among the more actively enforced structured-data abuses, and the penalty applies site-wide.

How SlapMyWeb checks this

The audit validates AggregateRating and Review nodes and cross-checks them against the page: whether the rating value is within the stated best and worst, whether a review count is present, and whether the rating actually appears in the visible content. A rating marked up but not rendered is the single most common reason review snippets are refused.

Know the term.
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