How to Get Aggregated Google Rating Stars in Search Results

By Katerina Bojkov

Have you ever wondered how some websites get the beautiful yellow stars and review count next to their web link in the Google search result?

Well, having 5-star reviews is every business owner’s dream, especially for eCommerce where customer reviews are a significant decision-making parameter. And as the tech-savvy world and digital marketing are taking over, these business reviews can make you stand out for sure.

What do you get with the aggregated Google rating?

Let me point out the benefits of having Google reviews stars in the SERP:

• Boost credibility and trustworthiness
• Higher click-through rate (CTR)
• Better SEO performance
• Higher ranking on local search
• Encourage new reviews (especially positive reviews)
• The stars will be reflected on Google Maps too

In this know-how post, you will learn how you can get the rich star snippet on your website search result.

In short, you will need a schema.org code that will generate the aggregated rating of your reviews displayed on your webpage.

Before you begin, please note these 2 things:
1. Add the schema code on a specific product page: Our research showed that Google doesn’t support star ratings on root domains/homepages. According to their guidelines in order for the stars to show in the search results the schema code needs to be placed on a web page showcasing a specific product or the service you are offering. So, please add the schema code on a specific product or service page and not the homepage.

2. Add the code before other schema codes: Make sure the schema code is added at the top of your page code. This means that it needs to be before any other schema codes in the header of your page. If you use WordPress, use a plugin to add the code in the header for a specific page.

What do you need to get started with Google rating?

Those shiny five-star snippets make you a search engine’s favorite. And having them is more simple than you think. You don’t need presence and business listing on any review sites.

What you need is:

• Google My Business (business profile)
• A number of reviews (at least 5)
• Schema code generator

How to get the star snippets?

The EmbedReviews platform provides the functionality to generate this schema.org code that will display a rich snippet in the Google search results.

By using EmbedReviews, you can easily create a feed with the reviews you collect on Facebook Page, Yelp, Google location or you can manually import online reviews that you have received from your customers (as structured data in .csv file).

If you don’t understand coding, don’t worry just follow the steps below. The screenshots will help you out too.

So, here is a step-by-step explanation of how to get the schema code for displaying rich snippet in Google search results:

Step 1: Log in to your EmbedReviews account and navigate to Widgets (if you still don’t have an account, click here to register)

Step 2: Create a new Reviews Widget by clicking the ‘Create new’ button

Step 3: In the Editor, choose the reviews’ sources you want to get reviews from

Step 4: Once the widget is created just copy/paste the top-right code into your webpage

Step 5: Now, once you have your reviews on the page, get the related Schema code that is located in the ‘Schema’ tab and again copy/paste the provided code in the same webpage, and if possible in the header of the page before any other schema codes.

That’s it.

To help Google to show these changes you will need to ask Google to re-crawl the URL where you’ve placed the schema.org code.

Here are the official guidelines, how you can do this:

1. Go to your Google Search Console
2. Click ‘URL Inspection’ in the left menu
3. In the top search field paste the page URL
4. On the new page click ‘Request indexing’
5. Re-crawling is not immediate or guaranteed. It typically takes several days for a successful request to be granted. Also, understand that we can’t guarantee that Google will index all your changes, as Google relies on a complex algorithm to update indexed materials.

Bottom line

If you follow-up the steps as described, your star snippet will display in the Google search results once the page is re-indexed.

Now, when your potential customers see the shining stars will be encouraged to write reviews to you (and probably they won’t be negative reviews).

Good luck! And don’t forget to let us know how this worked for you.

Source: https://embedsocial.com/blog/google-aggregated-review-stars-schema/