Schema.org : reviewCount & ratingValue - best practices for implementation?

[evoNick]

I'd like to add our merchant review count and rating to our site and use the schema.org markup to indicate to the search engines what these are.  The reason I'd like to do this is so that the star rating pulls through to the organic listing.

Check out this example from several UK tight sites.  Notice how the organic listings display the star rating...

My questions are:

1. Has anyone seen an example of this from Google.com (US site)

2. I heard that you should only add this markup to the homepape - but couldn't find any Google documentation to back this up.  Do you know if this can be applied throughout the site w/o penalty?

Thanks everyone!

[Zkwarta]

Sure, check out my site, cappex.com. We have reviews and ratings on many colleges within the US - many of them showing the review schema in the SERPS. For example - type in "cappex depaul university", or "cappex SUNY fredonia reviews" and you'll see what I mean.

No penalties on our end, and no limitation to just put it on the HP (In fact I've never heard about the markup only on the homepage...sounds a bit funky to me if you are reviewing a whole bunch of things...).

[evoNick]

Thanks Zkwarta.  We're looking to specifically pull in our Merchant Rating from Google Product Search.  Good to hear that the university ratings are working well for you.  Cool site!