Rich Snippets Correct in Tool, Not in Google

[sbaylor]

We implemented the hreview-aggregate and hreview structured data formats in order to get the star ratings of customer reviews on our site into Google a couple of months ago. These star ratings appear properly in the Rich Snippets tool through Webmaster Tools, but they don't appear in the SERPs.

We've gone through the suggestions I can find from Google, but I can't figure out why they don't appear in the SERPs.

An example page is http://www.gallerydirect.com/art/product/bailey/earth-fact-iv

Can anyone spot a problem in the code that might be causing Google not to display the Structured Data?

[Mike.Goracke]

Hi Darin,

If they appear to be working properly in the Rich Snippets tool in Webmaster Tools, it sounds like you have them set up correctly.

Google only displays rich snippets when they feel it is applicable to the particular search being done, "While we don't guarantee that we will always use this information [rich snippets], we will check your site for marked-up content when we crawl it."

I would recommend you read Rich snippets not appearing and make sure that you are following the guidelines listed and if you are, Google may just not find the search you are using relevant.

Hope this helps.

Mike

[sbaylor]

Mike:

I've been through all of their docs that I can find, and have only one possible issue that I can find (whether to use Count or Votes for the total number of reviews, so we actually have both in the source code).

Many of our competitors for these searches are having their star ratings appear in the SERPs, which is the reason for my concern. I doubt that Google would allow the ratings to appear for some vendors and not others (unless there is a technical reason, which is the reason for my original post).

[Mike.Goracke]

The link I sent you in my original posts addresses your concern of Counts or Votes:

"Reviews: Does your review use count instead of vote?

Your marked-up review uses count instead of votes. count specifies the total number of reviews for an item. votes specifies the number of people who provided a rating, with or without an accompanying review. A review can specify count or votes, or both. However, whenever you include count, the page must also contain markup for each reviewed item.

If, after implementing the suggestions above, rich snippets still aren’t appearing for your site, let us know. While we won't be able to individually reply to everyone who fills out this form and we can't make guarantees about how we may use data from any particular site, we may be in touch to learn more about your data."

If that description does not help, I would recommend clicking the "let us know" link and attempt to reach out to Google to look into your issue further.

Mike

[jake372]

I had a similar situation and it just took time.  When did Google last crawl your site?  Have they crawled your site since you have implemented rich snippets?

[sbaylor]

Jake, Google is crawling over 100,000 pages on this site daily, so I doubt it's an issue of it not being crawled enough.

[jake372]

Gotcha ya.  I just threw that out there b/c this was the situation with my site.  I just did a couple of quick looks and here's the first example that shows this page was cached by Google on March 15:

https://www.google.com/#output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=site:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gallerydirect.com%2Fart%2Fproduct%2Fst-john%2Fdallas%3Fsubstrate_id%3D1%26product_style_id%3D1%26frame_id%3D%26size%3D18x24&oq=site:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gallerydirect.com%2Fart%2Fproduct%2Fst-john%2Fdallas%3Fsubstrate_id%3D1%26product_style_id%3D1%26frame_id%3D%26size%3D18x24&gs_l=hp.3..0l2j0i10j0.1105.3433.0.3601.6.6.0.0.0.0.109.453.4j1.5.0...0.1...1c.1.9.psy-ab.7RchJ2GxIQg&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.45368065,d.dmQ&fp=d36fb92d0c1de289&biw=1309&bih=762

[sbaylor]

Interesting. I know that we don't update the sitemap every day, but maybe we need to look into auto-generating the sitemap. With so many pages being crawled daily, are they only updating the cache for pages with changes?  Or does the cache result that you sent mean that this page hasn't been crawled for a month?

[dohertyjf]

Hey Darin -

Why is your markup at the bottom of the page (http://imgur.com/AXcyxWL) instead of where the stars actually are? You're essentially hiding the snippets on the page, hiding content, and I can't imagine Google likes that very much.

I'd work to get the markup where the actual stars and content are.

[sbaylor]

We're using a service called Gigya for integrated logins using your accounts from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. Gigya apparently does some goofy stuff and from what I've been told, we essentially have the reviews on each page twice, so we have to hide one of them so that there isn't duplicate content (Whenever I ask the development team, I get a lot of jargon spackle rather than some straight answers). It's very likely that may be the reason why you see the markup so low on the page.

[andrewv]

Darin,

Have you had any luck with this issue? I believe I'm running into the same problem you are (larger, authoritative ecomm site with no rich snippets for any structured data)

[dohertyjf]

Darin -

I've been seeing recently where if there are multiple markups on a page, or the same markup on numerous pages (ie sitewide reviews instead of per-page reviews), then the markup will not show. This could be your issue.

Ask Gigya if they can comment out one of them. If they can't, find a new provider.

[sbaylor]

We've asked Gigya for help, but no love there.  We're trying other ideas to implementing these, but no success yet.