Rich Snippets - Aggregated Review in Organic Search

[Mark_Ch]

Hi All,

Let’s say you are a service provider such a Garden Landscaper, and over time your customers have placed reviews on Google Local Places.

As part your sites redesign your looking to implement "Rich Snippets Aggregated Reviews". Your organic natural search results should include the reviews; aggregated star picture, aggregated review value and total reviews.

Question #1 Is this possible?
#2 What is the best way of achieving this via Wordpress as a plugin?
#3 Do you need to file for consideration via Google?

Any other useful advice will be appreciated.

Thanks Mark

[Kara.Wallace]

Hi Mark,

To answer your questions:

1. Yes. That said, Google does not guarantee they will even use your rich snippets, "Rich snippets improve the web for everyone, so Google encourages webmasters to mark up their content (or use a Merchant Center product feed) to give us structured information about your data whenever appropriate. While we don't guarantee that we will always use this information, we will check your site for marked-up content when we crawl it."

2. Sorry, I don't know if Wordpress has a plugin; however, you just need to follow Google's Rich Snippet Guidelines.

3. You do not need to file for consideration. You do need to follow Google's Rich Snippet Guidelines and you can use Google's Rich Snippet Troubleshooting Guide if you do not see your snippets appearing.

Hope this helps.

Mike

[S.S.N]

follow-up question:

Can reviews on our website through a 3rd party review app be used in rich snippets? or does it have to be google reviews?

[Kara.Wallace]

It doesn't have to be through Google's review system.

Google can pull in reviews from Yelp, Citysearch, Yahoo Local, Bizrate, PriceGrabber, Epinions, etc.

Here is an example of how Google is pulling in reviews for Home Depot.

Mike

[S.S.N]

but can't be one that's iframed or scripted from an external source?

[Mark_Ch]

Hi Mike,

Thank you for your response.

I have another related question:
Can you pull the review metrics from Google Local Places in readiness to publish on your website?

Thank you in advance

Mark

[Kara.Wallace]

You should be able to use the Google Places API to include ratings and reviews.

Or you can check out how to Embed Google+ Local Business Reviews On Your Website In 3 Easy Steps - which might be easier than tinkering around with their API.

Hope this helps.

Mike