How to get star ratings in SERPs using Trustpilot reviews

[CommT]

Hi,

We use TrustPilot to gather customer reviews. This has gone very well - our sites are now ranked the number one and number two mortgage brokers on TrustPilot. We're even starting to get enquiries off the back of the reviews (as in referrals from TrustPilot).

I really want to use rich snippets to get this review data to display in the SERPs. Does anyone know if this is allowed, given that TrustPilot is a 3rd party?

Thanks, I really appreciate your help on this - just wasted an hour waiting for this same question to be answered on a google hangout with John Meuller, but he obviously didn't think it was worth answering!

Amelia

[GPainter]

https://support.trustpilot.com/entries/23015547-Google-and-Trustpilot-FAQ#question_02

Can Trustpilot guarantee that reviews appear in Google?
No. Trustpilot reviews are usually included, but only Google decides if, when and how reviews appear.

[TomRayner]

Hi Amelia

To follow on from Chris, can I ask if you're asking about getting the stars in your paid ads or in the organic listings?

If it's the latter, you'll need to have schema markup on the page itself, here's a Google guide to it.

Plus a helpful video.

[CommT]

Hi Chris,

For some reason I am getting an error on that link. Can you post a screen shot of it?

Thank you,

Amelia xx

[CommT]

Thank you Tom. It's for both actually. I understand that the stars will automatically appear on the ads once we reach 30 reviews (we're on 17 reviews on the site we advertise with ppc, and 60 on the site we don't run ppc...)

I understand that there may be problems displaying the stars because the reviews are posted on a 3rd party (Trust Pilot) - which seems so stupid to me - surely reviews from a 3rd party are less open to manipulation than those published on your own site? What's to stop someone writing a load of fake reviews on their own site and getting stars? Whereas TrustPilot is designed so that it cannot be manipulated like this! Daftness abounds on the interwebs.

Anyway, thank you for answering, I appreciate your help!

Amelia xx

[GPainter]

odd its a page on FAQ for trust pilot and Google so a screenshot wouldn't really cover it.

I recommend you Google the link - https://support.trustpilot.com/entries/23015547-Google-and-Trustpilot-FAQ

can then find it direct, also try it in a different browser as my IE didn't like the link either but Firefox & chrome  here is fine with it.

[CommT]

Thanks - It never even crossed my mind that it could be a browser issue - works in Firefox but not Chrome (for me anyhow).

Thank you again Chris - I'll have a read!

XXX Amelia

[PaddyDisplays]

Reviews you see in organic surps are only taken from schema markup (like tom said).  All you can do is markup properly but there is no guarantee that they will show.

With adwords, once you get over the 30 review within a year mark you your reviews should show  ( btw it takes a few weeks  google see the 30 reviews and then index and then show).  Our reviews were not showing even though we meet the standards, but after contact google it turns out it was just a technical issue on their end.

[CommT]

Thank you.

I'm wondering about how to display the reviews on our site. We can get a widget from TrustPilot, but I don't think this has Schema code in it.

I guess my web dev needs to do some magic with an API to get the feed and the schema stuff included?

Anyone done this?

Thanks,

Amelia XX

PS - Paddy Displays - I LOVE Sir Digby Chicken Ceasar!

[PaddyDisplays]

I also don't think the TrustPilot widgets have Schema markup in them.

you can see an example of the page with markup on it here

http://www.lovefurniture.ie/bedroom/bunk-beds

Under the products it say "The average review score for products in this section is.."

If you look at the code you will see ( I have bolded the schema):

The average review score for products in this section is                        itemprop="aggregateRating" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/AggregateRating">                             itemprop="ratingValue" content="4.5">                             itemprop="ratingCount" content="236">

Might be possible to draw the reviews from trustpilot and then display them with the schema markup. Could be a bit of work and then there is still no guarantee that google will show in the surps.

Might be worth checking the surps to see if anyone else is showing reviews and then check is anyone has tried to setup schema on their page but its not showing.

PS:  didn't think anyone would recognise Sir Digby

[CommT]

Thank you, Paddy.

I've just asked this same question at Webmaster Forum and it turns out that Google doesn't support schema on reviews gathered by a 3rd party.

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/YqcCi-vVSD0

That stand-point from Google seems to me to be totally stupid.There is absolutely NO way we could falsify reviews gathered by TrustPilot, but I could easily create fake reviews and put them on my site! (I would NEVER do that by the way - just pointing out it's possible).

[PaddyDisplays]

Yeah it is weird they don't support that.  As you say its easy to fake, and many did.  There used to be more rich snippets in Surps but google has gotten stricter with them.