A review is someone's evaluation of something. We support reviews and ratings for a wide range of schema.org types, including businesses, products, and different creative works such as books or movies.
Google displays the following types of reviews in search results:
- Critic reviews: A snippet from a longer review article that a single editor has created, curated, or compiled for a publisher.
- Review snippets: A rich snippet of a review or rating markup from a review website, usually an average of the combined rating scores from reviewers. Review snippets appear in Google Search results either under the search result or in the Google Knowledge Cards.
To participate, implement the markup, follow the guidelines for either critic reviews or review snippets, and register your interest in the pilot.
Critic reviews
With your critic reviews displayed prominently in Google Search results, your readers will be able to easily find them and navigate to your website to read the complete reviews. Critic reviews appear in Search results with a snippet from the critic, the critic's name and the publisher icon. You can supply critic reviews for the following content types:
- Local businesses
- Movies
- Books
Critic review examples
Business reviews
You can embed critic reviews inside your business listings. This is useful for sites that provide booking services for many businesses or for business listing aggregators.
You can provide standalone review blocks, which is suitable markup for sites that perform no direct function for the business being reviewed, such as news sites.
Critic review guidelines
In addition to the general structured data guidelines, review markup should follow the general guidelines and content-type guidelines listed below.
To be eligible for critic reviews, be aware of the following general guidelines:
- Authoritative human editor(s) must create, curate, or compile content for critic reviews.
- Profanity and vulgar language are discouraged. Reviews should be appropriate for a broad and diverse audience. Consequently, reviews containing vulgar or profane language may be ineligible for use.
- Refer clearly to a specific product or service. Do this by nesting the
review or ratings within the markup of another schema.org type—such as
schema.org/Book or schema.org/LocalBusiness
—or by using that schema.org typed element as a value for the
itemReviewedproperty. - Make sure the reviews and ratings you mark up are readily available to users from the marked-up page. It should be immediately obvious to users that the page has review or ratings content.
- Provide review and/or rating information about a specific item, not about a category or a list of items. For example, “hotels in Madrid,” “summer dresses,” or “cake recipes” are not specific items. See also our structured data guidelines for multiple entities on the same page.
- No reviews are shown for adult-related products or services.
- Single reviewer name needs to be valid. For example, "50% off until Saturday" is not a valid name for a reviewer.
- Ratings that don't use a 5-point scale: By default, Google assumes that your site uses a 5-point scale, where 5 is the best possible rating and 1 is the worst, but you can use any other scale. If you do, you can mark up the best and worst ratings, and Google will scale that to the 5-star system used in rich snippets.
The following guidelines apply to critic reviews of local businesses:
- Snippets must not be written or provided by the business or content provider unless they are genuine, independent, and unpaid editorial reviews.
- Critic reviews must allow for customers to express both positive and negative sentiments. They may not be vetted by the business or restricted by the content provider based on the positive/negative sentiment of the review before submission to Google.
- Critic reviews cannot be template sentences built from data or automated metrics. For example, the following is not acceptable: "Based on X number of responses, on average people experienced X with this business."
- Critic reviews for multiple-location businesses such as retail chains or franchises can only be submitted for the specific business location for which they were written. In other words, critic reviews for multiple-location businesses cannot be syndicated or applied to all business locations of the same company.
- There can't be any commercial agreements (paid or otherwise) to provide critic reviews between the content provider and the reviewed business.
- Do not include critic reviews that are duplicate or similar across many businesses.
- Only include critic reviews that have been directly produced by your site, not reviews from third- party sites or syndicated reviews.
The following guidelines apply to critic reviews of movies and books:
- The snippet must be an exact excerpt from the long-form body of the review. It should not be the review headline, a question or a teaser.
- The snippet must clearly indicate an opinion about the review subject. It should not be factual (e.g. "Gravity" is a film by Alfonso Cuarón) or a plot synopsis (e.g. Dr. Ryan Stone is an engineer on her first space mission).
- The snippet must make sense on its own and should not be confusing to someone who isn't reading the whole article.
- The snippet must be complete (not cut off, truncated, or ending in elllipses) and well-formed (having correct punctuation and grammar) thought.
Critic review properties
The following properties should be populated for all reviews, regardless of the review subject.
| Properties | |
|---|---|
aggregateRating |
Annotation for the average score assigned to the item being reviewed. This typically applies to user ratings rather than professional critic ratings. |
aggregateRating.bestRating |
The highest value allowed in the reviewer's rating system. If this field is omitted, 5 is assumed. Letter grades are allowed, e.g. "A". |
aggregateRating.ratingCount |
The number of ratings given to the reviewed item. |
aggregateRating.ratingValue |
The average rating given to the reviewed item. Letter grades are allowed, e.g. "B+". |
aggregateRating.worstRating |
The lowest value allowed in the reviewer's rating system. If this field is omitted, 1 is assumed. Letter grades are allowed, e.g. "C-". |
author |
Person or Organization, recommended The author of the review. The reviewer’s name needs to be a valid name. |
author.name |
Text, recommended Name of the author of the review. Provide the full name of the author. The value should be capitalized correctly. Names comprised of entirely uppercase or lowercase letters will be edited such that the first letter of every word is capitalized. |
author.sameAs |
URL, recommended URL to a page that unambiguously identified the author, e.g. the author's official website, a profile page, a Wikipedia article. |
datePublished |
Date, required Date of the review's first publication, in ISO 8601 date format. |
description |
Text, required Snippet from the body of the actual review that captures the author's opinion about the review subject. This snippet will be used on the Google Search result page, as shown in the mocks above. All of the following criteria should be met, else the review will be excluded from the feature.
|
inLanguage |
Text, recommended The BCP-47 language code of the review description, e.g. "ja" is Japanese. Strongly recommended for non-English reviews. |
itemReviewed |
Local business, Movie, Book, required Annotation for the subject being reviewed. See below for details of each type of review. |
publisher |
Organization, required Annotation for the publisher of the review. |
publisher.name |
Text, required Name of the publisher of the review, e.g. "The New York Times." |
publisher.sameAs |
URL, recommended The URL of the publisher's official website or Wikipedia page. |
reviewRating |
Rating, EndorsementRating, recommended Rating: The rating given in this review. A nested Rating or more specific subtype, most typically AggregateRating. EndorsementRating: A rating that expresses some level of positive endorsement for the item being reviewed. For example, inclusion in a "critic's pick" blog, a "Like" or "+1" on a social network. EndorsementRating is a rating by itself (for example, “2 thumbs up”), while a Rating is a scale (3/5 stars). Here’s an example: "reviewRating": [{
"@type": "Rating",
"ratingValue": "3.0",
"bestRating": "5",
"worstRating": "0"
}, {
"@type": "EndorsementRating",
"name": "2 thumbs up",
"ratingValue": "2"
}]
Additional EndorsementRating guidelines:
|
reviewRating.bestRating |
Text* The highest value allowed in this rating system. * Required if the rating system is not on a 5-point scale. If |
reviewRating.ratingValue |
The rating given to the reviewed item. Letter grades are allowed. For example, "B+". |
reviewRating.worstRating |
Text*
The lowest value allowed in this rating system. * Required if the rating system is not on a 5-point scale. If |
URL |
Canonical URL of the web page that contains the full text of the review.
|
Review subject properties
In addition to the critic review properties, you must define the specific properties for the review type that you want to implement.
| Properties | |
|---|---|
itemReviewed.name |
Text, required
Name of the business that is the subject of the review. |
itemReviewed.sameAs |
URL, required
URL to a page that unambiguously identifies the business. The official website of the business is strongly preferred. |
itemReviewed.address |
PostalAddress, required
Address of the specific business location. |
itemReviewed.address.streetAddress |
Text, required
Street number, street name, and unit number (if applicable). |
itemReviewed.address.addressLocality |
Text, required
City. |
itemReviewed.address.addressRegion |
Text, required, where applicable
State or province. |
itemReviewed.address.postalCode |
Text, required
Postal or zip code. |
itemReviewed.address.addressCountry |
Text, required
The 2-letter ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code. |
itemReviewed.geo |
GeoCoordinates
Geographic coordinates of the business. |
itemReviewed.geo.latitude |
Numeric, recommended
The latitude of the business location. The precision should be at least 5 decimal places. |
itemReviewed.geo.longitude |
Numeric, recommended
The longitude of the business location. The precision should be at least 5 decimal places. |
itemReviewed.telephone |
Text, recommended
Business phone number, inclusive of country code. Specify the public phone number of the business normally used by customers. |
Review.itemReviewed should be of type
Movie and contain the following properties.
| Properties | |
|---|---|
itemReviewed.name |
Text, Required
Name of the movie that is the subject of the review. |
itemReviewed.sameAs |
URL, Required
URL to a page that unambiguously identifies the movie. URLs to the IMDB page, Wikipedia page, or official website are stongly preferred. |
itemReviewed.datePublished |
Date, recommended
Original theatrical/direct-to-video release date of the movie, in ISO 8601 format. |
itemReviewed.director |
Person, recommended
Annotation for the director of the movie. |
itemReviewed.director.name |
Text, recommended
Name of the director. |
itemReviewed.director.sameAs |
URL, recommended
URL to a page that unambiguously identifies the director. URLs to the IMDB page or Wikipedia page are strongly preferred. |
itemReviewed.actor |
Person
Annotation(s) for main cast of the movie. |
itemReviewed.actor.name |
Text
Name of the actor. |
itemReviewed.actor.sameAs |
URL
URL to a page that unambiguously identifies the actor. URLs to the IMDB page or Wikipedia page are strongly preferred. |
Review.itemReviewed should be of type
Book and contain the following properties.
| Properties | |
|---|---|
itemReviewed.name |
Text, Required
Name of the book that is the subject of the review. |
itemReviewed.isbn |
Text, Required
ISBN of the book. In cases where no ISBN exists, use |
itemReviewed.sameAs |
URL, Required unless isbn is defined
URL to a page that unambiguously identifies the book. URLs to the Google Play Books page, Wikipedia page, or official website are stongly preferred. |
itemReviewed.author |
PersonRequired
Annotation for the author of the book. |
itemReviewed.author.name |
Text, Required
Name of the director. |
itemReviewed.author.sameAs |
URL, recommended
URL to a page that unambiguously identifies the author. URLs to the Wikipedia page are strongly preferred. |
itemReviewed.datePublished |
Date, recommended
Original publication date of the book, in ISO 8601 format. |
Review snippets
When Google finds valid reviews or ratings markup, we may show a rich snippet that includes stars and other summary info from reviews or ratings. In addition to the text of the review, a rating is an evaluation described on a numeric scale (such as 1 to 5). You can supply ratings for the following content types:
- Local businesses
- Movies
- Books
- Music
- Products
Review snippet examples
Types of features
Shows the key properties for a simple review.
| Microdata
|
RDFa
|
JSON-LD
|
You can embed a review into another schema.org type using its review property.
| Microdata Example
|
RDFa Example
|
JSON-LD Example
|
You can add ratings to your reviews.
| Microdata Example
|
RDFa Example
|
JSON-LD Example
|
Rating types
You can omit the rating for an individual review if your marked-up content contains both an author and a review date. For aggregate reviews, you must supply the average rating for the rich snippet to display.
Example of marking up an aggregate rating.
| Microdata Example
|
RDFa Example
|
JSON-LD Example
|
| Microdata Example
|
RDFa Example
|
JSON-LD Example
|
Review snippet guidelines
In addition to the general structured data guidelines, review markup should follow these additional guidelines.
To be eligible for review snippets, be aware of the following general guidelines:
- Aggregate ratings: An aggregate evaluation of an item by many people should be marked up as a schema.org/AggregateRating. Google may display aggregate ratings as rich snippets or, for certain types of items, answers in search results.
- Refer clearly to a specific product or service. Do this by nesting the
review or ratings within the markup of another schema.org type—such as
schema.org/Book or schema.org/LocalBusiness
—or by using that schema.org typed element as a value for the
itemReviewedproperty. - Make sure the reviews and ratings you mark up are readily available to users from the marked-up page. It should be immediately obvious to users that the page has review or ratings content.
- Provide review and/or rating information about a specific item, not about a category or a list of items. For example, “hotels in Madrid,” “summer dresses,” or “cake recipes” are not specific items. See also our structured data guidelines for multiple entities on the same page.
- No reviews are shown for adult-related products or services.
- Single reviewer name needs to be valid. For example, "50% off until Saturday" is not a valid name for a reviewer.
- Ratings that don't use a 5-point scale: By default, Google assumes that your site uses a 5-point scale, where 5 is the best possible rating and 1 is the worst, but you can use any other scale. If you do, you can mark up the best and worst ratings, and Google will scale that to the 5-star system used in rich snippets.
Google may display information from aggregate ratings markup in the Google Knowledge Cards. The following guidelines apply to review snippets in knowledge cards for local businesses:
- Ratings must be sourced directly from users.
- Don't rely on human editors to create, curate or compile ratings information for local businesses. These types of reviews are critic reviews.
- Sites must collect ratings information directly from users and not from other sites.
Review snippet definitions
Common review properties
| Properties | |
|---|---|
itemReviewed |
Thing, required* The item that is being reviewed. This needs to be a valid schema.org type. * If the review is embedded into another schema.org type using the
review property,
the |
reviewBody |
Text, recommended The actual body of the review. |
author |
Person or Organization, required The author of the review. The reviewer’s name needs to be a valid name. |
datePublished |
Date, recommended The date that the review was published, in ISO 8601 date format. |
reviewRating |
Rating, recommended The rating given in this review. A nested Rating or more specific subtype, most typically AggregateRating. |
reviewRating.ratingValue |
Number, recommended A numerical quality rating for the item. |
reviewRating.bestRating |
Number, required * The highest value allowed in this rating system. * Required if the rating system is not on a 5-point scale. If |
reviewRating.worstRating |
Number, required * The lowest value allowed in this rating system. * Required if the rating system is not on a 5-point scale. If |
publisher |
Organization, recommended The publisher of the review. |
Aggregated rating properties
| Properties | |
|---|---|
itemReviewed |
Thing, required* The item that is being rated. This needs to be a valid schema.org type. * If aggregate rating is embedded into another schema.org type, using
aggregateRating property, then there is no need
to mark up the |
ratingCount |
Number, required The total number of ratings for the item on your site. At least one of
|
reviewCount |
Number, required Specifies the number of people who provided a review with or without an
accompanying rating. At least one of |
ratingValue |
Number, required A numerical quality rating for the item. |
bestRating |
Number, required* The highest value allowed in this rating system. * Required if the rating
system is not a 5-point scale. If |
worstRating |
Number, required* The lowest value allowed in this rating system. * Required
if the rating system
is not a 5-point scale. If |