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Hi,

If you’re talking about a Rich Snippets, this isn’t an option for the free version of the plugin.

Thanks!

Google no longer support star ratings for individual sites any more;

https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/09/making-review-rich-results-more-helpful.html

@lensdigital, thank you!

We saw and read this. First thoughts on it, the Rich Snippets should work in the Business plugin, because:

1. The plugin will not use ‘self-serving’ reviews in the LocalBusiness schema, because these reviews just are not self-ed, these reviews are downloaded from a trust source like Google, Facebook or Yelp (and we will plan to add more platforms in the future);

2. The plugin is not an embedded widget, when you installed it in wp-admin, it works like a part of your site and rendered on the page in HTML, not like a JavaScript third-party solution.

On the other hand, the Google algorithm of indexation a Rich Snippets is very weird and it works like a black box, according to this we can’t exactly say how this changes will affect the plugin.

However, if Google no longer indexes the LocalBusiness scheme on individual sites (except directory/listing-sites, like a Yelp, for instance) at all, of course it will no longer work regardless of the plugin.

We will investigate this issue more.

Thanks!

• This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by richplugins.

I have implemented the business plugin on two sites for a client. Both of them were showing ratings within a day.

Now, neither show the rating.

This was the key sentence for me;

“We call reviews “self-serving” when a review about entity A is placed on the website of entity A – either directly in their markup or via an embedded 3rd party widget.”

If you can get it working, then great – my client would love that.

If you need example sites, then I am happy to provide you with the details off forum.

Correct, this plugin will no longer allow the Ratings to show in the Google search engine results pages. Especially if your business is a LocalBusiness schema type, where you’re scraping the ratings from Google My Business or Facebook.

I can also confirm that we previously had numerous pages showing the star ratings. But after Google implemented this change, the stars no longer show in the SERP.

I’m guessing their algorithm’s somehow know that there isn’t an actual area on the page to leave reviews; nor are the ratings actually compiled from data on the page.

Sort of a bummer that we’ve spent all this time, effort, and money to get this solution working… just as Google remove this functionality. Although, it’s possible it’s always been against Rich Snippet best-practices anyway…

—

Either way, it may be worth updating your description on these plugins to avoid confusion… as this also occurs on the paid version too.

@freshyjon currently we investigate the possibility to add some features to make it works, like a custom option with a specific schema type, for instance Product, but we do not sure, that it’s possible due to the Google agreement.

Of course we will change the description of both versions, free and business. after investigation.

Thanks!