Google Cracks Down: Are Your Review Snippets Secretly Breaking the Rules?
Ever wonder how much trust you can really put in those shiny little review stars popping up in Google’s rich results? Well, Google just threw down a fresh rulebook that’s gonna shake things up—specifically telling us to ditch any fake or hush-hush incentivized reviews hiding in our structured data. It’s like the search giant’s saying, “Hey, we’re onto the sneaky tricks, so play fair or don’t play at all.” For anyone hustling to get that golden spot in review snippets, this update is a reminder to clean house and keep it real—because Google’s cracking down harder, and your SEO game depends on it. Ready to dive into the deets and make sure your site’s squeaky clean? LEARN MORE.
Google updated the review snippet structured data guidelines with a new guideline that reads, “Don’t include fake or undisclosed incentivized reviews on your page or in your structured data markup.”
A review snippet is a short excerpt of a review or a rating from a review website, usually an average of the combined rating scores from many reviewers. Review snippets may appear in rich results or Google Knowledge Panels.
What is new. Google added a new guideline that is somewhat obvious but Google wrote that you should not include fake or undisclosed incentivized reviews and then markup those reviews with structured data.
Google also provided some examples of fake or undisclosed reviews, they include:
- Reviews that aren’t based on a genuine experience of a product or service
- Reviews written in exchange for a benefit (such as money, discounts, vouchers, or free products) that don’t clearly and prominently disclose the incentivization
Why we care. If you want to be eligible to show up for review snippets within Google Search, you must make sure to continue to follow the guidelines. Google added a new guideline to the documentation for a reason; Google probably sees people using these techniques to get fake reviews. So make sure you remove any reviews that were obtained with these methods and/or any other guidelines that may have been broken.
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