Review and AggregateRating Schema

#01What's the difference between Review and AggregateRating?

Google says to use AggregateRating for an aggregate evaluation of an item by many people, and if you include multiple individual reviews, to also include an aggregate rating (Google).

#02Which items can carry review markup?

Google supports review snippets for Book, Course list, Event, Local business, Movie, Product, Recipe and Software App, plus schema.org types including CreativeWorkSeason, CreativeWorkSeries, Episode, Game, MediaObject, MusicPlaylist, MusicRecording and Organization (Google). Local business and Organization are supported only for sites that capture reviews about other businesses or organisations.

#03What are the required properties?

Review (Google):

• author: a Person or Organization with a valid name under 100 characters. "50% off until Saturday" is Google's example of an invalid name.
• itemReviewed with a name, unless the review is nested inside the item.
• reviewRating with ratingValue. bestRating defaults to 5 and worstRating to 1 if omitted.

AggregateRating (Google):

• The item being rated, nested or via itemReviewed, with a name.
• ratingValue, as a number, fraction or percentage.
• At least one of ratingCount (total ratings on your site) or reviewCount.

#04What is the self-serving review rule?

Google says that if the entity being reviewed controls the reviews about itself, its pages using LocalBusiness or any other Organization structured data are ineligible for star review features. That includes reviews placed directly in structured data and reviews shown through an embedded third-party widget, such as Google Business or Facebook review widgets (Google).

Practically:

• A SaaS company putting aggregateRating on its Organization markup: no stars.
• A retailer marking up customer reviews of the products it sells, collected on its own product pages: allowed under the Product rules.
• A review site rating other companies: allowed.

#05Which reviews are banned outright?

From Google's guidelines (Google):

• Ratings or reviews aggregated from other websites
• Fake reviews that aren't based on genuine experience
• Incentivised reviews (money, discounts, vouchers, free products) that don't clearly and prominently disclose the incentive
• Reviews about a category or list rather than a specific item
• Markup for reviews users can't see on the page

For local businesses, Google adds that ratings must come directly from users, not from editors compiling them.

#06What does correct markup look like?

Fictional example with hypothetical data, for a product page that collects its own reviews:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org/",
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": "Example Trail Shoe",
  "offers": {"@type": "Offer", "price": 89.00, "priceCurrency": "EUR"},
  "aggregateRating": {
    "@type": "AggregateRating",
    "ratingValue": 4.4,
    "reviewCount": 57
  },
  "review": [{
    "@type": "Review",
    "author": {"@type": "Person", "name": "Lena K."},
    "datePublished": "2026-09-14",
    "reviewRating": {"@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": 5},
    "reviewBody": "Good grip on wet rock."
  }]
}
</script>

The 4.4 and 57 must match what visitors see. See Product schema for AI shopping for the rest of the Product properties.

#07Do ratings matter for AI answers?

Our view: AI shopping and comparison answers often summarise sentiment from reviews across the web, not only your markup. There's no published evidence that AggregateRating markup alone causes AI citations. What matters more is real reviews on credible third-party platforms, and consistent, honest ratings on your own product pages. Inflated or imported ratings risk both a manual action and contradictions with what AI tools read elsewhere.

#08How do you test it?

1. Run the page through the Rich Results Test.
2. Check the visible rating and count match the markup.
3. Remove aggregateRating from Organization or LocalBusiness markup on your own site.
4. Confirm incentivised reviews carry visible disclosure.

#09How should a review programme support this?

Our view: the markup is only as good as the reviews behind it. Ask every verified buyer for a review after a fixed interval, display all reviews including negative ones, and disclose any incentive on the review itself. Google recommends accepting only ratings accompanied by a review comment and author name (Google). Keep your own reviews and your third-party profiles separate: the third-party ones support your reputation in AI answers; your own feed product-page markup.

#10Exercise

#11Where do review stars usually go wrong?

Our view: the most common failure is a site-wide footer widget showing a company score, copied into Organization markup on every page. Google's self-serving rule makes that ineligible, and it can make every page look like it carries the same misleading rating. Scope ratings to the specific product page they describe.

#12Checklist

• Reviews visible on the marked-up page
• No self-serving Organization/LocalBusiness ratings
• No imported third-party ratings
• Incentives disclosed
• ratingCount or reviewCount present
• Valid reviewer names under 100 characters

#13From MentionX data: how often review pages are citedOriginal data

Method. Read-only aggregate queries over MentionX scans from 22 August to 29 October 2026 (UTC): 2,217 engine runs (2,154 completed) across 18 anonymised projects and six engines.

Review markup and review pages aren't the same thing, but the MentionX sample shows how often engines cite review pages directly:

Recommendation and best-of prompts, where ratings matter most, mention brands far less often than brand-specific prompts:

Our view: review pages are cited less often than articles and homepages, but for recommendation prompts genuine third-party reviews give engines evidence they can't get from your own pages.

Limits. A convenience sample of mostly B2B software projects, run through engine APIs, which can behave differently from the consumer apps. Perplexity, Copilot and DeepSeek figures come from a single day (26 October 2026), so treat them as a snapshot, not a trend.

#14Worked example: Ledgerline corrects its review markup

Ledgerline is a fictional accounts-payable tool. Figures are illustrative.

Ledgerline's homepage carries AggregateRating markup showing a rating taken from its own testimonials. The team learns that Google treats reviews a business publishes about itself as self-serving and doesn't show stars for them.

It removes the AggregateRating from the homepage and the Organization markup. For its integration marketplace, where third-party apps are reviewed by Ledgerline customers on Ledgerline's site, it adds Review markup to each app page with the item reviewed, the author, the rating and the review date, matching the visible reviews.

It encourages customers to leave honest reviews on independent review sites, and links to those profiles from its site without marking them up as its own reviews.

#15How should ratings be calculated?

Use the actual ratings shown on the page, with ratingValue, bestRating and worstRating if your scale isn't one to five. ratingCount or reviewCount should match the number of ratings or reviews included. Don't round up, exclude negative reviews or include reviews from other sites unless you show them on the page.

#16How do you handle review moderation?

Publish a moderation policy that explains what you remove, such as spam or abuse, and apply it consistently. Don't remove reviews because they're negative. Our view: a visible mix of ratings is more credible to readers than a perfect score.

#17Where should review markup live?

Put the markup on the page that shows the reviews for the item. Don't mark up reviews on category or listing pages that only summarise other pages. Keep one AggregateRating per item, and make sure it matches the reviews readers can see.

#18How do you monitor review markup?

Check Search Console's review snippet report for errors and warnings. Re-test pages after template changes. Spot-check that ratings in the markup match the visible ratings each month.

#19How do you ask customers for reviews?

Ask all customers, not just happy ones, at a natural point such as after onboarding or a renewal. Send them to independent review sites or your own review form. Don't offer incentives for positive reviews, and follow each platform's rules on asking. Our view: steady, honest reviews over time are more credible than a burst of reviews after a campaign.

#20How do you respond to reviews?

Reply to reviews, especially negative ones, with facts and a way forward. Don't argue or ask for removal of honest reviews. Fix the issues reviews raise, and say so when you've fixed them. Responses show readers how you treat customers.

#21How do reviews on your site relate to independent sites?

Reviews on your own site can support product pages, but independent sites carry more weight with buyers. Link to your independent profiles from your site, and keep both honest.

#22How do you mark up a single editorial review?

If you publish your own review of a third-party product, use Review with the itemReviewed, the author, the reviewRating and the datePublished. The author should be a real person or your publication, and the review must be visible on the page. Our view: editorial reviews are the clearest legitimate use of Review markup for most businesses, because they don't involve reviewing yourself.

#23What should you check before launch?

Test the page, confirm the item type is eligible and check the visible reviews match the markup.

#24What about reviews of services?

Local businesses and service providers face the same self-serving rule. Reviews of your own business shown on your own site won't produce stars. Encourage reviews on independent platforms instead.

#25Common questions

Can we mark up reviews from G2 or Trustpilot? Only if you show those reviews on your page and follow the platform's terms. Our view: link to the profiles instead.

Do review stars affect AI answers? There's no published evidence of a direct effect. Genuine reviews on independent sites matter more.

Is AggregateRating allowed on product pages? Yes, for eligible products with genuine reviews shown on the page.

#26Related

• SoftwareApplication schema for SaaS
• Schema markup for AI search