How to Add Review and Rating Schema

3 min read by Mohammad Shoeb

How to Add Review and Rating Schema

Review schema is the structured data that lets star ratings appear next to your page in Google search results. It tells search engines what was rated, the score, and who rated it. Here is how Review and AggregateRating JSON-LD work, the rules Google enforces, and how to add it correctly.

Review vs AggregateRating

There are two related types, and they answer different questions.

A Review describes a single rating of one thing. Its key fields are:

  • itemReviewed: the thing being rated (a Product, LocalBusiness, Book, and so on).
  • reviewRating: a Rating object with ratingValue (the score given) and bestRating (the top of the scale, usually 5).
  • author: the person or organization who wrote the review.

An AggregateRating summarizes many ratings into one. Its key fields are:

  • ratingValue: the average score.
  • reviewCount or ratingCount: how many reviews or ratings the average is based on.

The important structural rule: AggregateRating is not a standalone block. It nests inside the item being rated. You put it on the Product, LocalBusiness, or other thing, never floating on its own.

What Google requires (read this before you ship)

Google enforces real rules here, and breaking them can remove your rich results or trigger a manual action.

  • The rating must be about a specific item. A vague “we are rated 5 stars” with no clear subject does not qualify.
  • The rating must be visible on the page. Users have to see the same rating your markup claims. Hidden or markup-only ratings are not allowed.
  • No self-serving first-party reviews. Google does not allow reviews of your own business, placed on your own site, to produce review rich results. Reviews of products you sell are fine; reviews where you rate yourself are not.
  • Never fake it. Do not invent ratings, do not aggregate scores pulled from other sites, and do not reuse the same numbers across unrelated pages. Ratings must be genuine and reflect real reviews on the page.

Following these is not just etiquette. It is the difference between earning stars and losing them.

Add Review schema in four steps

  1. Open the Review Schema Generator and choose Review or AggregateRating.
  2. Set itemReviewed (or the parent item type) and fill in ratingValue and bestRating.
  3. For a single review, add the author. For an aggregate, add reviewCount or ratingCount.
  4. Copy the JSON-LD and paste it into the page head, inside a <script type="application/ld+json"> tag.

The Review Schema Generator runs entirely in your browser, so nothing you type is sent anywhere. Make sure the numbers in your markup match the ratings shown on the page.

Validate before you trust it

Paste your final markup into Google’s Rich Results Test. It confirms the type is recognized, flags missing required fields, and shows whether the page is eligible for a star rich result. Fix any errors, then request indexing so Google re-crawls the page.

Keep ratings genuine, visible, and tied to a real item, then validate, and the stars take care of themselves.

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