Review snippet
A short excerpt of a review or a rating that Google may show, with stars, in search results when the page has valid review or rating structured data.
A review snippet is a short excerpt of a review or a rating, usually an average of the scores from many reviewers (Google Search Central). When Google finds valid review or rating markup on a page, it may show stars and other summary information in a rich result or a Knowledge Panel. Products, recipes, events and software apps are among the kinds of item it supports, though Google doesn’t guarantee a review snippet will show up.
Google’s rules for review stars
Your content has to follow Google’s guidelines to be eligible, and Google may take manual action against a site that breaks them. Among them:
- Visitors must be able to see the reviews you mark up. In Google’s words, “It must be immediately obvious to users that the page has review content.”
- Review a specific item, not a category or a list of items.
- Don’t aggregate reviews or ratings from other websites.
- Don’t include fake reviews, or reviews written in exchange for a benefit such as money, discounts or free products unless they disclose it clearly and prominently.
If your site runs on a content management system, Google says a plugin built into it may be the easier way to add the markup. Whatever you use, check that it marks up only reviews shown on the page and doesn’t pull in ratings from other sites.
Self-serving reviews
If a business controls the reviews about itself, its pages that use LocalBusiness or other Organization structured data are “ineligible for star review feature.” Google’s example: reviews of a business on its own website, whether in its structured data or through an embedded third-party widget such as Google Business reviews or Facebook reviews. Stars for local businesses are only for sites that collect reviews about other local businesses.
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Updated Oct 12, 2026.