How long will it take for the stars to show up on my website’s link in the SERP (Google search engine results page)?
The time estimate could be anywhere between a few hours to a few weeks. Google ultimately decides when and if they want to display the stars in the SERP for your domain. The best thing you can do is follow our guidelines for setting up the widget and then resubmit all URLs on your website where you have implemented the TQW with stars into your own Google Search Console as described here.
Is there anything I can do to help make the stars show up sooner in the SERP on my website?
Yes, you can submit all URLs where you have the TQW with stars enabled into your Google Search Console instance for your website and request for Google to reindex the page. This helps to give Google a “nudge” to recrawl the page faster and reconsider the new content you have now added to the page. Note that there is a limit on the number of URLs you can submit per user in Google Search Console each day. If you are submitting more than ~25 URLs, you may need to have multiple users submit in Google Search Console or submit on different days.
What is the best way to search for my page on Google to see if the stars are eligible to show up?
The best way to see if a specific URL is eligible to receive star ratings in Google search results is to use a site search parameter like this: “site:https://YOUR-URL-HERE….”. Just replace the YOUR-URL-HERE highlighted with the url on your own website. If you see the stars show up, that page is eligible to have stars shown when a keyword is searched in which that page ranks for that keyword. See example below. You can also check the Review Snippet report in Google Search Console as described by Google here.
How can I measure the impact of these stars in the search results?
Analyze your Google Search traffic using the Performance Report. The data will show you how often your page appears as a rich result in search, how often users click on it and the average ranking position. You can also automatically pull these results with the Search Console API.
Are there a minimum number of reviews I must have in order to be eligible for the stars in SERP functionality on my TQW?
Yes, you must have at least one long-form review. The TQW does not function for products that only have ratings.
What if I have multiple products and multiple TQW widgets on a page? Will this still work?
No, this is intended only for pages that have a single widget for a single product. It is against Google guidelines to markup multiple products on a single page like this. Your company could end up with a manual penalty from Google if you do this.
Will this give me the ability to include the star ratings from TrustRadius on Google Ads?
No, that is a separate and different thing that TrustRadius does not currently offer. These star ratings on Google Ads are called seller ad extensions (and must be obtained through other means). The TrustRadius TQW is designed to add star ratings to organic SERP results only as outlined here.
Am I able to use the Star Ratings feature if I'm using the API to syndicate TrustRadius review content?
Yes, it is possible to use the Star Ratings feature if you are using the TrustQuotes for Web API to syndicate TrustRadius review content. However, it will require some additional work to add the correct code to the page(s) where you have the review content syndicated in order to get this feature to show up in Google search results.
You will need to add the AggregateRating schema type to the page(s) where you have the TrustRadius review content. For more information on what this schema type is and examples of how to add it to the page code, please see the AggregateRating example in this Google documentation.
What are the benefits of using the TQW to gain star ratings in SERPs?
Studies have shown that you can see up to 35% increase in CTR when you have stars enabled in the search results. We can assume this is because star ratings are eye-catching and also increase trust for Google users, who are more likely to click on your website when seeing this differentiator. Better CTR (click through rate) results in more organic traffic to your site.
Does CSS styling of TQW cause any issues with the star ratings?
No, the star rating code comes via the same Javascript file but since this code isn’t shown to a user, CSS will not affect this portion of the code we include in the Javascript file. So as long as you use the JS code to implement the widget on your site, all is fine.
Duplicate content - Should I be concerned?
No. First you should understand that duplicate content typically leads to a page being ‘filtered’ from search, not penalized by Google. Google states that most duplicate content is not deceptive in origin (emphasis ours):
“Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Mostly, this is not deceptive in origin.
If your site contains multiple pages with largely identical content, there are a number of ways you can indicate your preferred URL to Google. (This is called "canonicalization".) More information about canonicalization.”
However, in some cases, content is deliberately duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or win more traffic. Deceptive practices like this can result in a poor user experience when a visitor sees substantially the same content repeated within a set of search results.”
For example, if you were to take the TrustRadius content and exactly copy it from our site and place it on your site with no additional content or other changes to it, that would be considered duplicate content. In that scenario, Google would decide which of the two identical pages to show in search results. They would not penalize either of those sites for this.
We do not advise only adding a TrustQuotes for Web widget to a page on your site with no other supporting content, but if this were to happen it wouldn’t exactly match the content as displayed on TrustRadius. Instead, we expect and encourage you to incorporate this as part of your content, so that this content supports the subject matter of your page and isn’t the only content on the page.
Do ratings factor into the score that is shown in Google?
Yes. The trScore that you see on your product page on TrustRadius is the same data we supply to the search engine.
Why doesn’t what Google shows in the ratings match what is on my product page on TrustRadius?
Google is showing a ‘moment in time’ whereas TrustRadius is showing real time. We feed this same real time data to Google via the code we insert on your website, but Google will only see and thus use this content in the search results when they come and index that page. So the more frequently they index your page, the more accurate the rating will be. If you receive a large volume of reviews, you’ll likely see slight disparity in what Google shows on your page vs the score on TrustRadius due to this data changing more frequently and Google not crawling and indexing this content as quickly.
How many pages on my website can I add star ratings to? Is there a limit on the number of pages Google will show star ratings on my site for?
No, there is not a maximum number of pages that can be eligible for this rich result feature, the pages just need to be in some way related to your product and have the TrustQuote for Web widget installed. Some examples of websites that have many (sometimes thousands) of pages with the star ratings feature: Amazon, Walmart, BestBuy, TrustRadius, RetailMeNot, TechRadar, PCMag and many others.
Some example URLs from a smaller business staffing agency that has implemented this are shown below. This agency has the TrustPilot widget (a widget that offers similar star ratings thanks to structured data markup functionality like the TQW) on all of their location pages and all seven of which are showing the stars in Google: