Review stars in Google for your own product: why they disappeared
Since September 2019 Google shows no review stars for Organization or LocalBusiness reviews a business hosts about itself. Where product stars come from.
LLaunchScaler·Published ·8 min read
Review stars disappeared from many companies' own pages in September 2019, when Google stopped showing review rich results for LocalBusiness and Organization markup whenever the business being reviewed controls the reviews. Google calls those reviews "self-serving," and the rule covers reviews added in your own markup and reviews shown through an embedded third-party widget alike.
So marking up reviews you host about yourself earns no stars at all under Organization or LocalBusiness, and only a chance of stars under SoftwareApplication or Product, which Google never guarantees. Below is what changed, which markup can still show stars, why inventing ratings is off the table, and where stars for your product can legitimately come from.
Why did review stars disappear from my site?
Google changed the rules on September 16, 2019. Its post defined self-serving reviews as those where "a review about entity A is placed on the website of entity A, either directly in their markup or via an embedded third-party widget," and said it would no longer display review rich results for LocalBusiness and Organization types "in cases when the entity being reviewed controls the reviews themselves."
Google explained the reasoning in an update two days later. Before the change, a business "could add review markup about themselves to their home page or another page and often cause a review snippet to show for that page." Google considers that self-serving "because the entity itself has chosen to add the markup to its own pages, about its own business or organization."
The same post answered the questions site owners asked next:
A third-party review widget doesn't get around it: "Google Search won't display review snippets for those pages. Embedding a third-party widget is seen as controlling the process of linking reviews."
You don't need to remove the markup: "Google Search just won't display review snippets for those pages anymore."
There is no penalty for it on its own: "You won't get a manual action just for this."
Your Business Profile is unaffected, because the update "only relates to organic Search."
Which schema types can still show review stars?
Google's review snippet documentation lists the types it supports, and it limits two of them. Local business and Organization are supported "only for sites that capture reviews about other" businesses or organizations. Software App and Product have no such limit, so a product page is not automatically ineligible the way a company page is.
Questions, answered
What people ask about this
01
Why did my review stars disappear from Google?
In September 2019 Google stopped showing review stars for LocalBusiness and Organization pages when the business being reviewed controls the reviews, which it calls self-serving. That covers reviews added in your own markup and reviews shown through an embedded third-party widget.
Supported "only for sites that capture reviews about other local businesses"
Organization
No
Supported "only for sites that capture reviews about other organizations"
SoftwareApplication
Eligible, not guaranteed
Listed as "Software App"; must follow the review snippet guidelines
Product
Eligible, not guaranteed
Listed; must follow the review snippet guidelines
Book, Course list, Event, Movie, Recipe
Eligible, not guaranteed
Listed
Eligible is not the same as shown. Google's structured data guidelines say: "Google does not guarantee that your structured data will show up in search results, even if your page is marked up correctly," because "using structured data enables a feature to be present, it does not guarantee that it will be present."
Can a SaaS product page use AggregateRating?
Yes, if the ratings are real, collected from your users, visible on the page, and nested in SoftwareApplication or Product markup rather than Organization. Google's software app documentation requires a name, an offers.price, and either an aggregateRating or a review, and both must follow the review snippet guidelines.
A minimal, valid shape for a product page that displays its own collected ratings looks like this:
The numbers in that markup must be the numbers on the page. Google's guidelines are specific:
The reviews and ratings you mark up must be "readily available to users from the marked-up page." If you use AggregateRating, users should see that rating on the page.
"Don't aggregate reviews or ratings from other websites." Copying your average from a review site into your own markup breaks this.
"Don't include fake or undisclosed incentivized reviews on your page or in your structured data markup," including reviews given for money, discounts or free products without clear disclosure.
Review a specific item, not a category or a list of items.
If you mark up several individual reviews, include an aggregate rating of them too.
Google recommends, without requiring it, accepting only ratings that come with a review comment and the author's name. The full SoftwareApplication property list is in SoftwareApplication schema for SaaS.
Which review markup mistakes stop stars showing?
Most missing stars trace back to one of a few setups that break Google's rules, and each has a direct fix. Check your homepage and product pages against this list before you spend time on anything else.
Setup on your site
What Google's rules say
Fix
AggregateRating inside Organization markup on your homepage
Self-serving; ineligible for star review snippets
Remove it, or move real product ratings to SoftwareApplication or Product markup on the product page
A third-party review widget embedded on your pages
Embedding a widget is "seen as controlling the process of linking reviews"
Keep the widget for visitors if you like; expect no stars from it
Your average from a review site copied into your own markup
"Don't aggregate reviews or ratings from other websites"
Remove it; link to the review site instead
Ratings in the markup that visitors can't see on the page
Review content must be "readily available to users from the marked-up page"
Show the rating and reviews on the page, or remove the markup
Reviews given for discounts or free months, with no disclosure
Undisclosed incentivized reviews are not allowed
Disclose the incentive clearly with each review, or leave those reviews out
A rating built only from the reviews you chose to show
The FTC rule bans presenting displayed reviews as all of them while withholding negative ones
Show every genuine review, or state how reviews are selected
How do you check whether your markup is eligible?
Test the page, then test it again as Google sees it. Google's steps are to validate the code in the Rich Results Test, deploy it on a few pages, and use the URL Inspection tool to check how Google sees each page, making sure it isn't blocked by robots.txt, a noindex tag or a login.
Paste the product page URL into the Rich Results Test and read the result for the review snippet or software app feature. Fix critical errors first.
Deploy the markup on the product page only.
In Search Console, run URL Inspection on that page and request indexing once the live test is clean.
Allow time for recrawling. Google notes it may take several days after publishing for Google to find and crawl a page.
Search for your product page afterwards. If no stars appear, that is Google's decision; eligibility is all the markup can give you.
Why should you never invent ratings?
Because it breaks Google's rules and the FTC's at once. Google warns that if a site violates its review snippet guidelines, it "may take manual action against it." And since October 2024 the FTC's rule on consumer reviews bans fake reviews outright, including ones that misrepresent that a reviewer exists or used the product.
The FTC rule reaches further than invented reviews. It bans compensation "conditioned on the writing of consumer reviews expressing a particular sentiment," undisclosed reviews by your own officers and managers, and presenting the reviews you display as "most or all the reviews" while withholding the negative ones. A star rating computed only from the reviews you chose to keep fails that last test.
From third-party pages that review your product. Review platforms capture reviews about other companies' products, which is exactly the case Google's rules allow, and they carry their own review markup. When their page about your product ranks, the stars appear on their result, not on your site.
That changes what to aim for. Instead of trying to put stars on your homepage, aim for third-party pages that rank for your product's name:
Claim your profiles on the software review sites your buyers use, and ask customers to review you there.
Keep your own review markup only on a product page with SoftwareApplication or Product markup, with real ratings shown on that page, or remove it; don't copy ratings in from elsewhere.
Get at least one independent, written review of your product that can rank when someone searches "[your product] review."
Search your product name plus "review" every month to see which pages rank, and which of them show stars.
Nothing will put review stars back on your own company page. What you can get is a third-party page that reviews your product and ranks for its name. LaunchScaler's Review article is an editor-written review of your product on LaunchScaler's blog: one permanent indexed page, labelled as commissioned, with 3 links back to you, a slot in the weekly newsletter and a share to the community feed. The editor calls the product as they find it, rough edges included. It costs $59, one time, ordered against a product you have claimed. Order your review.
What are self-serving reviews in Google's rules?
Google calls a review self-serving when a review about entity A is placed on entity A's own website, either directly in its markup or through an embedded third-party widget. Pages using LocalBusiness or Organization markup for such reviews are ineligible for star review snippets.
03
Can I add AggregateRating to my own SaaS product page?
Google's self-serving rule names LocalBusiness and Organization, and SoftwareApplication and Product remain supported types for review snippets. The ratings must be real, shown on the page, and not copied from other websites, and Google never guarantees that stars will appear.
04
Will I get a penalty for self-serving review markup?
Google said in 2019 that you won't get a manual action just for self-serving reviews and don't need to remove them; it simply won't show the stars. Fake or undisclosed incentivized reviews are a different matter and can lead to a manual action.
05
Where can review stars for my product legitimately appear?
On third-party pages that capture reviews about other companies' products, such as software review sites, which carry their own review markup. Those stars belong to the third-party page in search results, not to your site.
Spam Score is the share of sites with features like yours that Moz found penalised: 1 to 30% low, 31 to 60% medium, 61 to 100% high. A flag, not a penalty.
