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·11 min read

Review Schema: How to Earn Star Ratings in Search Results

A plain-English guide to using review schema correctly so your small business earns star ratings in Google search results without violating Google policy.

# Review Schema: How to Earn Star Ratings in Search Results

You've seen them. You search for a plumber, a yoga studio, or a brand of coffee, and a few results stand out with gold stars and a rating like "4.7 (243)". Those listings get clicked more often. They look more trustworthy. And they're not magic.

Those stars come from a small block of structured data called review schema. Add it correctly and Google can show your ratings directly in the search results. Add it incorrectly and you either get nothing, or worse, a manual action.

This guide walks through what review schema is, when you're allowed to use it, how to add it without a developer on common platforms, and how to confirm it actually works.

Close-up of a Google search results page on a laptop screen showing a local bakery listing with five gold stars and "127 reviews" displayed beneath the business name, two competitor listings above and below have no stars, warm natural window lighting
Close-up of a Google search results page on a laptop screen showing a local bakery listing with five gold stars and "127 reviews" displayed beneath the business name, two competitor listings above and below have no stars, warm natural window lighting

What review schema actually is

Schema markup is structured data you add to your page's HTML. It tells search engines, in a standardized format, what your content represents. Review schema describes a rating or review someone has left for a thing: a product, a service, a recipe, a book, a course, or your business.

Two flavors matter:

  • Review — a single review from one person about one thing
  • AggregateRating — the average score from many reviewers, plus the count

For star ratings in search, AggregateRating is usually what you want. It's the "4.7 out of 5 based on 243 reviews" version.

Schema is most commonly written in JSON-LD, a small block of JSON inside a

The required pieces for star ratings are:

  • The thing being reviewed (Product, LocalBusiness, Recipe, etc.) — itemReviewed for standalone reviews
  • A rating value (typically 1 to 5)
  • A review count (how many reviews the average is based on)

That's the core. Other fields can help, but those three carry the snippet.

How common platforms handle it

You probably aren't editing raw HTML. Here's what to do.

Shopify. Most modern themes include product schema out of the box. If you use Judge.me, Yotpo, Loox, or Shopify's own product reviews, the app injects AggregateRating into the product schema automatically once you have reviews. Confirm with Google's Rich Results Test.

WooCommerce. Adds product schema by default. AggregateRating appears once a product has at least one review. Rank Math or Yoast can add more complete schema. Avoid running two plugins that both inject product schema — they'll fight and produce duplicates.

WordPress (non-commerce). Use Rank Math, Yoast SEO, or Schema Pro. For a local business homepage, set up LocalBusiness schema and connect it to a review source. For posts that review specific products, use the plugin's Review block to mark up a single Review entry.

Wix and Squarespace. Both support structured data for products with reviews when you use their native review features. Custom schema injection is more limited.

Custom site. Generate JSON-LD with Google's Structured Data Markup Helper, paste it into a