Why review stars don't show next to your website on Google

Local business and Organization review snippets are eligible "only for sites that capture reviews about other" businesses or organisations. Valid itemReviewed types are Book, Course, CreativeWorkSeason, CreativeWorkSeries, Episode, Event, Game, HowTo, LocalBusiness, MediaObject, Movie, MusicPlaylist, MusicRecording, Organization, Product, Recipe and SoftwareApplication. Service isn't one of them, and we wouldn't relabel a service as a Product to get stars: Google lists "potentially misleading" markup among the reasons rich results don't show.

The self-serving rule applies to LocalBusiness "or any other type of Organization", subtypes included, whether the reviews are in the business's own structured data or come "through an embedded third-party widget". The aggregation rule is separate: "Don't aggregate reviews or ratings from other websites." Ratings must be "sourced directly from users".

Also: "users should be able to see that aggregate rating on the page"; reviews must be about "a specific item, not about a category or a list of items"; and no "fake or undisclosed incentivized reviews". Product rich results only support pages focused on a single product or its variants.

A single product page in an online shop, with reviews of that product collected through the shop and shown on the page. This is the code in the Schema Markup Validator screenshot above, so pasting it in should give the same clean result:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": "Example 1.7 litre kettle",
  "image": "https://www.example.co.uk/kettle.jpg",
  "brand": {
    "@type": "Brand",
    "name": "Example"
  },
  "aggregateRating": {
    "@type": "AggregateRating",
    "ratingValue": "4.4",
    "reviewCount": "89"
  },
  "review": {
    "@type": "Review",
    "author": {
      "@type": "Person",
      "name": "A. Customer"
    },
    "reviewRating": {
      "@type": "Rating",
      "ratingValue": "5",
      "bestRating": "5"
    }
  }
}
</script>

Why it qualifies. Product needs name plus at least one of review, aggregateRating or offers. AggregateRating needs ratingValue and at least one of ratingCount or reviewCount. Each Review needs author and reviewRating.ratingValue; itemReviewed can be left out because the review is nested in the Product. bestRating and worstRating default to 5 and 1; datePublished is recommended, and a shop would normally add offers.

Decimals take a dot: 4.4, never 4,4. The author must be a valid name, shorter than 100 characters. The 4.4 and the 89 must also be readable on the page. For merchants, Google recommends Product markup in the initial HTML. Strip any comments out of JSON-LD before publishing: the standard doesn't allow them.

A trade's home page markup that describes the business correctly, then adds a rating of itself:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Plumber",
  "name": "Example Plumbing",
  "url": "https://www.example.co.uk/",
  "telephone": "+44 113 496 0000",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "1 Example Street",
    "addressLocality": "Leeds",
    "postalCode": "LS1 1AA",
    "addressCountry": "GB"
  },
  "aggregateRating": {
    "@type": "AggregateRating",
    "ratingValue": "4,9",
    "reviewCount": 212
  }
}
</script>

What's wrong with it, most serious first:

1. Plumber is a subtype of LocalBusiness, and the business is rating itself on its own site. That's self-serving, so the page is "ineligible for star review feature", whether a person typed the rating in or a widget generated it.
2. If the 4.9 and the 212 come from the Google Business Profile or another review site, the markup also breaks "Don't aggregate reviews or ratings from other websites."
3. "4,9" uses a comma. Google asks for a dot: 4.9.

Fixing the comma won't bring stars, because the first two problems aren't syntax. The rest of the block isn't affected by this rule: if you tidy up, take out the aggregateRating object and leave the rest.

The Rich Results Test (search.google.com/test/rich-results) asked us to log in before it would run a test when we tried it signed out on 30 October 2026, although Google's help page for it doesn't mention signing in. It lists the Google rich result types found, with errors and warnings for each. Status lines include "N valid item(s) detected", "N items detected: Some are invalid", "N invalid item(s) detected", "No items detected", "URL cannot be crawled" and "Structured data with syntax errors detected".

It fetches the page as Google-InspectionTool, so a robots.txt rule can block it, and it won't test an HTTPS address unless the certificate is valid. If it refuses on certificate grounds, fix that first: see the "Not secure" warning.

The Schema Markup Validator (validator.schema.org) runs without signing in. It replaced Google's old Structured Data Testing Tool, checks syntax and compliance with schema.org, and no longer checks Google Search rich result types. Use it for vocabulary and nesting mistakes, and the Rich Results Test for Google eligibility.

The two can disagree. Owners on Google's help forum describe a microdata rating that the validator linked to the right item and the Rich Results Test didn't. One JSON-LD block, with the rating nested in the item it rates, avoids that.

The Unparsable structured data report finds markup Google couldn't read at all. To confirm a fix on one page, run URL Inspection and choose "Test live URL", then press "Validate fix" on the issue in the rich result report. Its states are "Not started", "Started", "Looking good", "Passed" and "Failed"; Google checks a sample first, and the time depends on crawl frequency.

If the markup is valid and eligible and stars still don't show, Google's general guidelines list the reasons it may hold them back: results are tailored by search history, location and device type; the markup isn't representative of the page's main content or is potentially misleading; it's wrong in a way the Rich Results Test couldn't catch; the content it describes is hidden from users; or the page doesn't meet Google's guidelines, Search Essentials or content policies.

A structured data manual action costs the page its rich result eligibility but doesn't affect how it ranks.