Aug 26, 2020
How do I use AggregateReview schema with critic reviews and TrustPilot's TrustScore system
TrustPilot is a review platform that has its own proprietary mathematical formula for determining a company's rating. That rating system is called "TrustScore." Once a review for your company is posted, it automatically includes 7 additional 3.5-star "phantom" reviews to give your company a more reliable rating foundation, so that no one review can have a substantial, immediate impact in representing your company. (You can read more here if interested)
My main question is:
If I use AggregateRating schema on my site, and I just have TrustPilot reviews, do I only include the individual review ratings themselves (let's say 10 5-star reviews) and bypass the TrustScore, or do I include the TrustScore as part of the overall calculation? (which would make the overall score 4.38/5, assuming 10 5-star reviews and an additional 7 3.5 star reviews)
A secondary question is:
Can I include a critic review as part of AggregateRating schema? To be more clear, if I have 10 5-star reviews on TrustPilot and 2 critic reviews, can I say I have 12 total reviews as part of my AggregateRating schema?
Thanks for your help in advance
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You should be ok marking up your thing being reviewed as a
SoftwareApp.
TrustPilot
If you include reviews from TrustPilot in your SoftwareApp,
bear in mind that TrustPilot marks the reviews up as being for a LocalBusiness
(which is a bit dodgy in itself). That's mixed signals about those reviews.
For those reviews you should indicate that the publisher is
TrustPilot and I would include a url in the review pointing to the page the
original reviews are on. e.g.
"review": {
"@type": "Review",
"url": "https://trustpilot.com/....",
"publisher": {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Trustpilot",
"sameAs": "https://trustpilot.com/"
},
...Critic Review
I'd take a guess that they are not critic reviews but normal
reviews that people posted on your site?
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/critic-review
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/review-snippet
It's fine to list those as the reviews for the thing being
reviewed, and I believe you can combine them with other reviews. If you are
combining reviews from multiple sources you would have to re-calculate all the
aggregateReview values.
Original Poster Matt Veltmann marked this as an answer
TrustPilot reviews are not critic reviews, so I'd say you can't merge their score with this critic review.
One way to put it together:
Review (Your critic review)
itemReviewed (Your SoftwareApp)
aggregateRating (your TrustPilot data)
review (Your TrustPilot reviews
url (The TrustPilot review page)
publisher (TrustPilot)
Original Poster Matt Veltmann marked this as an answer
All Replies (8)
Aug 28, 2020
I appreciate the response but can you take another look at my questions? I've already looked through the general links and information you provided prior to asking Google Support Forum, but the questions I have are not specifically addressed there.
What I'm asking is
1) Can a critic review be aggregated with all the other reviews across the web about your business in AggregateRating schema?
2) Do I consider the TrustPilot TrustScore as part of my overall "rating" for AggregateRating when I compile them all together in the structured data on my website?
-Matt
I think Nikolaj was pointing at:
Sites must collect ratings information directly from users and not from other sites.
TrustPilot is another site.
Aug 31, 2020
Thank you, that helps a lot!
One quick question off of that though - how do we categorize a Critic Review of our business if we're not a Local Business, Book, or Movie, as per Google's Guidelines of Critic Review? Just a regular review?
And if that's the case (just a regular review), wouldn't that mean that gets aggregated with the other reviews we have across the web?
@Tony - thank you for chiming in, however, I think an important detail here needs to be clarified (please correct me if I'm wrong). Per Google's Guidelines:
If the review snippet is for a local business or an organization, you must follow these additional guidelines:
- Pages using
LocalBusinessor any other type ofOrganizationstructured data are ineligible for star review feature if the entity being reviewed controls the reviews about itself. For example, a review about entity A is placed on the website of entity A, either directly in their structured data or through an embedded third-party widget. - Ratings must be sourced directly from users.
- Don't rely on human editors to create, curate, or compile ratings information for local businesses; instead, use critic review structured data.
- Sites must collect ratings information directly from users and not from other sites.
The review snippets in our case would be for a Software App. I know there was no way to know this ahead of time, but because we're not clarifying our business as a local one or "organization", these additional guidelines need not apply.
Last edited Aug 31, 2020
Sep 1, 2020
They could be reviewing both, as the software app is most of the business itself. But to answer your question, SoftwareApp. Is there something we should keep in mind we're not seeing?
Thanks for the help so far,
Matt
You should be ok marking up your thing being reviewed as a
SoftwareApp.
TrustPilot
If you include reviews from TrustPilot in your SoftwareApp,
bear in mind that TrustPilot marks the reviews up as being for a LocalBusiness
(which is a bit dodgy in itself). That's mixed signals about those reviews.
For those reviews you should indicate that the publisher is
TrustPilot and I would include a url in the review pointing to the page the
original reviews are on. e.g.
"review": {
"@type": "Review",
"url": "https://trustpilot.com/....",
"publisher": {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Trustpilot",
"sameAs": "https://trustpilot.com/"
},
...Critic Review
I'd take a guess that they are not critic reviews but normal
reviews that people posted on your site?
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/critic-review
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/review-snippet
It's fine to list those as the reviews for the thing being
reviewed, and I believe you can combine them with other reviews. If you are
combining reviews from multiple sources you would have to re-calculate all the
aggregateReview values.
Original Poster Matt Veltmann marked this as an answer
Sep 3, 2020
Awesome - all good information and thanks for sharing!
Let me clarify the Critic Review question, if you don't mind, and if you could help that would be great:
Our business is labeled as a "SoftwareApp", not a Book, Movie, or LocalBusiness, as stated before. But we definitely have a Critic Review.
This is NOT OUR PRODUCT, but as an example, think: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/corel-paintshop-pro as similar to a critic review that we do have. This Corel Paintshop Pro product, for example, is not a book, movie, or local business, so how would the company who produces this product mark the schema on their site for a Critic Review? Just as a regular "Review"? And if so, as you mention in your previous answer, you're saying we could combine it with the other TrustPilot reviews we currently have?
If there's a way you could answer this, it would help us mark up our site in a lateral fashion :)
-Matt
TrustPilot reviews are not critic reviews, so I'd say you can't merge their score with this critic review.
One way to put it together:
Review (Your critic review)
itemReviewed (Your SoftwareApp)
aggregateRating (your TrustPilot data)
review (Your TrustPilot reviews
url (The TrustPilot review page)
publisher (TrustPilot)
Original Poster Matt Veltmann marked this as an answer