Microformats Specifically hreview-aggregate

Question

I had a question about microfomats and more specifically hreview-aggregate. A client implemented them a while ago but they are not showing in the SERPs however Google's rich snippet testing tool shows them working perfectly. I took a look at the code and it is currently

<div class="hreview-aggregate">
            <div class="rating-45 clearfix">
                <span class="rating" title="4.383 of 5 stars">4.383 of 5 stars</span>
                <a tabindex="0" href="https://www.example.com/category/" title="View all xxxx Reviews"> 
                <span class="count">View all xxxx Reviews</span> 
                </a>
            </div>
        </div>

I changed it up to include class="average" class="best" and a few other spans that they were missing.

<div class="hreview-aggregate">
            <div class="rating-45 clearfix">
                <span class="rating" title="4.383 of 5 stars"><span class="average">4.383</span> of <span class="best">5</span> stars</span>
                <a tabindex="0" href="https://www.example.com/category/" title="View all xxxx Reviews"> 
                View all <span class="count">xxxx</span> Reviews 
                </a>
            </div>
        </div>

Will the updated code finally show in the SERPs? Also, the page only has the rating but no reviews, should I use COUNT or VOTES?

gonna need a lot more info than that....url? have you made sure they're being indexed? when were they indexed? lets start with that. need to see whole document — albert, Oct 03 '13 at 02:38
yes, they are indexed, but at the discretion of the client I can't show the URL. The fact that Google's own rich snippet testing tool shows that original code working but not showing in the SERPs is what bothers me. — user2836352, Oct 03 '13 at 03:42
...if it's open for indexing...i don't see why you can't share it....um, there's a number of reasons why it wouldn't be indexing. i'd start with your documents. is the content being generated on the fly? is your ajax crawlable/accessible? have you followed google web masters or whatever it is instructions to a tee? but again, without seeing the documents render, idk — albert, Oct 03 '13 at 06:12

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 19 '14 at 09:56

I doubt the Google Rich Snippet Tool would pass this. The hreview-aggregate specification (specification) states an item needs to be specified that is being reviewed.

I've also seen the rich snippet tool speak of an average property, but the specification doesn't mention it, if you use value instead of average you comply to the spec and the rich snippet tool picks it up. And you should round the number to one decimal.

You should indeed use votes instead of count if the page doesn't contain any individual reviews.

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

This is an old question but to those still using hreview-aggregate.

The structure more or less is as follows:

<div class="hreview-aggregate">
<div class="item">
    <span class="fn">Item Name</span>
</div>
<div class="rating">
    <span class="average">3.5</span>
    <span class="best">5</span>
    <span class="count">15</span>
</div>

In your code you should have something like this:

<div class="hreview-aggregate">
<div class="item">
    <span class="fn">Item Name</span>
</div>
        <div class="rating-45 rating clearfix">
            <span title="4.383 of 5 stars"><span class="average">4.383</span> of <span class="best">5</span> stars</span>
            <a tabindex="0" href="https://www.example.com/category/" title="View all xxxx Reviews"> 
            View all <span class="count">10</span> Reviews 
            </a>
        </div>
    </div>

So that it fully validates with: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool

Should I use COUNT or VOTES?

From the microformat doc itself: http://microformats.org/wiki/hreview-aggregate

count:: This property is used to specify the total number of reviews for the product or service.

votes:: This property is used to specify the total number of users who have rated the product or service, contributing to the average rating. For some sites, the number of votes is equal to the number of reviews, so count may be used and this property omitted.

in your case, see my example with count as I believe this is most applicable to you.

As mentioned before there are several factors that can cause google not to show it.

Google itself says:

When Google finds valid reviews or ratings markup, we may show a rich snippet that includes stars and other summary info from reviews or ratings.

Keyword: MAY

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/reviews#review-snippets

from my experience they usually do, just make sure its properly formatted and validated.

Microformats Specifically hreview-aggregate

2 Answers2