Review Schema (AggregateRating)
Definition
Review Schema is the Schema.org markup for individual customer reviews and aggregate ratings, which when properly implemented can produce star-rating rich snippets in Google search results and feed AI search engines with verifiable customer sentiment data.
Schema.org defines two relevant types: Review for an individual review (with author, reviewBody, reviewRating) and AggregateRating for the summary (ratingValue, ratingCount, reviewCount). They're typically nested inside a parent entity like Product, LocalBusiness, or Service.
Google's structured data guidelines have tightened over the past five years. To qualify for star rating rich snippets in search results, the rated entity must be of an eligible type (Product, Service, LocalBusiness, etc.), the ratings must be aggregated from real customer reviews visible on the page, and the ratings must not be self-reported without external verification.
Self-claiming a 5-star average from "847 customers" without a visible review widget on the page is increasingly likely to be ignored or trigger manual review. Google's quality raters check the page for an actual review surface — embedded testimonials, links to Trustpilot/G2/Yelp, or pulled-in third-party widgets.
For tools-and-software businesses, the cleanest implementation is to embed verifiable third-party reviews (G2 widget, Trustpilot widget) and let Schema markup describe what's actually on the page rather than asserting ratings the page doesn't prove.
Related terms
Schema.org Markup
Schema.org markup is a standardized vocabulary of structured data tags — typically embedded as JSON-LD blocks in a page's HTML — that tells search engines and AI assistants what type of entity the page represents and what its key attributes are.
Reputation Management
Reputation management is the operational discipline of monitoring, responding to, and influencing online perception of a business across review platforms, social media, and search results, with the goal of improving conversion-relevant metrics like rating, response rate, and brand mention sentiment.