Review Schema: Complete Reference

By Amit Patel

Review schema marks up a rating and review of a thing — a product, book, or local business — and can surface star ratings in search results, but it is governed by strict policies, the biggest being that you cannot mark up reviews of your own business. Used correctly it is one of the more eye-catching rich results; used wrong it is one of the fastest routes to a structured-data manual action. This reference covers what is eligible and the rules that keep you safe.

What Review Schema Does

It describes a review — an author, a rating value, and the item being reviewed — and can produce star ratings in the SERP for eligible item types, either as a single Review or an averaged AggregateRating.

Stars in results are visually prominent and lift click-through, which is exactly why Google polices them tightly. The markup must describe a genuine review that is visible on the page and about an eligible type of thing.

The Self-Serve Policy

Google’s “self-serve” rule prohibits marking up reviews of your own organization or its products on your own site — you cannot award yourself stars. Reviews must be about a distinct item and, ideally, come from independent sources.

This is the single most-violated Review rule. A business adding Review/AggregateRating about itself on its homepage is precisely what Google disallows and will strip or penalize. Reviews of third-party products you sell, or of distinct items, are different — the prohibition is on self-rating your own entity.

Eligible Types

Review and AggregateRating are only eligible on specific item types — Product, Book, Course, Event, LocalBusiness (with the self-serve caveat), Recipe, SoftwareApplication, and a handful of others — not on arbitrary pages.

Adding Review markup to a blog post or a generic page does not produce stars and can be flagged. Match the review to a supported type; for software and apps this connects to SoftwareApplication, and for products to Product. Confirm eligibility in Google’s documentation before adding it.

Rules That Avoid a Manual Action

Mark up only genuine, visible reviews; never self-serve; do not aggregate reviews from other sites you do not host; and keep rating values within the stated scale. Violations risk a structured-data manual action.

The safest posture: reviews are real, present on the page, about an eligible and distinct item, and honestly counted. If any of those is untrue, remove the markup. Validate with the Rich Results Test and watch the enhancement report in Search Console for warnings.

Example Markup

A single Review on a Product (shown as code):

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": "Example Widget",
  "review": {
    "@type": "Review",
    "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "A. Reviewer" },
    "reviewRating": { "@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": 4, "bestRating": 5 }
  }
}
</script>

See JSON-LD vs Microdata for the format.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line

Review schema earns eye-catching stars but demands discipline: real reviews, eligible types, and never rating your own entity. Follow the self-serve rule above all, validate, and monitor for warnings — the same care-with-policy approach the whole schema cluster applies to the higher-risk types.