Review schema is structured data that tells Google about your reviews. Visible result: star ratings in search results + AI Overviews.

Review schema markup is structured data you add to your website's HTML so Google understands you have reviews and what the aggregate rating is. The visible result: your star rating shows up in Google search results — the orange stars below the title — and increasingly in Google's AI Overviews. Done right, review schema increases organic click-through rate by 18–35%.

What review schema actually does

Review schema gives Google two pieces of information it can display in search results:

AggregateRating — your average star rating across all reviews + the total review count
Review — individual review excerpts that may appear in rich results

When Google decides to display rich results for your page, the search result transforms from a plain text snippet into a snippet with stars, a numeric rating ("4.7"), and a review count ("based on 127 reviews"). Searchers eye-track to the stars before they read the title — they're the highest-attention element on a search results page.

Where to place the schema

JSON-LD format is the only format Google currently recommends. Place it in the <head> section of every page where you display reviews. The schema must reference reviews that are actually visible on the page — Google's quality team has been increasingly aggressive about removing rich results from sites that ship schema for reviews that aren't displayed on the page.

The minimal valid AggregateRating schema

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Service",
  "name": "Local SEO Services",
  "provider": {
    "@type": "LocalBusiness",
    "name": "Your Business Name"
  },
  "aggregateRating": {
    "@type": "AggregateRating",
    "ratingValue": "4.7",
    "reviewCount": "127",
    "bestRating": "5",
    "worstRating": "1"
  }
}

The 2024–2025 enforcement changes

Google has been progressively stricter about review schema since the August 2024 spam update. The current rules:

Self-serving reviews don't qualify. Reviews on your own site about your own business may not earn rich results. Reviews on a service page need to be either third-party-validated (pulled from Google Business Profile, Yelp, etc.) or marked with the appropriate Review schema referencing the original source.
Aggregate-only schema gets demoted. Sites that ship AggregateRating without any individual Review entities now rarely earn rich results. Best practice: include at least 3–5 individual reviews on the page with full Review schema.
Manipulation triggers manual penalties. Sites caught shipping schema for reviews that don't exist on the page (or don't exist anywhere) get hit with manual actions removing all rich results until corrected.

The AI Overviews opportunity

Since AI Overviews launched in May 2024, review schema has become more important, not less. AI Overviews pull review data from structured data when generating "best plumbers in Baltimore"-type queries. Pages with strong review schema appear in AI Overview citations at substantially higher rates than pages without — even when the pages without have stronger conventional rankings.

Current data: pages with valid AggregateRating + 5+ individual Review schemas appear in Baltimore-area AI Overview citations roughly 2.4x more often than pages without. As AI Overviews drive more search traffic (12–18% of organic clicks for local service queries as of early 2026), this delta matters more.

What to do this week

Open Google's Rich Results Test. Run it against your homepage and your top 3 service pages. See whether you have valid review schema.
If you have no review schema, add it. Most modern CMS platforms have plugins (RankMath, Yoast, Schema Pro for WordPress) that generate it automatically.
If you have AggregateRating only, add 3–5 individual Review schemas to the same page. Use real reviews from your Google Business Profile.
Re-test in Rich Results Test. If valid, you'll start seeing rich results in Google search within 2–6 weeks.
Audit monthly. Google rolls out schema enforcement updates 3–4 times per year — what was valid last quarter may need adjustment.

See our Local SEO service for full schema implementation and Map Pack ranking work, or request a free audit for a written review of your current schema implementation.

Review Schema Markup: How to Get Star Ratings in Google Search Results