You’ve probably noticed them: those little yellow stars that appear under some results in Google. They catch the eye, they build trust, and they make people more likely to click. So how do you get them on your own search results?
The short answer is: structured data, yet another tool in the technical SEO toolkit. But don’t let that phrase put you off. It’s more straightforward than it sounds.
What are those stars, exactly? They’re called review rich results. Google pulls them from review data on your site and displays them in search results when the conditions are right. They’re not something you can just switch on; you have to give Google the information in a specific format it can read.
That format is called schema markup. Schema markup is a small piece of code you add to your pages that helps Google understand what your content is about. For star ratings, you’d use Review or AggregateRating schema, which tells Google: here’s a product or service, here’s the average rating, here’s how many reviews it has.
Where do the reviews come from? They need to be reviews that actually live on your website, not Google reviews or Trustpilot. If you have a product page with customer reviews, or a service page where you’ve collected testimonials in a structured way, that’s the content you can mark up.
How do you add the markup? On WordPress, plugins like Rank Math or Yoast can help you add schema without touching any code. If you want more control, you can add it manually using JSON-LD, which Google recommends.
One thing worth knowing: Google doesn’t guarantee it will show rich results even if your markup is perfect. It takes them into account, but the final call is theirs. Getting the markup right gives you the best chance.
It’s one of those small technical wins that can have a noticeable impact on click-through rates: more visibility, more trust, more traffic.
Want to know if your site is set up to take advantage of opportunities like this? Get a free audit from Pollinate Marketing and we’ll show you what you’re missing.
