HubShout | Online Marketing Solutions

Hey all,

I know that it's possible to get testimonials on local business website to appear as ratings/reviews on Google Places pages by using the hReview microformat.

Does anybody know if they are still valid with Google+ LOCAL and the zagat scoring system?

To take it one step further, does anybody know of any code that we might be able to place on our clients testimonial pages that is zagat compatible? Would that work?

Appreciate any ideas.

Cheers, Andrew.

Hey Andrew,

As you might have guessed, I saw this thread and wanted to chime in. hReview microformat used to be a great way (and a somewhat secretive to many in the industry) to get that "double gold stars" to appear in the SERPs. As of recently this cool trick has somewhat gone away... at least in terms of showing in SERPs.

I'm not sure if Google has changed policy on showing the "double gold stars" because of the zagat rating system implementation or what, but I haven't seen hreview microformat show up as much.

However... hReview markup does do an interesting thing... Reviews from your website will show up in the place of the website description tag. The business I've been watching that has been on top of the markup is Attaboy plumbing in Indianapolis, IN.



I haven't seen anything that is zagat compatible yet, and I've even heard rumors and seen some screenshots of Google tests that they might get rid of zagat ratings and go back to the gold stars. I caught on pretty quick when they adjusted from the numerical scoring on reviews to "descriptions." It's going to be interesting to see if they go back to gold stars or not.

Give schema.org review markup a try. http://schema.org/Review . Not sure what impact it will have, but it's worth a try.

I just want to mention Attaboy Plumbing is NOT a client of ours. I've been watching them because they have a good website and used hReview markup pretty early in the game before a lot of other companies did.

Hey Eric, Thanks heaps for your input and great advice. I'm sure that the smart guys at Google sit back each month and say to each other "Ok boys, how can we mess with their heads this time?" Have a great day :-)