Critic review

Does your site provide combined rating scores from reviewers? Use review snippet structured data.
Does your site provide reviews about other employers? Use Employer Aggregate Rating structured data.
Does your site review claims made by others? Use Fact check structured data.

A critic review is a snippet from a longer review article that a single editor has created, curated, or compiled for a publisher. Critic reviews appear in Search results with a snippet from the critic, the critic's name and the publisher icon, helping your readers to easily find the reviews and navigate to your website to read the complete reviews. You can supply critic reviews for the following content types:

• Local businesses
• Movies
• Books

Examples

You can embed critic reviews inside LocalBusiness. This is useful for sites that provide booking services for many businesses or for business listing aggregators. Here's an example of an embedded review of a business in JSON-LD using the Structured Data Testing Tool:

<script type="application/ld+json"> { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Restaurant", "@id": "http://davessteakhouse.example.com", "name": "Dave's Steak House", "image": "http://davessteakhouse.example.com/logo.jpg", "sameAs": "http://davessteakhouse.example.com", "servesCuisine": "Steak House", "priceRange": "$$$", "address": { "@type": "PostalAddress", "streetAddress": "148 W 51st St", "addressLocality": "New York", "addressRegion": "NY", "postalCode": "10019", "addressCountry": "US" }, "telephone": "[phone]", "geo": { "@type": "GeoCoordinates", "latitude": 40.761293, "longitude": -73.982294 }, "aggregateRating": { "@type": "AggregateRating", "ratingValue": "88", "bestRating": "100", "worstRating": "1", "ratingCount": "20" }, "review": { "@type": "Review", "url": "http://www.localreviews.com/restaurants/1/2/3/daves-steak-house.html", "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Lisa Kennedy", "sameAs": "https://plus.google.com/114108465800532712602" }, "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Denver Post", "sameAs": "http://www.denverpost.com" }, "datePublished": "2014-03-13T20:00", "description": "Great old fashioned steaks but the salads are sub par.", "inLanguage": "en", "reviewRating": { "@type": "Rating", "worstRating": 1, "bestRating": 4, "ratingValue": 3.5 } } } </script>

You can provide standalone critic review objects, which are suitable for sites that perform no direct function for the business being reviewed, such as news sites. Here's an example of a standalone review of a business in JSON-LD using the Structured Data Testing Tool:

<script type="application/ld+json"> { "@context":"https://schema.org", "@type":"Review", "author": { "@type":"Person", "name":"Lisa Kennedy", "sameAs":"https://plus.google.com/114108465800532712602" }, "url": "http://www.localreviews.com/restaurants/1/2/3/daves-steak-house.html", "datePublished":"2014-03-13T20:00", "publisher": { "@type":"Organization", "name":"Denver Post", "sameAs":"http://www.denverpost.com" }, "description":"Great old fashioned steaks but the salads are sub par.", "inLanguage":"en", "itemReviewed": { "@type":"Restaurant", "name": "Dave's Steak House", "sameAs": "http://davessteakhouse.example.com", "image": "http://davessteakhouse.example.com/logo.jpg", "servesCuisine": "Steak House", "priceRange": "$$$", "address": { "@type": "PostalAddress", "streetAddress": "148 W 51st St", "addressLocality": "New York", "addressRegion": "NY", "postalCode": "10019", "addressCountry": "US" }, "geo": { "@type": "GeoCoordinates", "latitude": 40.761293, "longitude": -73.982294 }, "telephone": "[phone]", "aggregateRating": { "@type": "AggregateRating", "ratingValue": "88", "bestRating": "100", "ratingCount": "20" } }, "reviewRating": { "@type":"Rating", "worstRating":1, "bestRating":4, "ratingValue":3.5 } } </script>

Guidelines

Your content must follow these guidelines to be eligible to appear as a rich result.

Warning: If your site violates one or more of these guidelines, then Google may take manual action against it. Once you have remedied the problem, you can submit your site for reconsideration.

• Technical guidelines
• Content guidelines
• Webmaster guidelines
• General structured data guidelines

Technical guidelines

• Refer clearly to a specific product or service by nesting the review within the markup of another schema.org type, such as schema.org/Book or schema.org/LocalBusiness, or by using a schema.org type as a value for the itemReviewed property.
• Make sure the reviews and ratings you mark up are readily available to users from the marked-up page. It should be immediately obvious to users that the page has review content.
• Provide review information about a specific item, not about a category or a list of items.

  Recommended: Hesperia Madrid Hotel

  Not recommended: Top 10 hotels in Madrid

Content guidelines

• Authoritative human editor(s) must create, curate, or compile content for critic reviews.
• The snippet can't exceed 200 characters.
• The snippet must clearly indicate an opinion about the review subject. It should not merely define the subject (for example, ""Gravity" is a film by Alfonso Cuarón") or a plot synopsis (for example, "Dr. Ryan Stone is an engineer on her first space mission").
• Critic reviews can't be template sentences built from data or automated metrics.
• Don't include critic reviews that are duplicated or similar across many businesses.
• Only include critic reviews that have been directly produced by your site, not reviews from third-party sites or syndicated reviews.
• Use non-smart double quotation marks (") to denote titles (for example, ""Gravity" is the best movie.")
• The snippet must make sense on its own and should not be confusing to someone who isn't reading the whole article.
• The snippet must be an exact excerpt from the long-form body of the review. It should not be the review headline, a question or a teaser.
• The snippet must be complete (not cut off, truncated, or ending in ellipses) and well-formed (having correct punctuation and grammar) thought.
• Avoid profanity and vulgar language. Reviews should be appropriate for a broad and diverse audience. Consequently, reviews containing vulgar or profane language may be ineligible for use.
• Don't add critic review structured data for adult-related products or services.
• If the critic review is for a local business, you must follow these additional guidelines:
  • Snippets must not be written by the business or content provider, and may not be provided by the business or content provider unless they are genuine, independent, and unpaid editorial reviews.
  • Critic reviews must allow for customers to express both positive and negative sentiments. They may not be vetted by the business or restricted by the content provider based on the positive or negative sentiment of the review before submission to Google.
  • Critic reviews for multiple-location businesses such as retail chains or franchises can only be submitted for the specific business location for which they were written. In other words, critic reviews for multiple-location businesses can't be syndicated or applied to all business locations of the same company.
  • There can't be any commercial agreements (paid or otherwise) to provide critic reviews between the content provider and the reviewed business.

Structured data type definitions

You must include the following required properties for your content to be eligible for display as a rich result. You can also include the following recommended properties to add more information about your content, which could provide a better user experience.

Review

The full definition of Review is available at schema.org/Review.

Required properties
datePublished	Date Date of the review's first publication, in ISO 8601 date format.
description	Text A snippet from the body of the actual review that captures the author's opinion about the review subject. The snippet must follow our content guidelines.
itemReviewed	Book, Movie, or LocalBusiness The item that is being reviewed.
itemReviewed.address	PostalAddress The address of the specific business location. The itemReviewed.address property is required only for reviews about a local business.
itemReviewed.address.addressCountry	Text The 2-letter ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code. The itemReviewed.address.addressCountry property is required only for reviews about a local business.
itemReviewed.address.addressLocality	Text The city of the local business (if applicable). The itemReviewed.address.addressLocality property is required only for reviews about a local business.
itemReviewed.address.addressRegion	Text The state or province of the local business (if applicable). The itemReviewed.address.addressRegion property is required only for reviews about a local business.
itemReviewed.address.postalCode	Text The postal or zip code of the local business (if applicable). The itemReviewed.address.postalCode property is required only for reviews about a local business.
itemReviewed.address.streetAddress	Text The street number, street name, and unit number of the local business (if applicable). The itemReviewed.address.streetAddress property is required only for reviews about a local business.
itemReviewed.author	Person The annotation for the author of the book. The itemReviewed.author property is required only for reviews about a book.
itemReviewed.author.name	Text The name of author of the book. The itemReviewed.author.name property is required only for reviews about a book.
itemReviewed.isbn	Text The ISBN of the book. In cases where no ISBN exists, use itemReviewed.sameAs. The itemReviewed.isbn property is required only for reviews about a book.
itemReviewed.name	Text The name of the item that is the subject of the review. It can be the name of the book, movie, or local business.
itemReviewed.sameAs	URL The URL of a page that unambiguously identifies the item that is the subject of the review. Google strongly prefers the following URLs based on the subject of the review: Books: The book's Google Play Books page, Wikipedia page, or official website. Movies: The movie's IMDB page, Wikipedia page, or official website. Local Business: The business's official website. For books only, the itemReviewed.sameAs property isn't required if you define itemReviewed.isbn.
publisher	Organization Annotation for the publisher of the review.
publisher.name	Text Name of the publisher of the review. For example, "The New York Times".

Recommended properties
aggregateRating	AggregateRating The average score assigned to the item being reviewed. This typically applies to user ratings rather than professional critic ratings.
aggregateRating.bestRating	Text The highest value allowed in the reviewer's rating system. If this field is omitted, 5 is assumed. Letter grades are allowed (for example, "A").
aggregateRating.ratingCount	Number The number of ratings given to the reviewed item.
aggregateRating.ratingValue	Text The average rating given to the reviewed item. Letter grades are allowed (for example, "B+").
aggregateRating.worstRating	Text The lowest value allowed in the reviewer's rating system. If this field is omitted, 1 is assumed. Letter grades are allowed (for example, "C-").
author	Person or Organization The author of the review. The reviewer’s name must be a valid name. For example, "50% off until Saturday" is not a valid name for a reviewer.
author.name	Text Name of the author of the review. Provide the full name of the author. The value should be capitalized correctly. Names comprised of entirely uppercase or lowercase letters are edited such that the first letter of every word is capitalized.
author.sameAs	URL URL of a page that unambiguously identifies the author (for example, the author's official website, a profile page, a Wikipedia article).
inLanguage	Text The BCP-47 language code of the review description (for example, "ja" is Japanese). We strongly recommended inLanguage for non-English reviews.
itemReviewed.actor	Person The annotation(s) for main cast of the movie. The itemReviewed.actor property is only recommended for movie reviews.
itemReviewed.actor.name	Text The name of the actor. The itemReviewed.actor.name property is only recommended for movie reviews.
itemReviewed.actor.sameAs	URL The URL of a page that unambiguously identifies the actor. Google strongly prefers the actor's IMDB or Wikipedia page. The itemReviewed.actor.sameAs property is only recommended for movie reviews.
itemReviewed.datePublished	Date The original publication date of the book or the original theatrical or direct-to-video release date of the movie, in ISO 8601 format. The itemReviewed.datePublished property is only recommended for reviews about a book or movie.
itemReviewed.director	Person The annotation for the director of the movie. The itemReviewed.director property is only recommended for movie reviews.
itemReviewed.director.name	Text The name of the director. The itemReviewed.director.name property is only recommended for movie reviews.
itemReviewed.director.sameAs	URL The URL of a page that unambiguously identifies the director. Google strongly prefers URLs to director's IMDB or Wikipedia page. The itemReviewed.director.sameAs property is only recommended for movie reviews.
itemReviewed.geo	GeoCoordinates The geographic coordinates of the business. The itemReviewed.geo property is only recommended for reviews about a local business.
itemReviewed.geo.latitude	Number or Text The latitude of the business location. The precision should be at least 5 decimal places. The itemReviewed.geo.latitude property is only recommended for reviews about a local business.
itemReviewed.geo.longitude	Number or Text The longitude of the business location. The precision should be at least 5 decimal places. The itemReviewed.geo.longitude property is only recommended for reviews about a local business.
itemReviewed.telephone	Text The public phone number of the business that's normally used by customers, including the country code. The itemReviewed.telephone property is only recommended for reviews about a local business.
publisher.sameAs	URL The URL of the publisher's official website or Wikipedia page.
reviewRating	Must be one of the following: Rating The rating given in this review on a scale (for example, 3 out of 5 stars). Ratings can be either numeric (for example, 1-5) or text (for example, A-F), where you define the best and worst score in the bestRating and worstRating fields. The rating can be a nested Rating or more specific subtype. The most typical subtype is AggregateRating. Here’s an example of reviewRating.Rating: "reviewRating": [{ "@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": "3.0", "bestRating": "5", "worstRating": "0" }] EndorsementRating A rating that expresses some level of positive endorsement for the item being reviewed. For example, inclusion in a "critic's pick" blog, a "Like", or "+1" on a social network. EndorsementRating is a rating by itself (for example, “2 thumbs up”), not a rating on a scale. Here’s an example of reviewRating.EndorsementRating: "reviewRating": [{ "@type": "EndorsementRating", "name": "2 thumbs up", "ratingValue": "2" }] Additional guidelines: Google recommends using a text string up to a few words in length (approximately 10-15 characters). An EndorsementRating may be part of a numeric scale or organized system. If the scale is not numeric, indicate that the endorsement is positive to help consumers understand that the rating is broadly positive.
reviewRating.bestRating	Text The highest value allowed in this rating system. This property is required if the rating system is not on a 5-point scale. If bestRating is omitted, 5 is assumed.
reviewRating.ratingValue	Text The rating given to the reviewed item. Letter grades are allowed. For example, "B+".
reviewRating.worstRating	Text The lowest value allowed in this rating system. The worstRating property is required if the rating system is not on a 5-point scale. If worstRating is omitted, 1 is assumed.
URL	URL URL of the web page that contains the full text of the review. The webpage indicated by this field must contain a full-length review that is longer than 300 words. Other use cases: If no value is provided, Google assumes that the crawled page is the location of the review in its entirety. If your structured data is on a page other than the one containing the full text of the review, or if you have multiple URLs for the full-text review, you must populate this field. If you have duplicate pages for the same content, make sure you use the canonical URL.