Star ratings: self-reviews vs aggregate reviews

Star ratings: self-reviews vs aggregate reviews

Today's lesson: those review stars under a result come from review schema — but where the reviews live changes everything, and gets sites penalized.

Imagine grading your own homework versus the class voting.

1. AggregateRating from real customer reviews on your page (the class voting) is allowed and trusted.
2. A business marking up reviews ABOUT itself, written by itself (grading your own homework), breaks Google's rules — stars get removed and trust drops.
3. Third-party platforms that collect verified reviews are the safest source to display.

The tradeoff: self-collected reviews give you control but invite suspicion; verified third-party reviews cost a fee but survive Google's checks.

Try this: check that any star markup on your site points to genuine, visible customer reviews — not invented ones. 🎓