Creating “Review” Schema Markup Using the Schema App Editor

This short video demonstrates the basics of creating Review markup. Read on for a detailed step-by-step tutorial with screenshots. 

Review Markup

Create a review data item 

The first step is to create a Review data item. In the Structured Data Editor, use the class tree to search for “Review”. Once selected, click “Create”.

*Note: there are other types of reviews (critic review, employer review etc.) which may be more specific to your case. 

Assign the data item a name and a URL. We recommend assigning a name that is descriptive and clearly identifies the item you are creating. In our example, the name for our “Review” is “Schema App Whitaker Brothers Review”. Enter the URL of the page where this review exists. 

Copy the URL from the address bar to avoid any typos or missing trailing slashes.

Once created, the page will refresh and the data item will be in Edit mode. You are required to have an author, item reviewed and review rating. Date published is only recommended. 

Create a Person/Organization data item

Type the name of the person or organization who wrote the review into the “author” field and click “Convert to Data Item”.

Next, you’ll be prompted to add the URL of this new data item, as well as its schema.org “type”.  Make sure to adjust the type depending on whether on individual wrote the review (ie. person) or if it was provided by an organization. Once selected, the Editor automatically appends a “#anchor” tag to the end of the URL. The base URL should always reflect the page on the site where the Review resides.

Once you have the correct URL, anchor tag, and type, click “Create”.

Additional Fields

If there are additional required and recommended fields for this new data item then make sure to include them here. In this case, I’ve copied the image address of the logo as well as the description that is listed with their review.

Create an Item Reviewed Data Item

If you’re creating a review data item from within a product data item, then you do not need to have the item reviewed field populated. This is an example of a nested review. We recommend you make the connection between a product and review in this way. You can also link an existing product data item, as shown in the video. 

The alternative for this field is to simply create a new data item for whatever is being reviewed using the same steps as outlined above. 

Create a Review Rating Data Item

Type a name for the “review rating” field and click “Convert to Data Item”. When there, double check that the URL is pointing to the page the review is on and that the #anchor is correct. Then click “Create”. 

The only required field is the review rating. As mentioned above, if the rating is not on a 1-5 scale, then also populate the best and worst rating fields. Then click “Done”. 

Other fields to populate

If you have a published date listed for your review, use the calendar for the “date published” field. 

Other fields to populate include: review body, publisher, image etc. These will depend on the content that you have on your site. 

Aggregate Rating Markup

If you have more than one review, Google recommends you create an Aggregate Rating.

Create an Aggregate Rating Data Item

The first step is to create an “Aggregate Rating” data item. In the Structured Data Editor, use the class tree to search for “Aggregate Rating”. Once selected, click “Create”.

Remember to double check that the URL is reflective of where the rating is shown on your site and that the anchor tag is correct. Once you’ve done that click “create”.

Now you will have the required and recommended fields. In this case no further data items will be needed as they are easily populated with integers. 

Note: If you are ever unsure of the meaning of one of the fields, you can hover over the field name and it will give you a short definition.

For the item reviewed field, simply create a new data item for whatever is being rated and reviewed. 

Nested Data Items vs Singular Data Items

Note: You can create an aggregate rating data item from within your “thing” data item for the item being reviewed. In this case you wouldn’t need to populate the item reviewed field, just as was the case with the review markup above. 

The connection between the “thing” being reviewed and it’s reviews and aggregate rating needs to occur in only one direction. This is why we suggest you nest the reviews and aggregate rating within the “thing” data item. 

For example, with a product, this is how you would approach the markup: