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I want to implement review structured data within my website, but I don't know if it's appropriate. My website is a game review website, so the only people doing the reviews are the people writing the post.

So I have a page with 1 game and 1 review. The visitors aren't able to give their own reviews on the page. Is it still possible to use the review structured data here or should I be using something else?

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    What gave you the idea that it might not be suitable for your case?
    – unor
    Commented Sep 17, 2019 at 15:14
  • Is it still possible to use the review structured data here... Short answer? Yes!
    – closetnoc
    Commented Sep 17, 2019 at 16:39
  • Looking at the rich google snippets, I see that the amounts of votes are showing, so I thought I was only able to use it when visitors are able to create reviews
    – patrick
    Commented Sep 17, 2019 at 17:32

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It appears that the most relevant review structured data type is the critic review. This is because it isn't a combined score from reviews submitted by many users which would use the user review schema. It also meets Google's criteria for a critic review:

  • Authoritative human editor(s) must create, curate, or compile content for critic reviews.
  • Only include critic reviews that have been directly produced by your site, not reviews from third-party sites or syndicated reviews.
  • Don't add critic review structured data for adult-related products or services.

However, Google probably won't use the structured data from your games review website. Google says that it will only show critic review rich snippets for:

  • Local businesses
  • Movies
  • Books

Until Google shows star ratings for game critic reviews, there is no benefit from implementing the structured data on your site. If you were to implement it, you would have to hope that Google starts to show star ratings for game critic reviews in the future.

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  • Thanks, I was looking for an explanation like this. A shame that they don't support games for critic reviews yet.
    – patrick
    Commented Sep 18, 2019 at 7:26
  • There may be some benefit. (1) You may not get a rich result, but the structured data still conveys information that may be useful to the search engine. (2) Bing appears to support single review types (i.e. Review, which is a parent type of CriticReview). See bing.com/webmaster/help/markup-reviews-76f106ad
    – GDVS
    Commented Sep 18, 2019 at 7:34
  • I would agree to adding it. It seems most of Google rich snippets are geared to movies, books etc It simply does not make sense that a critic or a single reviewer cannot be allowed to review something. I personally prefer a critic or a single reviewer from one trusted site to review something than the mass of aggregate reviews out there at the moment. Naturally a reviewer or critic should not be allow to review their own product, service or the like. But if a Game or tourist destination cannot be reviewed then thumbs down! Hopefully Google will see the sense in this soon.
    – Dtheme
    Commented Sep 20, 2019 at 4:13
  • @Dtheme you can do whatever you want an your site if you don't care about Google. The question is whether Google would view it as abuse to mark up something that they don't support to try to get rich snippets. Google has given out manual penalties for rich snippet spam. My guess is that if you marked it up in this case, Google would just ignore it and not use it, but I would also worry about the risk of penalties.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Sep 20, 2019 at 9:15

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