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I have 2 questions and wondered why nobody raised the issue of this.

  1. What if I set aggregateRating by schema.org as I wish and always get 5 stars in Google search results ?

Moreover, I can easily write script that increment rating votes each day to trust by Google when robot crawls and send fake ajax queries for rating vote.

<meta itemprop="worstRating" content="1">
<meta itemprop="bestRating" content="5">
<meta itemprop="ratingValue" content="5">
<meta itemprop="ratingCount" content="807">

Articles rating is 5 based on 807 votes
  1. Also I noticed there are websites that use aggregateRating, but Goole does not show starts in search results. Why it can be and how can I manage this?
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  • As the reviews should be "readily available to users" on the page, would you fake the ratings there, too? Or would you show the real reviews with the real ratings, and only fake the rating value in the structured data?
    – unor
    Oct 6, 2017 at 16:01
  • Thanks for your comment. I can do whatever, question is what's the trick of rating system if everyone can to that.
    – sirjay
    Oct 6, 2017 at 16:12
  • 1
    Google only chooses to show enhanced display in the search results with stars for sites that are trustworthy. If you give Google fake data, Google won't use it.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Oct 8, 2017 at 9:54
  • How will they know it whether data trust or no? I can make fake ajax queries for rating.
    – sirjay
    Oct 20, 2017 at 21:41
  • 1
    Google checks ratings from various sites and uses algorithms to sniff out fakes. Even when there are only reviews on one site, there are mathematical probabilities of a rating that can be determined. Also consider, when in doubt, Google uses only the reviews that are available using Google Plus Google My Business.
    – closetnoc
    Oct 20, 2017 at 21:45

1 Answer 1

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For your 1st question:

You can fake your rating, but Google consider this as Spammy Structured Data. It can penalize you and send you message in your Google Search Console. Penalty could be sitewide or for partial pages.

Once you receive this penalty, it means, your markup is gone from that page (or sitewide). You could still see your markup in Google's Structured Data Testing Tool, but it won't appear on SERP. You need to modify your page (or site) and apply for reconsideration request.

One should keep in mind these Structured Data Guidelines

Point to note: Even though you receive such penalty, your ranking won't get affected as ranking and markup are two totally different things.

For your 2nd question: It is totally dependent on Google to show your markup. However you can check following

  1. Check your page in Google Structured Data Testing Tool
  2. Check your webmaster and see if Google finds the Structured Data Markup. To check this: Login in your search console -> Click Search Appearance -> Click Structured Data. If Google is able to find structured data, then it is likely to show up your markup on SERP.

More information: Read Build, Test, and Release Your Structured Data

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