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I have applied structured aggregate rating to my website using Schema.org but after a couple of months the 1 to 5 rich snippets are not displaying for the given set of URLs in Google.

Here is an example URL:

http://docur.co/documentary/asteroids-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly

To me this page should be displaying the rich snippets as I have tested it using the Google Rich snippet testing tool and it has flagged no issues.

So my question is: Is the site just not authoritative enough to display rich snippets yet (I have read that Google displays rich snippets "at discretion") or is there an error in my code that is not being picked up by the tool which is hindering the display, or something else?

UPDATE: I have updated my code according to @unor recommendation which clearly states rating only. I have introduced more fresh URL's into the Google index which already have ratings but the rich snippet is still not displaying...

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  • It takes some time before rich snippets show up. In fact, it can take quite a bit of time. Search engines are not real-time. There may be quite a few factors that have to be updated within the index before a trigger is set to then evaluate whether Google will or will not show rich snippets. Sometimes these evaluations are run in batch mode in periodic intervals. This means, if you make a change, it is very possible that it can take a month or two before the fruits of your labor will even be realized.
    – closetnoc
    Commented Mar 31, 2016 at 16:29
  • Yes but can you provide any evidential support for this please (not that I do not believe your statement)? Generally pages on the site shoot to page 1 within a couple of mins for competitive key terms. To me this shows that the site is relevant and trusted, however this does reflect on rich snippets from what I have observed.
    – John
    Commented Apr 1, 2016 at 20:33
  • There is a difference between a page ranking and rich snippets. These are two entirely separate processes. You are right for fresh sites, changes can come within minutes. I posted a research article on one site and within 20 minutes started receiving searches on it. With rich snippets, the process is different. It appears there are site wide assessments that are made before even one page appears with Rich snippets. This tells me that this is a metrics/trigger based process that does not run in real-time.
    – closetnoc
    Commented Apr 1, 2016 at 22:56
  • It has been my experience that rich snippets appear and disappear in about 30 day intervals. Gone one month, back a month later. I am not saying it would take your site 30-60 days, but could take a site 30-60 days. I guess the main point I was making in too little space was you may need to wait longer. Cheers!!
    – closetnoc
    Commented Apr 1, 2016 at 22:58

3 Answers 3

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Not saying that this is the reason for the problem, but it seems that you shouldn’t use reviewCount unless you have reviews (in contrast to ratings, which ratingCount is for).

From Google’s guidelines for the Reviews/Rating Rich Snippet:

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 or ratings content.

Your example page says that there are 4 reviews (<span class=ratingCount itemprop="reviewCount ratingCount">4</span>), but it has 4 ratings, not 4 reviews, as also confirmed by the page content:

Reviews (0)

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  • Thanks for the response, at this point I am willing to try anything so I will re-configure as recommended, put some fresh URL's into the index and see what happens. John
    – John
    Commented Mar 22, 2016 at 18:23
  • Implemented with no luck...
    – John
    Commented Mar 24, 2016 at 19:18
  • @JohnHoward You need to wait longer than 2 days. Sometimes it takes weeks/months to percolate schema data. Check in with google webmaster tools under search appearance > structured data, then visit any confirmed crawled pages from there to really see if its accepted or not. Or you can try JSON-LD markup instead of microdata, it may be faster.
    – dhaupin
    Commented Mar 28, 2016 at 20:39
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Displaying of rich snippets isn't a must from Google. Even if the structured markup is error free, rich snippets could remain not displayed. I see two main causes for non-displaying of rich snippets:

  • there are too much pages in index and a big part of indexed pages is valueless, like the whole content in folders year, tag, u, category etc.
  • there too few pages with rating amount > 0

I would let indexed only content in the folder /documentary/ all other pages i would set to noindex, follow.

Then i would setup documentary page titles without watch documentary at the beginning.

After both steps i would upload new sitemap, only with documentary-pages and wait a bit.

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I can't see an error. As you say, Google displays them "at discretion" so you may be doing everything right and still not see Rich Snippets.

That said, worth noting there was a bug with review snippets for a period in February and, judging from Mozcast, another blip last week.

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  • Thanks for the response, it surely is perplexing when you throw potential Google bugs into the mix.
    – John
    Commented Mar 22, 2016 at 18:19

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