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I'm just starting to learn more about rich snippets and I saw that they support aggregate ratings. But on my blog, users cannot rate articles; they can only "like" them (like on Facebook). Some of the articles have hundreds of likes and I think being able to see that data from a SERP would give users more motivation to read those articles (much like seeing an article that had, say, 4 or 5 stars out of 5).

I haven't been able to find any information on doing this using rich snippets, so I'm thinking either it's not supported or I'm not looking in the right place.

Do rich snippets support "total likes" instead of a rating?

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  • I really think you should add more information on the question, obviouslly you are using a CMS, which CMS are you using, what kind of system you have for likes, is it using facebook api or is it a custom one if it is custom one, what different it from aggregate ratings, is it a plugin etc..
    – knif3r
    Feb 24, 2016 at 18:36
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    @knif3r My blog is custom, as is its "like" system. I'm not sure how that information helps, though. If I was using WordPress with a plugin, would that make any difference in whether or not rich snippets support "total likes" instead of a rating?
    – Nick
    Feb 24, 2016 at 18:42
  • Yes it does help a bit because there are different CMS systems and they have pretty big differences, also if you use a plugin there could be additional information on the functionality and it's implementation in a snippet I will try to give you advice in the answers I hope I find something. But I am pretty sure snippets are self-generated in SERPs and you don't have enough control over them to do it.
    – knif3r
    Feb 24, 2016 at 19:00
  • this is a Wordpress plugin which declare to have this function (Check features point 2) : wordpress.org/plugins/likebtn-like-button It will add the Rating stars next to your link and assosiate your posts with it.
    – knif3r
    Feb 24, 2016 at 19:11
  • @knif3r You are correct that the way in which your site's rich snippets are used by a search engine is up to the search engine. But it really doesn't matter whether or not I'm using a well-known CMS with well-known plugins or if I'm using a custom solution. Rich snippets are still rich snippets. Thanks for the WordPress plugin. I don't think it's what I'm after, though. Features point 2 says "Google Rich Snippets providing five star rating in Google search results.". I'm wanting likes, not a five star rating.
    – Nick
    Feb 25, 2016 at 15:18

1 Answer 1

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The vocabulary Schema.org doesn’t offer a property for this purpose.

Schema.org defines the type LikeAction, but this is for representing the action that something has liked (or can like) something. (The type UserLikes is deprecated, but wouldn’t help anyway.)

You could represent with Schema.org that your article is the object of multiple LikeAction items (one for each like), but that would be a lot of additional markup/data for articles with many likes.

Example in Microdata:

<!-- user 23 liked article 42  -->
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/LikeAction">
  <link itemprop="agent" href="http://example.com/users/23" />
  <link itemprop="object" href="http://example.com/articles/42" />
  <link itemprop="actionStatus" href="http://schema.org/CompletedActionStatus" />
</div>

<!-- user 12 liked article 42  -->
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/LikeAction">
  <link itemprop="agent" href="http://example.com/users/12" />
  <link itemprop="object" href="http://example.com/articles/42" />
  <link itemprop="actionStatus" href="http://schema.org/CompletedActionStatus" />
</div>

<!-- user 5 liked article 42  -->
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/LikeAction">
  <link itemprop="agent" href="http://example.com/users/5" />
  <link itemprop="object" href="http://example.com/articles/42" />
  <link itemprop="actionStatus" href="http://schema.org/CompletedActionStatus" />
</div>

(You could also add the datetime of the like. If only the count matters, you could omit agent and actionStatus.)

But anyway, Google Search doesn’t offer a Rich Snippet that would show the likes count.

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  • Rich Snippet that would show the likes count. developers.google.com/structured-data/images/rs-frozen.png look at the stars below the title and next to the link, this is what he is talking about.
    – knif3r
    Feb 24, 2016 at 21:55
  • @knif3r: Isn’t this what Nick is not talking about, hence the title "[…] instead of a Rating"? I understood it like he wants a Rich Snippet that displays "12 Likes" or "Liked 12 times". The "votes" parts in that Rich Snippet comes from the number of the ratings (ratingCount); I assume you can’t have a votes count without a corresponding average rating (with a maximum value).
    – unor
    Feb 24, 2016 at 21:58
  • Well he doesn't specified that he wants to customize the text of the ratingCount he just gave it as an example and sait that he want to indicate which articles has been upvoted the most from the SERPs, this is the closest that he can get in my opinion and there is a wordpress plugin that will help him to achieve it.
    – knif3r
    Feb 24, 2016 at 22:19
  • @unor Thanks for the information! Your interpretation of my question is correct. I was hoping to get total likes on the SERP as opposed to a star rating. You're probably right that it's not possible.
    – Nick
    Feb 25, 2016 at 15:23

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