Aggregate-rating schema and Google rich snippets

What are rich snippets?

A rich snippet is an enhanced search result. For products, that usually means star rating, review count and price shown right there in the listing. It lifts click-through because it carries proof and information before the click, which makes it one of the highest-value SEO surfaces available. And it is entirely schema-driven.

Which schema makes the stars appear?

Two structured-data types do the work. AggregateRating carries the overall score and the count, while Review carries the individual reviews themselves: author, rating, date. Both must attach to the Product entity, validate against the schema, and match what is actually visible on the page. A rating in the markup that the shopper cannot find on the page is a mismatch. Search engines penalise it. The same markup also feeds AI shopping agents, which is why this overlaps so heavily with the wider work in structured data and schema for product UGC.

How do you earn and keep the stars?

1. 1Emit valid AggregateRating and Review schema on product pages.
2. 2Source it only from real, attributable reviews with real dates.
3. 3Make sure the markup matches the visible reviews exactly.
4. 4Validate with a structured-data testing tool, and re-check after any template change.
5. 5Monitor Search Console for review-snippet issues or manual actions.

The stars are also a Core Web Vitals question, not only a markup one. A review widget that injects layout late, or an iframe Googlebot times out on, can cost you the snippet even when the JSON-LD is perfect. Speed is part of eligibility. Keep the rendering fast and the markup server-readable, the approach in Core Web Vitals for UGC widgets, so the data is there when the crawler arrives.