In September 2019 Google announced that it would no longer show review rich results for LocalBusiness and Organization items, and their subtypes, when the entity being reviewed controls the reviews about itself. In practice this means a company cannot get stars in search by marking up testimonials about the company on its own site. The rule is part of Google's review snippet guidelines.
What counts as self-serving
A review is self-serving when the reviewed entity hosts it, either directly on its site or through an embedded third-party widget. Google's guidance is explicit that embedding a widget does not change this. The restriction applies to LocalBusiness and Organization types, not to products or software apps the company sells.
What is still allowed
- Reviews of a specific product or software app on its own page, if genuine and visible
- Editorial reviews of other companies' products
- Organization markup without ratings, which remains useful for identity
Why Google introduced it
Google described the change as making review rich results more helpful. Reviews a business curates about itself are easy to filter and hard for users to trust, so Google stopped displaying them for these types. The markup is still valid Schema.org; it just no longer earns stars.
Example
Homepage testimonials
Rookbridge, a consulting firm selling a SaaS add-on, wraps its homepage testimonials in Organization markup with an AggregateRating. No stars ever appear. Moving the rating to the add-on's SoftwareApplication markup, using genuine product reviews shown on that page, makes the product page eligible instead.
Common mistakes
Assuming a third-party widget fixes it
Google treats embedded widgets the same as first-party reviews for this rule.
Questions
No. Google simply does not show stars for these items. Misleading or fake reviews are a separate issue that can lead to a manual action.
