Star Ratings Capsule Snipped From Hub

1. 96

   eugbugposted 2 months ago

   I just had one of these capsules snipped from a hub. Why can't we use them in non-recipe hubs? If Hubpages had pages coded to support Google Review stars, hubs would stand out from the competition in search results (Wikihow and similar sites support them).

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2. 94

   Marisa Wrightposted 2 months ago

   The star rating was originally created for recipe Hubs.  At the time, HubPages let us use it for anything, but then realised that was confusing Google.   Apparently the coding is a rich snippet which tells Google "this is a recipe".
   
   I don't know why they've never gotten around to producing a rich snippet for a star rating for reviews.

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   Paul Edmondsonposted 2 months ago

   How we and the community were using the markup for recipes and reviews was causing us a google penalty.  It's one of the things that Google evaluates site wide.  So, we decided to only use the article markup for now.  We think markup can be helpful, but it's tough to enforce the rules for it to the standard that's required.
   
   Related to this, I was helping a large site the other day with a manual action they didn't interpret quite right related to recipe markup.  If you use recipe markup on a site, be sure that you strictly follow the rules and only use it on food recipes with a single recipe per page.

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   Robinposted 2 months ago

   Here are the guidelines for properly using a mark up in your article.  On the left of that article are links to recipe guidelines, etc.
   Eugene, asking for stars on the usefulness of an article, doesn't meet Google's guidelines, so it was removed. 
   
   I can see where authors would make mistakes if they don't know the specifics, e.g., if you add a star rating for a recipe you can only have one recipe in the article.

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      eugbugposted 2 months agoin reply to this

      Does that mean Robin that sites such as Wikhow that use markup to show stars for the usefulness of an article are doing so against Google's guidelines?

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         Robinposted 2 months agoin reply to this

         I don't believe they are using a technical mark up for this information.  It's similar to our old system of giving an article a thumbs up; it is more of an internal metric.

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            eugbugposted 2 months agoin reply to this

            Ok, but do you know how they manage to get a star rating displayed in Google search results?

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               Robinposted 2 months agoin reply to this

               They probably use the markup and monitor that it is used correctly for reviews, etc.  They don't use it for usefulness of an article.  As Paul said, we removed the ability for Google to see our markup because our authors were using it incorrectly and we were being penalized for it.

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                  eugbugposted 2 months agoin reply to this

                  They use it for "helpfulness".
                  
                  Here's two examples:
                  
                  http://www.wikihow.com/Maintain-a-Lawn-Mower
                  http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Concrete

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                     Robinposted 2 months agoin reply to this

                     That's an internal metric.  It's not used on Google like this: 
                     

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5. 96

   eugbugposted 2 months ago

   Ok, but it still looks good. This is how it appears in a search:
   
   
   

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6. 90

   Will Apseposted 2 months ago

   Every feature that can be exploited by self-promoters will be exploited to the hilt by Hubbers.
   
   Every feature that can used misused will be routinely misused.
   
   You don't want to arm them with opportunities to shoot themselves in the foot. Or our feet, to stretch a metaphor.

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   Paul Edmondsonposted 2 months ago

   Actually, Wikihow does use the article schema with the aggregate review element. 
   
   https://search.google.com/structured-da … First-Time
   
   I'd consider testing it on a few pages, but given some of the issues with schema penalties we will want to be very careful with it.
   
   I agree with your point, it does help pages stand out in results.

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   Robinposted 2 months ago

   Thanks for pointing it out, Eugene.  I learned something new today!

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   Terrielynn1posted 2 months ago

   I had one snipped to and never got a reason. I used it because i had a recipe in the hub for making homemade cleaner. I thought it was approprate since people would be trying it. but they removed anyway. THen i got a warning saaying without it it wont show as a recipe. Now iam not sure what to do. I thought the rating capsule would be good to have.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 2 months agoin reply to this

      Terrielynn, did you use a recipe capsule to create the recipe for the home cleaner?  If so, the system is expecting a ratings capsule to go with it.   
      
      Recipe capsules are for FOOD, not other kinds of recipes, so I'd recommend removing the recipe capsule and just using an ordinary text capsule instead.

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    Terrielynn1posted 2 months ago

    hi Marrisa. I'll have to check. That does make sense. Thank you. I am going to go check.

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