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).
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Ok, but do you know how they manage to get a star rating displayed in Google search results?
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.
They use it for "helpfulness".
Here's two examples:
http://www.wikihow.com/Maintain-a-Lawn-Mower
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Concrete
Ok, but it still looks good. This is how it appears in a search:
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.
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.
Thanks for pointing it out, Eugene. I learned something new today!
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.
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.
hi Marrisa. I'll have to check. That does make sense. Thank you. I am going to go check.
by Jessica 5 years ago
I just received an email notification that products were removed from one of my hubs because I "must provide relevant experience." One of the products that was removed is one I have used for a long time and mentioned my experience in the hub. Do we have to go into great detail about our...
by Simone Haruko Smith 13 years ago
Happy Friday, Hubbers!I am happy to announce that the new Special Layout Options for recipes and reviews that we introduced on our blog earlier this week are now live. Head over to the HubTool and have a look!In addition to making new Hubs using these Special Layout Options, you can update your...
by promisem 9 years ago
Quite a few of my Hubs have related Hubs. I try to put a few links in a Hub to another related Hub when it seems appropriate. But I see that the editors often remove them. I have tried to find out why in past forum postings without any luck. I assume it's because of loss of page rank. Is that the...
by Glenn Stok 12 years ago
I was studying the Authorship Markup on the new profile format that has been released for staff only at this time. I noticed that the HTML link to other profiles is coded as rel="me nofollow". This defeats the purpose of rel="me" for Google authorship markup since...
by David Patrick 11 years ago
I would like to work for Mechanical Turk, but have heard many people do not pass the test (which intimidates me). But I have read through older forums and see some hubbers active on here have passed the test while others have failed. And I have heard mixed things about people making anywhere from...
by Norma Lawrence 8 years ago
My Hub "Creatures of the Past" is being considered for a niche site. I need to fix my Amazon capsule. I have the dinosaur chart but did not make comment on it. Also they say the title needs work. Can someone help me? I am new at this and totally lost.
Copyright © 2025 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2025 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |