Review Stars Dropping in Google Organic Search Results

There has been a trend in the past couple of days where review stars have been dropping by a fairly large percent in the past couple of days.

Here we see the first drop on Mozcast.

As you can see, the review stars dropped by 14.5%.  But the following day, Mozcast’s update on Thursday morning, showed another significant drop.

This shows an additional 12% drop.

Dr. Pete Meyers from Moz confirmed that it isn’t a coding issue, that it is a real drop.  And I am hearing from others who have seen their own review stars – and those of competitor’s results too – dropping significantly in the search results.

Meyers also made an interesting observation.  He noted that the review stars have been decreasing while it seems that local packs are showing an increase in them.

Google has also been adding review stars to the local pack results, so that may be part of the motivation for dropping them in organic.

— Dr. Pete Meyers (@dr_pete) February 18, 2016

He says it is anecdotal, but it could be that Google is just slightly changing the balance of where they appear.

It is worth noting that even large publishers are being impacted by this change.  So sites like Yelp are seeing their review stars being dramatically reduced as well.

Update: The review stars dropped by another 5.8% today.

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post

Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.

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