Why Review Stars Are Not Showing in Google for Your Shopify Store

Review stars fail to appear in Google for a Shopify store for one of five reasons: the product page has no review markup, the rating in the markup is not visible on the page, the rating is not specific to that product, two sources are outputting conflicting markup, or Google has not yet recrawled the page or has chosen not to show stars. The first four you can check and fix yourself. The fifth you can only wait on. This guide works through the checks in order, starting with the quickest.

First, which stars are you missing?

Establish whether the missing stars are in ordinary search results or in Google Shopping, because they come from different systems.

• Stars under a normal search result are read from structured data on the product page itself.
• Stars on Shopping listings come from a product ratings feed sent to Google Merchant Center, and have their own requirements.

This article deals with the first kind. For the second, see how to get star ratings on Google Shopping listings. Both routes are introduced in our guide to collecting verified product reviews on Shopify.

Check 1: is review markup present on the page?

Run a product URL through Google's Rich Results Test and see whether it detects a product with a rating.

For stars, the page needs Product structured data that includes an aggregateRating, with a rating value and a count of reviews. In the test result, look for a detected product item and confirm those fields are there.

If nothing is detected, the usual causes are:

• the reviews app's widget has not been added to the product template in use, or has been added to one template while the product uses another;
• the app's structured data option is switched off;
• the product has no reviews, in which case there is correctly no rating to mark up.

Test a product that certainly has published reviews.

Check 2: is the rating visible on the page?

The rating in the markup has to match something a shopper can see on the page. Markup describing a 4.7 average from 38 reviews should sit on a page that shows those stars and those reviews.

Stores trip over this in a few ways:

• the review widget was removed or hidden during a redesign, but the markup stayed;
• reviews are displayed on desktop and hidden on mobile, and Google mainly reads the mobile version;
• the markup count includes reviews that are unpublished or awaiting approval.

Open the product page on a phone and confirm you can see the star average and read the reviews.

Check 3: is the rating about this specific product?

Each product page should carry the rating for that product alone. The stars are meant to describe the item on the page.

Look for:

• a store-wide average attached to every product page;
• the same rating repeated on the home page, collection pages and blog posts;
• reviews of one product shown on another because listings were merged or duplicated.

Leave rating markup off pages that are not about a single product.

Check 4: is there duplicate markup from the theme and the app?

Check that only one source describes each product. This fault is common on Shopify stores that have changed reviews app or theme, and it is hard to spot by eye, because the page looks perfectly normal.

Many themes output their own product structured data. A reviews app then adds its own. Google may find two product items on one page: one with a price and no rating, another with a rating and no price, or two ratings that disagree.

To find it:

1. In the Rich Results Test, count the product items detected. You want one.
2. View the page source and search for aggregateRating. More than one occurrence deserves a closer look.
3. Search the theme code for the names of any reviews apps you have used before.

The fix is to have a single, complete product item: either the app supplies the rating into the theme's existing markup, or one of the two is switched off. If you have recently switched apps, the clean-up steps are in moving reviews from one Shopify reviews app to another.

Check 5: does the test show errors or warnings?

Fix every error the Rich Results Test reports, then look at the warnings. An error on a required field can make the whole item ineligible. Typical problems are a missing review count or a rating value outside its scale.

Google Search Console also reports on product structured data across the whole site, which tells you whether a fault affects one page or every product.

Everything passes. Why are there still no stars?

Because valid markup makes a page eligible for stars and does not oblige Google to show them. Google decides, result by result, and nobody outside Google can force it.

Two things are usually at work:

• Time. Google has to recrawl the page before it sees a change, and it does so on its own schedule. After fixing markup, expect a wait. You can ask for a recrawl of an important URL in Search Console, which is a request only.
• Google's judgement. Stars may show for some queries and not others, and may come and go.

Do not respond to the wait by adding more markup or changing it every few days. Each change gives Google something new to re-read. What reviews can and cannot do for search is covered more broadly in whether product reviews help Shopify SEO.

For the markup itself, Marka Reviews adds rich snippets to your product pages for organic results. As with any reviews app, it supplies the data and Google decides what to display.

A short checklist

1. Confirm whether the missing stars are in organic results or in Shopping.
2. Run a reviewed product through the Rich Results Test.
3. Check that the rating in the markup is visible on the mobile page.
4. Make sure each rating belongs to that product only.
5. Look for a second product item or leftover code from an old app.
6. Clear errors, request a recrawl once, then wait.

Missing stars are usually a markup fault you can find with this list, or a matter of time. If you would like the markup handled without theme code, Marka Reviews adds it along with the review widgets, and whether stars appear remains Google's decision.