Hello Sunil
How to get star ratings on Google search results 

Google Rich Snippets: What Are They and How Do You Get Them? (WordPress Edition)

Have you ever wondered how some websites get the beautiful yellow stars and review count next to their web link in the Google search result? Showcasing great five-star rating and reviews in your website’s search results is a great way to stand out in organic search.

Well, these are organic star rating and here is a handy little guide to improve your chances of getting these stars next to your webpage!

Here is one example for you to see how star rating reflects on Google search result:

An example of star ratings from Google search result

On the above example, you can see a picture of the ice cream is added with rating of the recipe, the time it takes to prepare this type of ice cream and the number of calories it contains. It has much more information so that sometime it’s also called as Rich snippets.

Why are Rich snippets important for SEO?

Rich snippets stand out and look much nicer and you will instantly know more, just by looking at them. People like to click on Rich snippets so that it has higher click-through rate. If the click-through rate of a snippet increases, you will get more traffic from that search result.

💡 Definition – Click-through rate (CTR)

Click-through rate (CTR) is an incredibly important concept in search engine marketing. The simplest definition is that click-through rate is the percentage of people who click on your ad after seeing your ad. (In mathematical terms: CTR = Clicks/Impressions.)

– Source: willmarlow

Not because your position in the search engine changed, but just because more people click on your result. In the long run, Rich snippets will affect your ranking as well.

As more people click on your result, Google will notice that people prefer your page above other ones. That will definitely improve your rankings in the long run!

How do you get Rich snippets on Google search results?

Google can show Rich snippets if you add structured data to your site. Structured data is a piece of code in a specific format, written in such a way that search engines understand it. Search engines read the code and use it to create Rich snippets.

So structured data is a tool you can use to tell Google in a way it understands what you are saying i.e. detailed information about a page on your website.

Google then will be able to use this information to create informative search results in some cases Rich snippets in the form of star rating and review.

Everyone want to be listed on top 10 result of Google and we can take a benefit of “Google Rich snippets” but doing this manually is bit hard.

Your work can be done easily within a click by installing a WordPress star rating plugin which support Google Rich snippet and ratings will visible in Google search result.

Best WordPress star rating plugins with Google Rich snippets

To make your selection shrink from WordPress plugins repository and add this functionality to your WordPress site, we have compiled three best WordPress star rating plugins that you can use and allow your visitors to leave their ratings on your post which later reflect on Google search result.

❗ Important

All plugins are tested by us and we do not post any untested plugin. It takes five days to write this post because of testing hundreds of plugins and chose three best plugins in them.

Pick any of these WordPress star rating plugins that replicates what you want as closely as possible.

  1. kk Star Ratings
  2. Yasr – Yet Another Stars Rating
  3. Rate my Post – WP Rating System

#1 kk Star Ratings

kk Star Ratings - Best WordPress Star rating plugins with Google Rich snippets

kk Star Ratings is a widely used star rating plugin for WordPress which supports the Google Rich snippets. That means, its ratings get indexed by Google which has the potential to drive more traffic to your website.

Here are some highlighted features of kk Star Ratings:

  • Choose where to show the star ratings (homepage, archives, posts, pages)
  • Customize position within the post content
  • Control the structured data schema and type
  • Restrict voting per unique IP

It also features various different animations when you mouse over the stars, and you can decide how many stars you want. It also comes with a sidebar widget that you can add to show the top rated posts.

After you have installed the plugin when you go to the settings page of the plugin, you will quickly notice that there is no option to disable or enable the star rating for specific posts.

If you want to selectively add the stars to certain posts, you can use the following shortcode (use square brackets for short code).

[kkratings] or [kkstarratings]

Before applying this shortcode on selective posts on your WordPress site, use the following screen settings in kk Star Ratings panel.

Shortcode for kk Star Ratings - Best WordPress Star rating plugins with Google Rich snippets

Then use the WordPress built-in shortcode block feature to add star rating for specific posts as follows:

Add shortcode block for kk Star Ratings - Best WordPress Star rating plugins with Google Rich snippets

#2 Yasr – Yet Another Stars Rating

Yasr – Yet Another Stars Rating - Best WordPress Star rating plugins with Google Rich snippets

 Yet Another Stars Rating (YASR) plugin is a lightweight plugin which comes with some great features. It’s based on an older jQuery plugin called “RateIT“, and that’s about where the similarities end.

YASR will let you create multiple star ratings for different aspects of your posts (best for product reviews), and it even integrates the ratings in the Google search indexing.

Here are some highlighted features of Yet Another Stars Rating (YASR):

  • Support for automatic star rating on your post
  • Compatible with WordPress new Gutenberg editor
  • Support for selective star rating on your post by using shortcode

#3 Rate my Post – WP Rating System

Rate my Post – WP Rating System - Best WordPress Star rating plugins with Google Rich snippets

Rate my Post – WP Rating System is another lightweight and free tool that allows your visitor to rate your posts and send you a private feedback after rating in case that they didn’t like your post.

What sets Rate my Post – WP Rating System apart from other WordPress rating plugins is its simplicity, performance and impact on engagement. It works with any page cache plugin and one of the most customizable free WordPress rating plugin.

Here are some highlighted features of Rate my Post – WP Rating System:

  • Add rating functionality to your WordPress site automatically or use shortcode for selective post.
  • Supports structured data for Rich snippets
  • Supports for AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)

Conclusion

These are some of the WordPress star rating plugins we think might serve your needs, in case they don’t, you can find a hundred more of similar plugins that might – and if nothing does, get your hands on the code yourself and create your own plugin.

WordPress is completely open source, letting you reference its code for the best optimization and giving you the best foundation needed for a plugin ecosystem.

However, we would like to hear from you. Do you have any experience with the plugins we have written about? Are there any you feel should be added to this list? Please leave your comments down below.

How useful was this post?

Click on a star to rate it!

Average rating 2.5 / 5. Vote count: 2

No votes so far! Be the first to rate this post.

We are sorry that this post was not useful for you!

Let us improve this post!

Tell us how we can improve this post?

Sunil Pradhan

Hi there 👋 I am a front-end developer passionate about cutting-edge, semantic, pixel-perfect design. Writing helps me to understand things better.

Add comment

Stay Updated

Want to be notified when our article is published? Enter your email address below to be the first to know.

Sunil Pradhan

Hi there 👋 I am a front-end developer passionate about cutting-edge, semantic, pixel-perfect design. Writing helps me to understand things better.