Do these 3 things before closing this tab:
1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsNo: Google did not remove review snippets from healthcare webpages as a category. Its September 2019 change restricts organic Search review rich results when a business or organization uses structured data to mark up reviews it controls about itself. That can affect a clinic’s website, but the rule turns on the entity and who controls the reviews—not on whether the page is about healthcare.
What Google changed
In September 2019, Google announced that it would stop displaying self-serving review rich results for LocalBusiness and Organization structured data, including their subtypes, when the reviewed entity controls the reviews. The rule covers both Review and AggregateRating markup. Google’s current “Review Snippet (Review, AggregateRating) Structured Data” guidance continues to describe the restriction.
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Google explained that a business could previously mark up reviews about itself on its own homepage or another page, sometimes using a third-party review widget. An embedded widget does not avoid the restriction if the business controls which reviews are selected or linked. In the original announcement, Google’s Yuxin Cao and Sven Naumann wrote: “Self-serving reviews are no longer displayed for businesses and organizations (the LocalBusiness and Organization schema types).” The rollout was described as gradual.
Does the rule apply to a clinic or doctor’s website?
It may, if the site marks up reviews of the clinic or organization itself using a covered entity type and the organization controls those reviews. The fact that a site belongs to a healthcare provider does not by itself make it ineligible. The same distinction applies to hospitals and other organizations.
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Use these questions to identify the relevant case:
| Situation | How the policy applies |
|---|---|
| A clinic marks up patient testimonials about that clinic on its own site. | Self-serving review rich results are restricted when the clinic controls the reviews and the markup describes it as a LocalBusiness or Organization subtype. |
| A clinic embeds a review widget that displays reviews it selects or controls. | The widget does not bypass the restriction; control over the reviews is the key consideration. |
| A review site collects ratings about clinics or other organizations. | Google says third-party sites collecting reviews about other organizations are not affected by this self-serving-review restriction. |
| A clinic’s Google Business Profile shows reviews or ratings. | The 2019 change concerns organic Search review rich results, not Business Profiles. |
What can still qualify for review snippets?
Google’s current documentation lists supported review-snippet types including books, courses, events, movies, products, recipes, and software applications. It also lists types such as CreativeWorkSeason, CreativeWorkSeries, Episode, Game, MediaObject, MusicPlaylist, and MusicRecording. Local-business markup is supported only for sites that capture reviews about other local businesses; organization markup may be eligible when a site captures reviews about other organizations.
Being an eligible type is not a guarantee that Google will show a rich result. Its guidance says appearance can vary and structured data does not guarantee a search feature.
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What to check if review stars disappeared
- Identify the entity and review subject. Inspect the page’s structured data to see whether it describes the clinic or organization itself as
LocalBusinessorOrganization, and whether the marked-up reviews are about that entity. - Check who controls the reviews. Consider whether the organization selects, filters, or controls the reviews, including those presented by a third-party widget. If so, the self-serving restriction may explain the missing organic review snippet.
- Check the markup and visible page. Find any
RevieworAggregateRatingmarkup and confirm that the review content and ratings it describes are readily available to users on the page, as Google’s review guidance requires. - Run the Rich Results Test. Google’s Rich Results Test can identify structured-data issues. A valid test result does not override the self-serving-review restriction or guarantee that a snippet will appear.
- Inspect the deployed URL. Use Google Search Console’s URL Inspection to see how Google accesses the page. Check that it is not blocked by
robots.txt, markednoindex, or behind a login. After changes, Google needs to recrawl and reindex the page; its guidance notes that this may take several days.
What the missing snippet does—and does not—mean
This policy concerns the display of review rich results in organic Search. Google’s announcement says it does not affect Business Profiles, and the restriction does not require a business to remove visible testimonials from its website. A missing review snippet alone also does not establish that a site’s rankings changed: Google describes its separate reviews system as primarily evaluating first-party review content, with that system being one of multiple ranking factors.
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