Rating Scope

Finds AggregateRating markup that is not about the page it sits on, or that no reader can see

Rule ID	schema/rating-scope
Category	Structured Data
Scope	Per-page
Severity	warning
Weight	4/10

How it works

Review Schema checks the shape of AggregateRating: does it have a ratingValue, does it have a ratingCount or reviewCount. A single sitewide rating block emitted by a template satisfies all of that on every page of the site — including the privacy policy, the terms page and every blog post. This rule asks the two questions the shape check cannot:

1. Can a reader see a rating on this page at all? Google requires the rating to be visible in the page content. Rating markup that exists only in the JSON-LD is a structured-data policy violation, not a validation error, and it is the classic cause of a manual action.
2. Is the rated entity the subject of this page? A LocalBusiness rating attached to a privacy policy, a terms page or a blog post is a rating of the site, not of the page carrying it.

Repetition on its own is deliberately not the signal. On a legitimate local-business site the review badge really is on screen on most pages, and the rating really is about the business the page is about — a rule that fired on “AggregateRating appears on many pages” would flag every one of them. What is reported is the relationship between the rating and the page it sits on.

The rule stays quiet unless it has grounds to speak:

• A page with no AggregateRating produces no output at all.
• A rating visible anywhere in the rendered page text clears the visibility check — a star badge (★★★★★ 4.9), “4.9 out of 5”, “18 reviews”, a decimal rating printed in the copy, or the same wording in alt / aria-label / title text.
• A third-party review widget (Trustpilot, Yotpo, Judge.me, Elfsight and friends) renders its badge client-side, so the rating is legitimately absent from a raw-HTML crawl. Its presence clears the visibility check rather than accusing the page.
• The subject check runs only on page types where a rating cannot be about the page: privacy policies, terms pages and articles or blog posts. Everything else — homepages, location pages, product pages, category pages — is left alone.
• On an article the subject check reports only a rating attached to the site’s own business or organization entity. An article that reviews a Product legitimately carries that product’s rating.

Each finding names the page type and the rated entity, so it reads as “this LocalBusiness rating is on your privacy policy”, not as a missing field.

Solution

AggregateRating must describe the thing this page is about, and the rating has to be visible to the reader in the page content. A single sitewide rating emitted by a template lands on pages that cannot be rated, where it becomes a self-serving rating of the site rather than markup about the page.

Google treats invisible or off-topic rating markup as a structured-data policy violation and issues manual actions for it, which costs the whole site its rich results — not just the page that was flagged.

• Move the rating onto the pages whose subject it actually describes: the LocalBusiness on the homepage and location pages, the Product on its own product page.
• Drop the rating block from templates that render legal pages and blog posts.
• Where a page keeps the markup, make sure the same rating is on screen for readers, with the same value the markup claims.

Enable / Disable

Disable this rule

[rules]
disable = ["schema/rating-scope"]

Disable all Structured Data rules

[rules]
disable = ["schema/*"]

Enable only this rule

[rules]
enable = ["schema/rating-scope"]
disable = ["*"]