WPSSO Add Five Stars for Google Rich Snippets Plugin

Includes a 5 Star Rating in Schema markup:

1. If the Schema markup does not have an ‘aggregateRating’ property.
2. If Google allows an ‘aggregateRating’ property for that Schema type.

Google allows an ‘aggregateRating’ property for these Schema types and their sub-types:

• Book
• Course
• Event
• HowTo (includes Recipe)
• LocalBusiness
• Movie
• Product
• SoftwareApplication

If the Schema type in the Document SSO metabox is not one of these types (or one of their sub-types), then a 5 star rating cannot be added, as doing so would trigger an error in the Google search console. See Google’s Review snippet documentation for additional information.

WPSSO Add Five Stars is a Fallback Solution

The Google’s Review Snippet technical guidelines reminds us to:

Make sure the reviews and ratings you mark up are readily available to users from the marked-up page. It must be immediately obvious to users that the page has review content.

The WPSSO Add Five Stars add-on includes a 5 star rating if the document Schema markup does not already have an ‘aggregateRating’ property. It is always preferable to include actual ratings and reviews from your visitors and/or customers in the webpage. The WPSSO Add Five Stars add-on can be used in combination with any of the following third-party plugins and service APIs, or the WPSSO Ratings and Reviews add-on.

Suggested Rating and Review Plugins and Services:

The WPSSO Core plugin supports a selection of plugins that provide ratings and reviews:

• WP-PostRatings
• WP Product Review
• Yotpo Social Reviews for WooCommerce
• WooCommerce
• WPSSO Ratings and Reviews

The WPSSO Core Premium plugin also supports a selection of remote service APIs that provide ratings and reviews:

• Shopper Approved (Ratings and Reviews)
• Stamped.io (Ratings and Reviews)

WPSSO Core Required

WPSSO Add Five Stars (WPSSO AFS) is an add-on for the WPSSO Core plugin, which provides complete structured data for WordPress to present your content at its best for social sites and search results – no matter how URLs are shared, reshared, messaged, posted, embedded, or crawled.

Install and Uninstall

• Install the WPSSO Add Five Stars add-on.
• Uninstall the WPSSO Add Five Stars add-on.

Version Numbering

Version components: {major}.{minor}.{bugfix}[-{stage}.{level}]

• {major} = Major structural code changes and/or incompatible API changes (ie. breaking changes).
• {minor} = New functionality was added or improved in a backwards-compatible manner.
• {bugfix} = Backwards-compatible bug fixes or small improvements.
• {stage}.{level} = Pre-production release: dev < a (alpha) < b (beta) < rc (release candidate).

Standard Edition Repositories

• GitHub
• WordPress.org

Development Version Updates

WPSSO Core Premium edition customers have access to development, alpha, beta, and release candidate version updates:

Under the SSO > Update Manager settings page, select the “Development and Up” (for example) version filter for the WPSSO Core plugin and/or its add-ons. When new development versions are available, they will automatically appear under your WordPress Dashboard > Updates page. You can reselect the “Stable / Production” version filter at any time to reinstall the latest stable version.

WPSSO Core Standard edition users (ie. the plugin hosted on WordPress.org) have access to the latest development version under the Advanced Options section.

Changelog / Release Notes

Version 2.1.0 (2024/01/12)

• New Features
  • None.
• Improvements
  • None.
• Bugfixes
  • None.
• Developer Notes
  • Update for SucomUtil and SucomUtilWP changes in WPSSO Core v17.8.0.
• Requires At Least
  • PHP v7.2.34.
  • WordPress v5.8.
  • WPSSO Core v17.18.0.

Version 2.0.0 (2023/11/08)

• New Features
  • None.
• Improvements
  • None.
• Bugfixes
  • None.
• Developer Notes
  • Refactored the settings page and metabox load process for WPSSO Core v17.0.0.
• Requires At Least
  • PHP v7.2.34.
  • WordPress v5.8.
  • WPSSO Core v17.0.0.