Google has updated the local reviews guidelines or marking up reviews explaining when you can make use of Scheme markup and when not.
Here is the new list of guidelines:
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If the content provider or the business are not independent and genuine then they can’t provide the snippets.
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Customers are allowed to express both positive and negative sentiments. They may not be restricted by the content provider according to the positive/negative sentiment prior to the submission to Google.
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While putting reviews, keep in mind that template sentences built from data or automated metrics cannot be used.
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Reviews for multiple-location businesses cannot be used in every business locations of the same company.
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Content providers are not supposed to have any paid or commercial agreements for adding new reviews.
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Duplicate or similar reviews are not allowed.
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Only include reviews that have been directly produced by your site, not the third-party reviews.
The main change is only “directly produced by your site, not reviews from third-party sites or syndicated reviews” should be marked up, according to these guidelines.
This may impact a large number of websites that have implemented local reviews markup.
