Schema markup on ecommerce sites.

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  Gareth Marshall: Hi guys. Second question I'm asking here, seeing as though you all helped me out brilliantly the other week!
  
  We're thinking about implementing Schema mark up to our ecommerce sites. Most of our competitors seem to do it and we've heard that it shouldn't do our SEO efforts any harm.
  
  However, we've noticed that one of our competitors uses the user star average rating that's in a footer on their homepage on every product page they rank for. So it appears that their average customer rating as a company (which is high), is being used in a footer on every one of their product pages, rather than each product page having it's own unique rating, if you know what I mean? If you found one of their product pages in SERPs you'd think "oh, that's rated quite highly" without realising that the rating is in fact for them as a business, rather than that product.
  
  We just wanted to check- this is really not a good practice, right?
  
  Thanks
• 
  Fazly Rabby: Well not at all and in fact that rating should not show up on the SERP for product specific queries at all! Did you check if they do?
• 
  Dave Elliott: yeah. that won't(shouldn't anyway) show up in the serps and is pretty naughty unless it is very obvious they are talking about a company rating rather than a product rating.
• 
  Gareth Marshall: Hi +Fazly Rabby ;yes it does. The rating is exactly the same (5 stars, 4.9, around 80k votes) for every single different product page they rank for, and also when you see their homepage and product menu pages in SERPs.
• 
  Gareth Marshall: +Dave Elliott ;No Dave it doesn't make it clear at all. If you didn't know you'd think the rating displayed is specific to the product. Glad that we've cleared up that this is bad! We noticed the other day and were like "hang on a minute!"
• 
  Fazly Rabby: Well I really need to see it. They might be using the same schema for products as well and the rating doesn't always have to be user generated.
  
  Not the best practice anyway!
• 
  Gareth Marshall: +Fazly Rabby ;I'll see if I can do some screenshots and some editing later, Fazly, as I don't want to mention them directly or anything.
• 
  Tony McCreath: Seeing the code would be intersting.
• 
  Fazly Rabby: Exactly +Tony McCreath. Maybe you could give us a keyword so we could see for ourselves ;) +Gareth Marshall
• 
  Gareth Marshall: +Fazly Rabby ;+Tony McCreath ;I could send you some details in an email?
• 
  Tony McCreath: +Gareth Marshall ;My emails in my profile. Or send a private post to only those whom you want to see it.
• 
  Tony McCreath: After a look at the website in question:
  
  While there are product reviews on the page, they are not marked up in any way. ;
  
  In the footer there is an aggregate review rating and this is the only review on the website that is marked up (schema). It is not pretending to be a product review, in fact it only contains the aggregate review item with no context to what the review is about. ;
  
  The code makes it clear that it was supplied to the website owners by a company that collects reviews. More than likely they are signed up with this "feedback" company as they have a seal of approval with them and link to them via a badge. They probably just placed code supplied by the feedback company in the footer. And that code is marked up.
  
  Google Shopping respects the feedback company as it is the largest source of review they have gathered for this website. The website understandably also link to their Google Shopping review page to highlight their excellent review rating.
  
  So, in my mind this was not a deliberate attempt to fool Google, but I'm sure they did not complain when it happened.
  
  I'd class this as an error on Googles behalf by allowing this site wide markup to be attributed to individual product pages.
• 
  Gareth Marshall: +Tony McCreath ;Ah I see. Thanks for having a look anyway, Tony. Hopefully from our point of view anyway Google will recognise their error soon then!
• 
  Tony McCreath: +Gareth Marshall ;we could give someone a heads up on this and it may speed up a fix.