Google has updated its review snippet documentation to clarify how you should indicate the target of reviews and aggregate ratings in structured data.
The change is a small documentation update, but it speaks to a common schema mistake that can make it harder for Google to understand your reviews.
What Changed In The Documentation
In the updated review snippet docs, Google advises against using multiple different “things” as the target of the same review or aggregate rating.
In practice, that means Google wants one clear relationship between a review or rating and the thing it describes.
Where Review Targets Get Confused
You usually see this kind of ambiguity when markup is generated automatically.
Themes and plugins may:
- Attach the same star rating to a product entity and to a business entity
- Reuse one aggregate rating across multiple entities on a complex page
- Leave older JSON-LD templates in place when new markup is added
You might not notice this by eye, but the structured data graph can end up with several paths that point to different review targets.
Why This Matters
If you work on websites that depend on review snippets, this update gives you a clear guideline to follow.
Cleaner relationships between reviews and their targets should make it easier for Google to interpret your data and reduce the risk of confusing signals.
Looking Ahead
There’s a simple check you can add to technical audits and schema reviews.
Test a few key URLs in the Rich Results Test and check how many entities share the same review or rating
In many cases, the fix is to remove one or two extra connections so that each review or rating has one obvious target.
Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock
