SellerDeck 2014 Beta with Feefo integration

[pmsupport]

Hi all,

Google has recently changed their policy on how they handle Google rich snippets. As a result, if you are using the SellerDeck 2014 Beta with Feefo, you need to make the change below to avoid being penalised by Google. These steps will revert you back to how Feefo works with SellerDeck 2013 and will avoid conflicting with Googles change in policy:

1) Download the file “Feedback SD2013.zip”, which can be download via the link below:

http://community.sellerdeck.com/atta...1&d=1415379775

2) Save this file to your desktop.
3) Right click on “Feedback SD2013.zip”, and select “Extract all..”.
4) Copy the file “feedback.xsl “ within this compressed file into your site folder, to replace the file currently in your site folder.
5) Repeat this for each site you have in SellerDeck 2014.
6) Copy feedback.xsl to this location on your PC, so that future sites you create, also include the file:

C:\Program Files (x86)\SellerDeck 2014\Original
or
C:\Program Files\SellerDeck 2014\Original

Thanks

[Mike Hughes]

Google has recently changed their policy on how they handle Google rich snippets. As a result, if you are using the SellerDeck 2014 Beta with Feefo, you need to make the change below to avoid being penalised by Google.

Hi Paul,

I'd love to hear some more details about what the changes are and how they're preventing penalties.

Mike

[guccij]

*googles rich snippets*

*still none the wiser*

[Mike Hughes]

Rich snippets allow you to mark up certain content on the site so that google knows what they are and can, if they want, include them in the search results.

A good example is product reviews. If you a have a product that has ratings / reviews then Google will often show the stars and number of ratings in the results page if you include the markup so they can find them. There are a few advantages including that your own listing stands out against the others.

A good example is here: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=blackridge+fly+rods

What I'd like to know is what happened to make sellerdeck change the way they are doing it and what the problem was.

Mike

[pmsupport]

Hi all,

Due to a recent change in Google's terms and conditions, independent reviews displayed on a web site may no longer be tagged as such using microcode (rich snippets). For this reason, the tags included with Feefo feedback content in the SellerDeck 2014 beta have been removed in the production release.

This change does not affect the appearance of the review content in your web pages, or its potential contribution to your search rankings. Enabling Feefo Enhanced Functions in SellerDeck 2014 will insert review content into the static HTML of your site pages, making it directly readable by search engines.

However Google will not display star ratings in its organic listings for pages containing independent reviews.

The change enforced by Google affects all independent review and rating services. Feefo are actively lobbying Google for a change of position. If they are successful, we will reinstate the microcode in a maintenance release.”

Thanks

[Mike Hughes]

Thanks Paul. I appreciate you taking the time to provide an answer.

Feefo are actively lobbying Google for a change of position.

I'll bet they are. If they can't get this changed then it destroys any point in using Feefo to get reviews. i.e. Send your own feedback request and you can use the review properly on your site, Use feefo to request the feedback and you can't.

I can see that Google don't want people pinching reviews from third party sites and placing them on their site.

In this case though, Feefo aren't independent but are gathering the feedback on our behalf under a commercial contract.

This needs changing otherwise I'll have to drop feefo and do it myself. It's not hard to build a system that will send out a feedback request email and a page to capture the reviews.

It would probably work better anyway. The product reviews feefo manages to capture are very short and simplistic. Truth be told they're not a lot of use really.

[guccij]

I'm guessing that it doesn't affect CodePath's Soapbox review system in the same way, as you can choose how much information you want to display. We just use the basic stars with a pop up box.

[Buzby]

I don't see why it would be a penalty though, surely ,Google will just choose not to use it.

I use the Soapbox from Codepath which I think is much better than Feefo, laid out better, and of course cheaper.

[Buzby]

And my rich snippets reviews are still showing in Google, and are number 1 so no penalty is being applied.

[Andy@codepath]

Soapbox and Google

I have been unable to find a clear redefinition of policy from Google but based on our best interpretation, we believe that Soapbox, if implemented as per our instructions, is adhering to the guidelines currently published by Google here:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/146750

The Rich Snippet markup on our own site is still showing star ratings, both 'in the wild' (Google search: Sellerdeck order import) and via Google’s Structured Data Testing tool, but of course it is unclear if this simply means that it has not yet been reassessed. Similarly, we have received no reports from customers indicating that they have been advised of inadmissible Rich Snippet content by Google.

As the merchant, you have the option whether or not to implement the Rich Snippets markup feature of Soapbox. If you have implemented Rich Snippet markup using Soapbox, and would prefer to disable it, simply reverse the instructions provided here:
http://www.codepath.co.uk/helpfiles/...chsnippets.pdf

I will update this thread, and the Rich Snippet implementation guidelines document (referenced above), if we receive any reports from customers having received notification of inadmissible Rich Snippet content, or if we receive any other information that either supports or contradicts our interpretation of Google policy.