toolkit

Scenario · Something looks broken

Our reviews aren't showing up

“The testimonials section is empty.” Or: “Our star rating disappeared from Google.”

"Our reviews disappeared" is actually two unrelated failures sharing one sentence: an empty section on the page itself, or the star rating vanishing from search results — and they have completely different causes and completely different fixes. This tells the two apart, checks whether the review section is actually rendering anything or just an empty container, and validates the underlying markup search engines need to show star ratings at all — while being upfront about the cases where Google simply won't show stars for this kind of listing no matter how correct the markup is.

What to ask for

Testimonials & reviews checkerTestimonials and reviews checker — renders a page and verifies the reviews section actually shows real, current, structured testimonials.Embed health checkThird-party embed health check — renders the page and asks one question per embed: did it actually paint anything? An Instagram feed, review widget, booking iframe or chat bubble that renders an empty container is invisible in the delivered HTML and visible only to the client.Structured data (schema)Structured-data audit — checks a page's JSON-LD against a per-type rubric: valid JSON, a schema.org context, and the required and recommended properties that gate rich results for Organization, WebSite, Article, Product, LocalBusiness, BreadcrumbList, FAQPage, Event, Recipe and more.Link & image checkerOn-page link & image checker — extracts every link and image a page declares, fetches each to its status code, and reports the dead ones (4xx/5xx broken links and broken images) plus the link-quality issues search engines and screen readers care about: non-descriptive anchor text, image-only links with no accessible text, malformed links, insecure external links, new-tab links missing rel=noopener, and excessive link counts.

See it work

A real run of Testimonials & reviews checker:

FAIL — 1 page(s)
      2 region(s) · schema none · 0 review link(s)
      [error] 2 testimonials/review region(s) render empty — "Reviews" · "https://cdn.trustindex.io" (widget likely not syncing)
      [warn] testimonials are visible but there is no Review/AggregateRating JSON-LD — add it to qualify for review-star rich results
      [warn] testimonials carry no visible dates — visitors and Google cannot tell if the praise is current
      [warn] testimonials section renders but contains no recognisable quote/review block — only the heading or widget shell is there
      [info] no link to an external review profile (Google, Yelp, RealSelf, Healthgrades) found — add one so happy patients can leave a review

  report: ./out/testimonials-and-reviews-checker-testimonials-and-reviews-checker.html
  text:   ./out/testimonials-and-reviews-checker-testimonials-and-reviews-checker.txt

The captured report, exactly as a run hands it to a client —open the full report ↗

Two different failures with one symptom. The section on the page is empty, or the stars that used to appear in search results are gone. The first is usually a broken embed; the second is usually markup that was never eligible in the first place.

  1. Establish which one it is. On the page, or in search results. They share no cause and the work diverges completely from here.
  2. For an empty section on the page, check the review component. The testimonials and reviews check reports what the page actually carries. If the reviews come from a third-party widget, the embed health check finds the container that loaded and never filled — a review widget with an expired account or a changed script renders as blank space, which reads as a design choice.
  3. Check the links and images in the section. Review widgets pull avatars and platform logos from the vendor, and a section of broken images is frequently what “the reviews look wrong” means.
  4. For missing stars in search, audit the structured data. The schema check validates the review or aggregate-rating markup against what the type requires. Invalid or incomplete markup is the fixable case.
  5. Know the ineligible case, and say it. Self-serving review markup — a business marking up reviews about itself on its own site — is not eligible for rich results, and for many medical categories star ratings are restricted regardless. If that is the situation, the finding is that the stars are not coming back, and no amount of markup work changes it.
  6. [manual] Fix what is actually broken. Re-authenticate or replace the widget, correct the schema, restore the missing content. Publish and purge.
  7. Verify. Re-run the review check and the schema audit, and confirm the section renders for a visitor rather than for the person who just fixed it.

Valid markup is not a promise of stars

The most common wasted afternoon here is perfecting review schema for a rating Google will not display for this category. Step 5 exists so that gets established early and reported as a fact, rather than discovered after the third round of markup changes.

What this does not cover

Google's decision to show a rating. Review rich results are granted at Google's discretion and have been restricted for many business types — valid markup does not entitle a site to stars, and no check here can make that call for them. Whether a testimonial is genuine, permitted, or compliant for a medical practice is also outside it, and self-serving review markup is a policy violation rather than a technical finding.

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