Aaron Queen

You could try something like this on the homepage:

1. Do NOT check the box to enable the plugin on the homepage page editing form.
2. Instead, add this shortcode somewhere to your homepage content. The bottom maybe:
[WPCR_SHOW POSTID="1620" HIDEREVIEWS="1" SHOWFORM="0"]
3. This should output the aggregate review metadata associated with postid 1620 (your reviews page), hidden on your homepage.

No guarantee this will work, as Google does whatever it wants, but it’s worth a shot I suppose.

Alternatively, you could enable WPCR on your homepage, and use the same above shortcode, except use the POSTID=”” for the ID of the homepage, then move all of your reviews from the reviews page associated to instead be associated with your homepage. On your reviews page, use the shortcode [WPCR_SHOW POSTID=”” HIDEREVIEWS=”0″ SHOWFORM=”1″] with the POSTID containing again the ID of the homepage. It seems a bit weird, but that’s worth a shot as well.

I’ll do some testing on my end as well to see what I can come up with, but Google does whatever they feel like most of the time.

This isn’t the official support forum, and I’ve never seen a ticket for this, so my apologies in the delay in responding here on the community forum.

We’ll look into this. At the heart of the plugin, it works only for posts when the checkbox is clicked to enable reviews for that page/post. This is by design.

However, I do see the use case of using do_shortcode to output the reviews on another page, without them outputting on the page they are assigned to. I’ll see what we can do to remedy the problem.

It’s possible that we don’t need to include the wpcr3_enable condition in get_aggregate_reviews(), as it only pertains to a single postid. One of the reasons it is included is for performance on blogs with a massive amount of posts. However, filtering on a single postid should be the same either way, so I’ll put some thought into this.

Thanks!

Version 3.2.0 now includes a -very- default 1×1 image for now. We’re looking at options for being able to specify the image yourself, but it’s difficult with people who have previously had the plugin installed to force a newly required field. Not impossible, just a pain. Try out 3.2.0 and all should now be well with the microdata output by the plugin.

I made some additional performance improvements in 3.2.0 if you wanted to give it a shot still.

Thanks for the nudge to address this.

While our internal testing has shown no difference in SERP rich snippets regardless of the missing or present image field, I have implemented a non-ideal solution in the meantime by using a 1×1 transparent image for now. We’ll have to think about how to upgrade the plugin to use a provided image for business/product posts, as we can’t do too much automatic without making some assumptions on how images are used on any given site for posts to know which image is the “right” one. The topic of when rich snippets appear is always a tricky one too.. sometimes they show for a tiny site, but don’t for a larger site, and vice-versa.. there is nothing I have found to determine the magical Google sauce for their appearance.

The same goes for the priceRange field. This data doesn’t currently exist on any of the review posts, so we can’t do anything about the past, just add the field in a future update so that site admins can utilize this field going forward.

Version 3.2.0 has just been released with the 1×1 stop-gap solution, some other similar fixes, and performance improvements. Give it a try and let me know how it works for you.

You can edit the business name on the page which has WP Customer Reviews enabled on it. For businesses, this is sometimes the same page that is showing the reviews, but if not, you should be able to find it. There is basically a checkbox to enable the plugin when editing the post, and then fields to fill out the business information.

Version 3.2.0 was just released also, which displays the name of the site if this information is missing, but it should be filled out to be proper.

While our internal testing has shown no difference in SERP rich snippets regardless of the missing or present image field, I have implemented a non-ideal solution in the meantime by using a 1×1 transparent image for now. We’ll have to think about how to upgrade the plugin to use a provided image for business/product posts, as we can’t do too much automatic without making some assumptions on how images are used on any given site for posts to know which image is the “right” one. The topic of when rich snippets appear is always a tricky one too.. sometimes they show for a tiny site, but don’t for a larger site, and vice-versa.. there is nothing I have found to determine the magical Google sauce for their appearance.

The same goes for the priceRange field. This data doesn’t currently exist on any of the review posts, so we can’t do anything about the past, just add the field in a future update so that site admins can utilize this field going forward.

Version 3.2.0 has just been released with the 1×1 stop-gap solution, some other similar fixes, and performance improvements. Give it a try and let me know how it works for you 🙂

Yes, Google is weird about which sites they make eligible to show the stars in SERPs. If you do a search for “powered by wp customer reviews”, you will see that it’s maybe 30% of sites that show the stars. I haven’t found a reason either way what the magic sauce is.

In regards to providing an image, it’s a tough one. Do we provide a bogus image, or do we then require an image on every review-enabled post, or if the review-enabled post has a featured image (or image in content?), then we use that? There is some testing that needs to be done for that.

I’ll have to double-check the newer and easier-to-output ld+json review format with their validator to see if those also require an image or not.