Google is introducing reviews to its local Knowledge Panels. Local Knowledge Panels are boxes that display information about a business, such as its address, opening hours, its position on a map and photographs of the venue. Now, a new feature called “Reviews from the web” is being introduced globally. “Reviews from the web” are aggregated user-generated ratings of a business, pulled from review websites. If you want your review website to be included in the “Reviews from the web” section, you need to implement review snippet markup and Local Business markup. In the US, critic reviews can now also be included in local Knowledge Panels. Critic reviews are editorial articles from qualifying publishers that give an opinion of a business. In order to participate, you need to ensure that your editorial reviews are annotated with schema.org markup. Google hopes that by introducing reviews to local Knowledge Panels, it will give users more useful information about a business when they are deciding whether or not to go there.Â
