Using javascript/google places to load in reviews dynamically into review schema (for rich snippets)

Question

The first time i hardcoded the reviews of my company into the page it got indexed in a single day (for the review rich snippet) by using this code:

<script type="application/ld+json">
  {
    "@context": "https://schema.org/",
    "@type": "CreativeWorkSeries",
    "name": "Review",
    "aggregateRating":{
      "ratingValue": "0",
      "bestRating": "10",
      "worstRating": "1",
      "ratingCount": "0"
    }
  }
</script>

I made a script that basically loads in the reviews of 2 locations of my company. When i inspect my page in the dev tools elements, it looks like everythings working fine, the numbers and rating are both loaded in correctly but there is no result in google search results. This is the full code i use to load in the data:

<script>
  document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function() {
  var service = new google.maps.places.PlacesService(document.createElement('div'));
  let places = ['placeid1', 'placeid2']
  var totalReviews = 0;
  var totalRating = 0;
  let numberOfPlaces = 0;
  getRecensies()


 async function getRecensies(){
      let counter = 0;
      await new Promise(function(resolve) {
           places.forEach((place)=>{
              service.getDetails({
                  placeId: place,
              },function(result, status) {
                  console.log("result", result)

                  if(result && result.rating && result.user_ratings_total){
                      totalRating = totalRating + result.rating;
                      totalReviews = totalReviews + result.user_ratings_total;
                      numberOfPlaces++
                  }
                  counter++
                  if(counter==places.length){
                      resolve()
                  }
                  
              });
          })
      })

      //totalRating = (totalRating / numberOfPlaces); // Get average rating

      var schemaElement = document.getElementById('review-schema-home');
      var schema = JSON.parse(schemaElement.textContent); 
      schema.aggregateRating.ratingValue = totalRating.toString();
      schema.aggregateRating.ratingCount = totalReviews.toString();
      schemaElement.textContent = JSON.stringify(schema, null, 2);

     }
      
  });
  </script>

<script type="application/ld+json" id="review-schema-home">
  {
    "@context": "https://schema.org/",
    "@type": "CreativeWorkSeries",
    "name": "Review",
    "aggregateRating":{
      "ratingValue": "0",
      "bestRating": "10",
      "worstRating": "1",
      "ratingCount": "0"
    }
  }
</script>

this next screenshot is from my inspector, as you can see the data loads in correctly. I made the script in the first place so i did not have to update my review amount manually. It looks like i'm gonna have to hard code this weekly.

Im curious if google spiders can crawl and execute scripts like this? Or another explanation why the review snippet is not appearing?

Answer 1

First off, while the Google crawler can read JavaScript and can also wait "a bit" till the on-page JS loads, I wouldn't rely on the script you've shown above.

There's no guarantee that getRecensies will resolve by the time the Googlebot has finished parsing your page.

On top of that, your script will run on each page load which may affect your Google Cloud bill. Also, if your API key you've used to load the API onto your page isn't protected, bad actors may misuse it to run their own Places API queries!

Overall, not a good idea.

---

Now, from Google's own troubleshooting website:

Google does not guarantee that features that consume structured data will show up in search results. For a list of common reasons why Google may not show your content in a rich result, see the General Structured Data Guidelines.

Hard-coding and regularly updating the review snippets is perfectly fine – as long as the markup is properly structured. You can test your markup with these two tools.

Once your markup has been consumed by the Googlebot, you'll see something like this in GSC:

But, AFAIK, this still does not guarantee that the enhancements will be present in the SERPs.