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For years, the little gold stars under a search result were the closest thing a dentist’s website had to a neon sign. Then, quietly, they started disappearing for healthcare pages. Nobody at Google sent a memo. Practices mostly noticed because a schema company noticed for them.
The short version
They mostly stopped showing up. On October 7, Search Engine Roundtable reported that Google seems to no longer display review rich results for healthcare pages that use review schema.
The tip came from Schema App, which manages structured data for a lot of healthcare organizations. In its own write-up, the team says review snippet visibility for those customers dropped starting in late May, with another dip for some in early August. They tried rewiring the markup a few different ways, including tagging practices as products (which, sure, why not), and nothing brought the stars back.
Google hasn’t announced anything. So this is a pattern people measured, not a policy anyone read. That’s how a lot of search changes arrive now. You find out from a chart.
Probably not the way you were told. Google stopped showing review stars for reviews a business publishes about itself back in 2019, for LocalBusiness and Organization markup. If the widget on your homepage wraps your own testimonials in star schema, it was mostly decoration for search purposes long before this week.
I see this all the time. A site has a plugin pumping out five-star markup on every page, the owner paid extra for it, and the stars never showed once. Not on Google, anyway. The plugin’s settings page looked very confident, though.
Healthcare was a slightly different case because a lot of medical groups marked up physician and location pages, and some of those did earn stars. That’s the slice that dried up.
The early answer is: not much, if at all. Schema App says it hasn’t tied the decline to a drop in overall organic traffic, and many of its customers didn’t even notice until someone pointed at the graph.
That tracks with what stars really did. They caught the eye. They didn’t make a bad page good. If your traffic held up while your stars vanished, the stars were the garnish, and the page was the meal.
Where you will feel it is in comparison. If you’re a chiropractor and the urgent care next door shows up in the map pack with 400 reviews, your plain blue link looks a little lonely. That fight was always happening in the local results, though, not on your blog page.
No. Leave accurate structured data alone. The stars were one possible reward for it, not the reason it exists.
Schema App makes the same point, and I agree with them on this one: don’t bend your markup into a pretzel just to chase a rich result Google has decided not to show. Describing a pediatric dentist as a product so the stars come back is the kind of half-assed trick that works for three weeks and then gets you a different problem.
What clean markup still does is tell machines who you are. Which doctors work where. What services you offer. Which location takes which insurance. Google uses that. So do the AI tools that now answer “who’s a good dermatologist near me” before anyone clicks anything. Google already did this once with FAQ rich results in 2023, and the sites that had clean, honest pages were fine afterward. The ones built around the trick had to start over.
Where humans read them. That’s your Google Business Profile first, because that’s where the stars still show and where most patients compare practices. Then your own site, written out in plain text on the pages where people make the decision: the service page, the doctor’s bio, the location page.
A few things I’d actually do this week:
None of that is glamorous. It’s also the stuff that keeps working no matter which shiny thing Google turns off next.
Google hasn’t said. It has turned off rich results for specific categories before, and medical searches get extra scrutiny because bad health information can actually hurt people. My guess is that’s part of it, but it’s a guess.
Yes, for eligible types like products, recipes and some services reviewed by third parties. They still don’t show for reviews a local business posts about itself. Your Google Business Profile stars are a separate thing and still appear in Maps and the local pack.
Structured data isn’t a ranking boost by itself, so removing it won’t rocket you anywhere. It helps search engines and AI tools understand your practice, which is worth keeping. Fix it if it’s wrong, leave it if it’s right.
Every few years Google takes away a shortcut, and everyone who built their strategy on the shortcut has a bad week. The practices that come out fine are the ones with a fast, clear website, real reviews in plain view and a Google profile somebody actually maintains. Boring as hell. Works every time.
If your site was leaning on stars that aren’t coming back, I can help you rebuild the parts that still matter, from the site itself to local SEO that holds up. Tell me what you’re working with and I’ll tell you straight what’s worth fixing.
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