Google Reviews Markup Guidelines Now Disallows Profanity & Vulgar Language

Dec 16, 2016 - 7:36 am 0 by

Google Penalty

Google's review markup guidelines now prohibit including profanity and/or vulgar language in your reviews. So if you have people using bad language in the reviews section of your site and you are marking it up using Google's reviews markup then you must remove the profanity and/or vulgar language to qualify to show your rich snippets and rich cards.

Google added this line to the guidelines:

Profanity and vulgar language are prohibited. Do not include reviews that contain vulgar or profane language.

So you need to step up your review spam detection to remove really upset customers reviews that go above and beyond and leave language that might not be suitable for Google's markup bots.

This was spotted by Aaron Bradley and posted on Google+ where he said "no more f@!ing vulgar reviews, okay?" Indeed.

Forum discussion at Google+.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Google Search Volatility

More Details

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Web Analytics

Dashboards Available In Google Analytics

Sep 11, 2026 - 12:32 pm
Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: September 11, 2026

Sep 11, 2026 - 10:00 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Search Console Indexing Report Missing Old June Data

Sep 11, 2026 - 9:17 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Degrades EU Search Quality, Losing Faith In Your Site, AI Mode Match Types & Google Maps Photo Scams

Sep 11, 2026 - 8:01 am
Google Ads

Google Shopping Ads X Days Left Attribute On Sponsored Ads

Sep 11, 2026 - 7:51 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Reporting Segments For Loyalty Program Members

Sep 11, 2026 - 7:41 am
Previous Story: Google Maps Promoted Places Gives Branded Pins & More To Brands