I noticed that a rival has a star rating showing in their search snippet, even though Google does not verify the rating. It may not have a significant impact on SEO, but it still gives them a slight advantage by making their article appear well-rated. I suspect that having a rating could influence the likelihood of readers clicking on their article compared to one without a rating. How is this data structured for Google to display it in this way?
Google doesn’t explicitly require verification for star ratings to be displayed in search results. It’s possible that your rival is using schema markup to indicate their rating. Schema markup is a structured data format that helps search engines understand the content of your website. By adding schema markup to your website, you can specify the rating of your content. This allows Google to display the rating information in the search results.