The WP Rich Snippets plugin: a record

01What did the WP Rich Snippets plugin do?

WP Rich Snippets was a premium WordPress plugin that added schema.org markup for reviews and ratings to posts, pages and products. A rich snippet is the extra detail, such as star ratings, a price or a review count, that Google can show under a search result when a page carries valid structured data. The plugin existed to produce that markup from inside the WordPress editor, without writing code.

Its homepage, as archived in March 2015, made the pitch plainly: mark up your content so search engines understand it, and your pages may show rich snippets in search results (Internet Archive capture of the plugin homepage, March 2015). The wording said "may", not "will". That caution still holds: valid markup makes a page eligible for a rich result, and the search engine decides whether to show it.

The core plugin handled editor reviews, user reviews and aggregate ratings, and printed a review box on the page alongside the markup. Fourteen paid add-ons, still listed on its add-ons page in June 2024, extended it to WooCommerce products, software specs, locations, ranking and comparison tables, front-end submissions and display options (Internet Archive capture of the add-ons page, June 2024). The same page gave its requirements as WordPress 4.0 or later, MySQL 5 and PHP 5.4.

Its users were WordPress bloggers, review-site owners, product reviewers and small agencies who wanted stars beside their search listings, and WordPress publications regularly named it in roundups of review and schema plugins.

02What happened to the plugin and this domain?

The record on this page is built from public archive captures, not from inside knowledge. This site has no connection to the people who built or sold the plugin, and no access to their code, customer records or plans.

The plugin's store appears in the Internet Archive from March 2015. An earlier capture of the domain, from 2013, shows only a parked page offering the name for sale, so 2015 is the first year the plugin's own site is on record here. Captures through mid 2024 show a working store with pricing, documentation, a blog of changelogs and the full add-on catalogue, and the last version the archived site names is 1.4.9.

Captures from late 2024 no longer show the store. By early 2025 the domain had lapsed and was parked, and a short placeholder page about the plugin, which was not the original site, appeared in the archive later that year. The present site was built afterwards as an independent handbook. Nothing in the public record shows the plugin being sold to, or continued by, anyone else, and this site does not claim to know more than the record shows.

If you hold a licence, the store that issued it no longer exists, and there is no route to renew it, download updates or open a support ticket here. That is the practical reason this page exists: the markup the plugin printed still sits on many sites, and the people who run them need to know how to look after it.

03The add-ons and today's equivalents

Each add-on solved one markup or display problem. Most of those problems are now solved better by a short JSON-LD block written for the type of thing a page actually describes. JSON-LD is a way of writing structured data as a separate script block in the page, rather than as attributes woven through the visible HTML, and it is the format the guides on this site use throughout.

The add-on map below takes each of the 14 add-ons, as named on the archived add-ons page, and points to the guide that covers the same job today. Several add-ons share a guide because they touched the same markup: the three ranking and comparison add-ons all come down to ItemList, and the three user-review add-ons all come down to AggregateRating. Every type is explained in the schema types section.

Some add-ons were display features rather than markup features. Customizer changed the colours of rating stars and buttons, and DataTables drew a sortable table on the page. Neither needs schema at all. What matters for search is that the rating a reader sees and the rating in the markup agree.

04If you still run it, what should you do?

Markup the plugin already prints keeps working for as long as the plugin keeps running, because search engines read the output, not the software. The risk is the software itself. A plugin that no longer receives updates no longer receives security fixes, or compatibility fixes for new versions of WordPress and PHP.

The safe order is to replace before you remove. Taking the plugin out first leaves a gap in your markup, and any stars it supported can go with it. The five steps on this page keep that gap closed. The schema plugin audit guide shows how to see exactly what any plugin prints, including duplicate blocks left behind by an old one, and adding JSON-LD without a plugin covers the code route if you would rather not install another plugin.

Old review boxes deserve a look of their own. If your posts use the plugin's shortcodes, those shortcodes print as plain text once the plugin is deactivated, because WordPress no longer knows what to do with them. Moving review box shortcodes to JSON-LD walks through finding them and replacing the box and its markup together.

If you prefer a maintained schema plugin, the same order applies. Install it, configure the review type, confirm on a test page that only one review block describes each item, and only then deactivate the old plugin. Yoast SEO, Rank Math and Schema & Structured Data for WP all print structured data; none is recommended here over another, and each needs the same testing.

1. Record what it prints

   Run three or four pages that used the plugin through the Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator and save the markup each page outputs.

2. Back up its data

   Export your posts and their custom fields before changing anything, so review scores, summaries and reviewer details are not lost.

3. Write the replacement

   Use the guide for each type you need from the add-on map, and print one JSON-LD block for each reviewed item.

4. Deactivate, then check for duplicates

   Once the new markup is live, deactivate the plugin and confirm that only one block now describes each review, and that no shortcodes are left printing as text.

5. Test again and watch the reports

   Run the same pages through both tools, and follow the review snippet report in Search Console over the following weeks.

05How do you get review stars now?

Review stars still exist in Google, on narrower terms than when the plugin was new. Google's review snippet documentation lists the content types that can show them, including books, courses, events, movies, products, recipes and software apps, and it limits reviews of local businesses and organizations to sites that capture reviews about other businesses (Google Search Central, review snippet structured data). In plain terms, a business marking up praise for itself will not get stars for it.

Three things decide whether stars can appear: the page is about an eligible type, the markup is valid and complete, and the review is real and visible on the page. The review schema guide covers the properties and policies in detail. If stars that used to show have vanished, work through the usual causes of missing rich snippets before changing any code.

Stars are only part of the picture now. The same Review, AggregateRating and author markup also helps AI answer engines tell what a page is and who stands behind it, which the AI answers section examines with the evidence available as of November 2026.

06Who runs this site?

This site is run by The wprichsnippets.com editors, an independent editorial team. It shares the old domain name and nothing else: not the code, the people, the customers or the business. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a continuation of the former WP Rich Snippets plugin or its developer.

There are no downloads, licences, copies or support for the plugin here, and this site does not link to copies of it. Third-party stores that offer the plugin for download have no connection with this site.

wprichsnippets.com is a handbook on structured data for WordPress and AI answers. Who writes it is set out on the about page, how examples are checked in the methodology, and corrections can be sent through the contact page.