Which author names are invalid for Google's review snippet markup?

Definition: As of 8 September 2026, Google requires the author.name field in review markup to be shorter than 100 characters and to contain a valid reviewer name. Google gives “50% off until Saturday” as an invalid example because it is promotional wording rather than a reviewer name.

Key facts

• Google's review snippet documentation accepts author as a Person or Organization and describes it as the author of the review.
• The reviewer's name must be a valid name. Google specifically says “50% off until Saturday” is not a valid reviewer name.
• The author field must be shorter than 100 characters. Google says a field longer than 100 characters makes the page ineligible for an author-based review snippet.
• Google's author markup best practices say that author.name contains only the author's name, without other information.
• Google recommends type and url, or sameAs, to help it understand who the author is, and says those URL properties must contain valid URLs.

What makes a review author name invalid?

Google's review snippet documentation distinguishes the author object from the text used to identify it. The author property can describe a Person or an Organization, but the value used as the reviewer's name still has to be a valid name. A sales message, offer, or call to action is not a reviewer identity. The documentation's example is the exact phrase “50% off until Saturday.”

The length rule is separate from the identity rule. Google says the field must be shorter than 100 characters and that a field longer than 100 characters prevents eligibility for an author-based review snippet. The documented boundary is attached to the author field, so a long review body or publisher name does not change the author-name limit.

What belongs in author.name?

Google's author markup best practices say that author.name should contain only the author's name. They list four kinds of extra text to leave out: the publisher's name, the author's job title, an honorific prefix or suffix, and introductory words such as “posted by.” Google assigns those details to separate properties, including publisher, jobTitle, honorificPrefix, and honorificSuffix.

For multiple authors, the same guidance says to list each author in a separate author field. It also recommends using type together with url or sameAs, with valid URLs, to help Google understand the author. A markup object that identifies a person can therefore keep the name field short and place an identity link in url.

"author": {
  "@type": "Person",
  "name": "Bob Smith"
}

This follows the shape of Google's simple review example, which uses Person and the name “Bob Smith.”

How can a site check the markup?

Google instructs publishers to validate review structured data with the Rich Results Test and fix critical errors. The review snippet documentation also tells publishers to deploy a few pages and use the URL Inspection tool to test how Google sees them. The page must be accessible to Google and cannot be blocked by robots.txt, a noindex tag, or login requirements.

The test does not replace the name review. The author value still needs to be checked against the two documented constraints: it is a valid name and it is shorter than 100 characters. Google warns that violating one or more review snippet guidelines may lead to a manual action.

Related terms

• Review structured data
• AggregateRating structured data
• JSON-LD
• How should an article identify an individual author?

FAQ

Is a 100-character author name allowed?

Google says the author field must be shorter than 100 characters. Keep the value below that limit because the documentation ties the rule to eligibility for an author-based review snippet.

Can you use a discount message as the reviewer name?

No. Google gives “50% off until Saturday” as an example of a name that is not valid for a reviewer, so a promotional phrase fails the documented name requirement.

Can you put a job title after the author name?

Google's author guidance says to specify only the author's name in author.name. It assigns a job title to the separate jobTitle property.

Sources

1. Google Search Central, "Review snippet (Review, AggregateRating) structured data", 8 September 2026
2. Google Search Central, "Article (Article, NewsArticle, BlogPosting) structured data", 8 September 2026

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