Readers can rate a recipe from 1 to 5 stars right on the card. The average and the number of ratings show on the card, in the Recipe Grid, and in Google’s recipe data — which can show stars in search results.

How it works for readers

  1. Hover (or tap) the stars and click a rating.
  2. The card shows Thanks for rating! with the new average.
  3. Their rating is remembered in their browser. If they rate again, their earlier rating is changed, not added again.

No account, no comment and no email needed.

One vote per person

Each visitor has one vote per recipe:

  • Logged-in users are counted by their account.
  • Everyone else is counted by a one-way scrambled code made from their IP address and a secret unique to your site. The real IP address is never stored.

To stop spam, each visitor can submit up to 30 ratings an hour across all recipes. Beyond that they see Too many ratings. Please try again later.

Imported ratings

Recipes imported from WP Recipe Maker, Tasty Recipes or Create keep their average and count. New votes are added on top. See Importing.

In Google results

Recipes with at least one rating include an aggregateRating in their Google data. Google decides whether to show stars; ratings must come from real readers, which these do.

Caching

If your site uses page caching, the average shown to other visitors may lag until the cached page refreshes. The person who voted always sees their result immediately. The number Google sees is always up to date in your database.

Turning ratings off

Recipes → Settings → Reader features → Star ratings. Existing votes are kept, so turning it back on restores them.

Privacy

See Privacy and your data. In short: your database stores the rating, the recipe, the time, and either the user ID or the scrambled visitor code — no IP addresses and no cookies. The reader’s own browser remembers which rating they gave (in local storage) so the card can show it.