Shop ratings help people find businesses that offer high-quality customer experiences, helping to build trust and enabling more informed purchasing decisions. As a result, shop ratings can help merchants improve the performance of ads and organic listings and drive more qualified customers to their landing pages.
Getting started with shop ratings is the same whether you’re looking to enhance your ads or free listings.
Where and how shop ratings are displayed
Shop ratings showcase your shop’s customer experience in ads and unpaid formats, and may show up on mobile and web across the Search Network and YouTube. Shop ratings may include:
- A rating out of 5 stars
- The number of ratings that the business has received
- A qualifier, such as the average delivery time, that highlights why you got the rating (if data is available)
- A link to read recent reviews
Ads
Text ads
Shop ratings display a rating and qualifier next to your text ads, letting people know which advertisers are highly rated for quality service. A rating of 3.5 or above is required to display a shop rating on text ads.
Unpaid
Rich results
Shop ratings may also appear alongside search results featuring a particular merchant when customers are shopping on Google, displaying the star rating and the number of reviews.
Free listings
Shop ratings display a rating next to a merchant’s name when shoppers interact with a free product listing within Search or Shopping, helping shoppers build trust with businesses from which to purchase a product.
How to participate
Getting started with shop ratings is the same whether you’re looking to enhance your ads or free listings.
Google gathers shop ratings from reputable websites that aggregate business reviews, as well as from users on Google. These ratings primarily reflect customers' overall post-fulfilment consumer experience with your business on a country basis. When you have a shop rating in a given country, they will appear on your ads and listings by default.
If you don’t have reviews or a shop rating for your shop, you can get started with any of the following services:
| Service | Description |
|---|---|
| Google Customer Reviews |
A free-of-charge program that collects post-fulfilment reviews on behalf of merchants, managed in Google Merchant Center. Learn how to sign up for Google Customer Reviews program using the onboarding guide. |
| Supported review partners | Google works with all the supported review partners shown below in this article. Contact any partner you’d like to work with directly. |
| Evaluation by Google and/or other evaluation partners |
These programs measure and analyse the quality of the shopping experience provided by online retailers. Google collects data about selected merchants and the shopping experience they provide through Google Search and Google-led research. To increase the ability for Google to collect data, make sure that you sign up for Google Merchant Center. |
Where ratings come from
Google doesn't modify existing ratings. To provide consistent ratings, we calibrate shop ratings and filter out what we consider to be untrustworthy (for example, spam and abuse) or otherwise questionable reviews that don’t indicate that a transaction took place. Google bases shop ratings on a number of sources, including:
- Google Customer Reviews: A free-of-charge program that collects post-fulfilment reviews on behalf of merchants, managed in Google Merchant Center.
- Shopping reviews for your shop domain, which include post-fulfilment comments from the various supported review partners listed below, in addition to users of Google Search.
- Aggregated performance metrics from Google-led shopping research.
Note: Reviews aren't verified by Google.
Supported review partners
We also source feedback from the following independent review websites that aggregate business reviews. Advertisers may contact any of these partners for help collecting reviews:
- Ausgezeichnet.org
- Bazaarvoice
- Birdeye
- Bizrate Insights
- eKomi
- Feedaty
- Feedback Company
- Feefo
- KiyOh
- Klantenvertellen
- Okendo
- PowerReviews
- ProductReview.com.au
- RA Trustvox
- Reco.se
- Reputation.com
- ResellerRatings
- Reviews.io
- Reevoo
- Shopper Approved
- ShopVote.de
- ShopAuskunft
- Sitejabber
- Stamped.io
- Trusted Shops
- TrustPilot
- TurnTo
- Verified Reviews
- Yotpo
- If you already partner with Google on seller ratings and require support, contact us.
- If you’re a reviews aggregator and would like to partner with Google on seller ratings, read our requirements and fill out our interest form to have your eligibility reviewed.
- Note: Typically, only 1 or 2 new partners are added globally per year.
How to check if you have a shop rating
To find out if you have a shop rating, edit the following URL to replace '{yourwebsite}' with your homepage URL: https://www.google.com/shopping/ratings/account/lookup?q={yourwebsite}
You’ll be able to view information about your shop and shop ratings if your site meets the minimum shop rating thresholds.
If your website domain varies by country, repeat the above step for each variation. If your site uses the same domain across countries and has reviews in multiple countries, the above URL will return a page for one country. You can edit the country code in the browser URL to view other countries. For example, if the URL contains 'c=AU' you can update this to 'c=US' to view ratings for the US.
When they show
Shop ratings show with Search Network campaigns and they'll only serve in a country when one of the following criteria is met:
- Google has received or collected enough unique reviews for the country within the last 24 months across Google Customer Reviews or our third-party review partners to confidently calculate a shop rating. The number of reviews needed can vary from business to business, but most merchants are able to obtain a rating after collecting 100 or more eligible reviews.
- Google or its partners have completed a research evaluation of your site.
Additionally, both of the following criteria must be met:
- Average, composite, rating of 3.5 or more stars for text ads
- Unpaid listings can show shop ratings if the average rating is less than 3.5 stars
- The ad’s visible URL domain must match the domain for which we have the ratings
The reviews from customers in a given country will only contribute to the business' rating in that country.
We may not show shop ratings when the underlying feedback is unrelated to what's being advertised in a specific ad.
Advertiser tips
Enabling shop ratings on ads
- You're not charged for shop ratings. When people click on your ads with shop ratings, you'll be charged as usual for clicks on your ad. If you don't want shop ratings to appear with your ads, follow the steps to turn off shop ratings.
- You don't need to be a Shopping advertiser or have a Google Merchant Center account for your ads or listings to be eligible for shop ratings on the Search Network.
Reporting on shop ratings performance
- Performance reporting for shop ratings is only available for text ads. You can check the performance of your shop ratings in the 'Account-level automated assets' report in Google Ads. Learn more About campaign level asset reporting for responsive search ads.
