Store ratings help people find businesses that offer high quality shopper experiences, helping to build trust and enabling more informed purchasing decisions. As a result, store ratings can help merchants improve the performance of ads and organic listings and drive more qualified shoppers to their landing pages.
Getting started with store ratings is the same whether you’re looking to enhance your ads or free listings.
Benefits
- Store ratings on Text Ads on average drive a 2% improvement in click through rate on the Search network1.
- You can measure the performance benefit by tracking the automated asset performance reporting [add link], so you can always confirm the value Store ratings are driving for your business.
Where and how store ratings are displayed
Store ratings showcase your store’s customer experience in ads and unpaid formats, and may show up on mobile and web across the Search Network and YouTube. Store ratings may include:
- A rating out of 5 stars
- The number of ratings 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
Store 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 store rating on text ads.
Unpaid
Rich results
Store 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
Store 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 store ratings is the same whether you’re looking to enhance your ads or free listings.
Google gathers store ratings from reputable websites that aggregate business reviews, as well as from users on Google. These ratings primarily reflect customers' overall post-fulfillment consumer experience with your business on a country basis. When you have a store rating in a given country, they will appear on your ads and listings by default.
If you don’t have reviews or a store rating for your store, you can get started with any of the following services:
| Service | Description |
|---|---|
| Google Customer Reviews |
A free program that collects post-fulfillment 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. Reach out to any partner you’d like to work with directly. |
| Evaluation by Google and / or other evaluation partners |
These programs measure and analyze 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 to sign up for Google Merchant Center. |
Where ratings come from
Google doesn't modify existing ratings. To provide consistent ratings, we calibrate store 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 store ratings on a number of sources, including:
- Google Customer Reviews: A free program that collects post-fulfillment reviews on behalf of merchants, managed in Google Merchant Center.
- Shopping reviews for your store domain, which include post-fulfillment 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 reach out to 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 store ratings and require support, contact us.
- If you’re a reviews aggregator and would like to partner with Google on store 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 store rating
To find out if you have a store 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 store and store ratings if your site meets the minimum store 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
Store 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 store 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 store 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 store ratings when the underlying feedback is unrelated to what's being advertised in a specific ad.
Advertiser tips
Enabling store ratings on ads
- You're not charged for store ratings. When people click on your ads with store ratings, you'll be charged as usual for clicks on your ad. If you don't want store ratings to appear with your ads, follow the steps to turn off store 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 store ratings on the Search Network.
Reporting on store ratings performance
- Performance reporting for store ratings is only available for text ads. You can check the performance of your store ratings in the “Account-level automated assets” report in Google Ads. Learn more About campaign level asset reporting for responsive search ads.
