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In this Help Centre, you can find content for both Merchant Center Next and the classic Merchant Center experience. Look for the logo at the top of each article to make sure that you're using the article for the Merchant Center version that applies to you. 

About the Shopping Experience Scorecard programme

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The Shopping Experience Scorecard programme can help you to deliver a great shopping experience for your customers.

Note: This programme is only available if you're participating in Buy on Google or free listings in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States (US).

By meeting certain criteria, you may receive:

Example shopping interface demonstrating a Google letter 'G' badge on a shop's profile to demonstrate that it's met the merchant performance standards.

  • The 'Top Quality Store' badge, which displays on your listings, improves customer confidence in buying products from your business.
  • Prominence in placements on the 'Shopping' tab.
  • Early access to Google's new features.

On this page


How it works

This programme will monitor the experience you provide in several areas, including shipping, returns, browsing, purchasing experience and seller rating (for more information, see the sections below). Within each of the measured categories, you'll be given a score from 0 to 10. This score is determined based on your performance for each metric, within each category. For example, your Delivery category score will contain metric scores for your delivery time and delivery cost. For each metric in each category, you'll be given a rating of 'Low', 'Fair', 'Good', 'Great' or 'Exceptional'. All of this information together will determine your overall quality score, which is also scored on a scale of 'Low' to 'Exceptional'. To earn the 'Top Quality Store' badge, you must rank 'Exceptional' in your overall quality score. You don't need to rank 'Exceptional' in each of the categories to rank 'Exceptional' in your overall quality score.

After you have set up your Merchant Center account and have approved products, you will automatically be enrolled in this programme. Your progress will be monitored automatically, and benefits will be applied to your offers when you meet a certain performance threshold.

The programme is meant to incentivise providing an excellent customer experience – and you can benefit, regardless of the size or industry of your business. You won't be penalised if you don't offer a certain level of customer experience or if you don't provide some or all of the requested information. You just won't receive the benefits listed above.

Google may make your offers more prominent on the 'Shopping' tab or in promotional modules if you provide information for some customer experience areas below. However, you must have an overall rating of 'Exceptional' in order to be eligible for the badge. The programme metric values aren't displayed directly to customers on an individual offer level. Instead, the programme metrics are impression-weighted averages and are only displayed in your Merchant Center account.

Google will evaluate the information that you provide each day. Even though all metrics are calculated based on an impression-weighted average, there's a fixed look-back period. So, if your rating has been in 'Opportunity' or 'Comparable' for a while, it may take a few weeks for your improvements to be reflected in Google's evaluation. All merchants on the platform are eligible to receive benefits from the programme, and your performance is evaluated against all other merchants.

Note: The standards and criteria for earning the 'Top Quality Store' badge will be updated regularly to provide an exceptional shopping experience. These changes could result in gaining or losing the 'Top Quality Store' badge, independent of the quality of the signals provided. For the most updated information regarding your badge status and signal quality, please visit the Shopping Experience Scorecard in your Merchant Center account.

Bear in mind: If you don't have any ratings or if you're missing specific ratings, this could either be because you're not currently providing the required information, or because your offers haven't received sufficient impressions in the look-back period.

Also, if you're providing offer-level delivery data, make sure that you include both delivery cost and transit time for each offer. Your offer-level data will override your account-level data, so the Shopping Experience Scorecard will use these values when determining your performance level.

See the 'Shopping Experience Scorecard' page to view the areas where you're providing information and to learn how you can update missing information.

Example

Barbara's Buckles has a blank rating for delivery speed. After a quick check, they realise that they're providing delivery costs without providing delivery speed. So, they create a delivery service for their products that includes both delivery costs and delivery speed. After the look-back window passes, their rating updates with a new value to reflect their delivery speed, which may boost their visibility and performance on the 'Shopping' tab.


Instructions

How to view your performance

To view your performance for each metric and your overall score:

  1. In your Merchant Center account, click the Growth Trending up drop down menu from the left navigation panel.
  2. Click Shopping Experience Scorecard.

By default, your 'Shopping Experience Scorecard' page will show how you compare to other merchants that sell within your category. If you sell across multiple categories, it will default to show how you compare against all shops. You can switch to view how you compare to direct competitors by clicking the drop down beside 'How your business compares to others in the {country name}' and then clicking Direct competitors. Note that your direct competitors are the shops that show products next to your products.

To earn a badge, you must perform well relative to other merchants in all the required metrics. All metrics are calculated daily and have a look-back period to ensure continuous performance.


How to improve your performance

Delivery experience

The metrics in this section measure the shipping and delivery experience you provide to customers.

  • Delivery time: The number of days it should take customers to receive their orders (this can be set up either via API or directly in Merchant Center).
  • Delivery cost: The cost for customers to receive orders excluding item costs (this can be set up either via API or directly in Merchant Center).

Return experience

The metrics in this section measure the return experience you provide to customers.

  • Return window: The number of days customers can return an item (this can be set up either via API or directly in Merchant Center).
  • Return cost: The cost for customers to return an item (this can be set up either via API or directly in Merchant Center).
Note: The scorecard will also highlight if one of your return policies has been rejected or if a new return policy has been collected from your website. Make sure that you fix rejected policies and accept, partially accept or disregard any suggested return policies to help your return scores.

Browsing experience

The metrics in this section measure the customer's experience when visiting your website. Learn more About valuable content coverage.

  • High-resolution images: Information obtained from your website regarding the percentage of images on your site that are more than 1048 pixels.
  • Images per item: Information obtained from your website on the average number of images per item.

Purchase experience

The metrics in this section measure the customer's experience while purchasing a product from your website.

  • Promotion disapproval rate: The percentage of your promotions that are disapproved (only applicable if you run promotions and submit them to Google). Learn more about Promotion basics.
  • e-Wallet types accepted: Information obtained from your website regarding the number of e-wallet payment methods that you accept. The e-wallet types currently tracked by the Shopping Experience Scorecard are PayPal, Google Wallet, Apple Pay and Amazon Pay. Learn how to Add or update your e-wallet payment method.

Seller rating

A rating calibrated by Google based on multiple sources including Google Customer Reviews, reviews from various independent rating websites and performance metrics from Google-led shopping research

To opt out of the Shopping Experience Scorecard programme, contact support via the 'Contact us' button below. Bear in mind that there are no programme penalties for not meeting a certain performance standard. This programme is only meant to reward retailers who provide an excellent customer experience.

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