You may have noticed the business reviews and ratings in Google search results before.
It is where websites and businesses are reviewed by visitors, users and customers online with the respective ratings displayed as a series of gold stars, with the ability to click and view all of the good (and bad) reviews for that particular business.
This powerful consumer confidence feature is now being rolled out across more of the Google Product network. Its most recent development has seen reviews linked directly to products within Google’s shopping campaign network.
This development has a significant potential impact for online retailers, specifically those online retailers who already use one of the pre-approved online review systems.
At teclan we are already working with our Digital Marketing clients to ensure they have this new feature integrated into their Merchant Centre, however if you want to know more about this new feature and how it could benefit your business when selling your products online then please get in touch with the teclan team.
About product ratings
As Google explains; Product reviews provide critical information to shoppers making purchase decisions and help advertisers drive more qualified traffic to their sites. To help shoppers find this information easily, Google show product ratings on Shopping Campaign Ads in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and France, but will continue to introduce product ratings in other countries over time. Product ratings show on Shopping Campaign Ads with a 5-star rating system and a count of total reviews. These star ratings represent aggregated rating and review data for the product, compiled from multiple sources, including merchants, third-party aggregators, editorial sites and users. A product must have at least three reviews in order for product ratings to be eligible to show on Google.com.
Product ratings are available only to advertisers who choose to share all of their product reviews with Google, either directly or through a third party and must comply with product ratings programme policies.
Product ratings are all about the products you offer, rather than the overall shopping experience provided to customers (e.g. shipping times, customer service). To get the most out of product ratings with your Shopping Campaign Ads, encourage your customers to submit clear and meaningful reviews for the products they purchase.
Approved third-party product review aggregators
Many advertisers use a third-party service for collecting reviews and syndicating them to sites like Google, who currently use product ratings and reviews information from the following approved aggregator sources:
- Bazaarvoice
- eKomi
- Feefo
- PowerReviews
- ShopperApproved
- Reevoo
- TurnTo
- Verified Reviews
- Yotpo
- Trustpilot
Product ratings vs seller ratings on Google Shopping
Bear in mind that product ratings are different from seller ratings, which appear as stars on text ads. Product ratings refer to the product being advertised, whilst seller ratings refer specifically to the merchant advertising the product.
Unlike seller ratings, which require a minimum of 30 reviews and an average of at least 3.5 stars, product ratings can appear for products with any number of stars, from 1 to 5. Sharing low product ratings can help buyers in their decision process and can improve the quality of clicks on your ads.
Information from Google – https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6059553?hl=en-gb