What is Google Customer Reviews?
Google Customer Reviews is a free service that allows e-commerce site owners to collect valuable feedback from customers who’ve purchased from their site.
Customers can opt to take a survey to rate their experience from the checkout page. Ratings from customer surveys apply to store ratings eligibility and Product Ratings eligibility.
Features of Google Customer Reviews
Google customer reviews are used to rate the Store and the Product. The store is the website where the products are listed.
Store Rating
The customer reviews are collated to compile ratings for the store. The store ratings can be integrated into Google Shopping ads & Search ads as well on Organic listings across Search & Shopping in Google.
Store ratings 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 reviews the business or the merchant has received
- A qualifier, such as the average delivery time, that highlights why the rating is received
- A link to read recent reviews, typically for the last 2 years
You can check if you have a Store Rating using the URL: https://www.google.com/shopping/ratings/account/lookup?q=yourwebsite
Edit the above URL to replace “yourwebsite” with your homepage URL.
Product Rating
The Product ratings are fetched from customer reviews which are then shown across products listed on Google.
Badge for the Website
Google adds a badge based on the customer reviews received. One such Badge is “Top Quality Store” for merchants that provide a great shopping experience.
According to Google, “Google’s Top Quality Store badge is earned by merchants that provide a great shopping experience”.
Placements for Displaying Google Customer Reviews
The Store ratings are displayed on ads and unpaid listings across Google search networks and YouTube.
Organic Listings
Rich Results
Store ratings can appear alongside search results featuring a particular merchant when customers are shopping on Google, displaying the star rating and the number of reviews.
Rich Results like Explore Brands also receive Store ratings.
Popular Products and Organic Product Listings
Store ratings can appear next to a merchant’s name when shoppers interact with a free product listing within Search or Shopping.
Products listed on Google Shopping will not only have ratings and reviews but also qualifiers taken from the reviews. The qualifiers are phrases explaining why the high or low ratings. It typically starts with the text “Reviewers noted:” (as highlighted in the image below).
Paid Listings
Store ratings display a rating and qualifier next to the 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 ads.
Shopping ads
Shopping ads get store ratings and reviews and sometimes qualifiers next to the ad.
Search ads
Text ads are also eligible to receive store ratings.
How Does Google Collect Reviews?
Google bases store ratings on several 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, in addition to users of Google Search.
- Aggregated performance metrics from Google-led shopping research.
List of supported review partners
- 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’re a reviews aggregator and would like to partner with Google on store ratings, read the requirements and fill out the interest form to have your eligibility reviewed by Google.
Note: Typically, only 1 or 2 new partners are added globally per year.
If you are a Merchant and want to partner with Google to share reviews sourced from your website, fill out the Product Ratings Partnership form.
How to Enable Google Customer Reviews for Your Store
- Log into your Merchant Center account.
- Make sure your Merchant Center account is verified and claimed.
- In the page menu on the left, click Growth.
- Click Manage programs.
- Go to the Customer Reviews card.
- Click Enable to sign up.
- Additionally, you can disable Google Customer Reviews by clicking De-activate.
Information to be added
- Google Merchant ID — This ID is located in the Google Merchant Center account at the top left of the dashboard.
- Estimated shipping days — The expected number of days between when the customer places an order, and the shipping date (Google uses this information to evaluate if orders are shipped on time)
- Estimated delivery days — The expected number of days between when the orders are shipped and when the customer receives it. (Google uses this information to evaluate if orders are delivered on time)
- Badge position in my store — Specify where on the storefront you want to display the Google Customer Reviews badge. You can choose between bottom right, bottom left, custom, or not to display it at all.
Advantages of Enabling Google Customer Reviews
Higher Trust
Higher reviews and ratings are highly trusted by users. This increases site visits and purchases.
Higher Engagement
Store ratings can result in more qualified shoppers visiting your site. With the badges added next to the store, the CTRs to the store also increase.
Drawbacks of Enabling Google Customer Reviews
Reviews are not verified by Google
Google does not verify any reviews collected from Customer review opt-ins or reviews collated from review partners.
It’s difficult to fake Google customer reviews since the surveys are sent out to the users who are verified buyers. However, there are instances where reviews are faked or artificially inflated on third-party review partner sites.
Low Ratings and Negative Reviews can impact purchases
If the service or product quality doesn’t meet user expectations, the customers can give negative ratings. This can affect the traffic to the store as well as conversions.
Is it possible to delete Customer reviews?
No, merchants can’t delete reviews added by users through Google customer reviews. However, if the reviews are sourced from a review partner, you may approach them to delete the reviews from their site.
How to Bypass Google Customer Reviews with Your Site Reviews
In my tests, I found that sites that don’t have aggregateRating schema may get appended with Google store ratings.
In most cases, reviews and ratings from structured data added to the page (can be a Product listing page or a Product description page) get higher precedence than Google Store ratings.
This means if you don’t want Google to append store ratings from Customer reviews, it’s better to add structured data that pulls reviews and ratings from the merchant website.
FAQ
Can I choose the date that customers receive the survey email?
No, Google manages the survey delivery schedules. Customers will receive the survey around or after their expected delivery date.
What happens if I don’t have a seller rating?
Your Google Customer Review badge will state “Rating not available” instead of a score. A minimum of 100 reviews in a particular country within the last 12 months is required to establish a seller rating in that country.
Can I participate in Google Customer Reviews if I do not sell physical goods?
Yes, Google Customer Reviews does not require merchants to sell physical products. For digital goods, it’s required to provide delivery dates for eligibility.
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