What is the Top Quality Store Badge?
The Top Quality Store Badge is a recognition given to online stores listed on Google Shopping or using Google Merchant Center that consistently deliver a high level of Shopping experience, Service, and customer satisfaction.
Google rewards these stores to help them stand out from competitors, making them more attractive to shoppers. Top Quality Store Badge was earlier called “Google Trusted Stores”.
The Benefits of Having Top Quality Store Badge
Google has assured certain benefits of having Top Quality Store Badge:
1. Better Visibility and Rankings in Google Shopping
Getting the Top Quality Store recognition from Google ensures higher visibility across Shopping search snippets. This includes the free listing in the Shopping search, and “Popular products” in the web search.
Google may also highlight the store’s promotions and offers more prominently on the “Shopping” tab or in promotional modules.
One of my analyses across 25 merchant listings showed that achieving “Top Quality Store Recognition” increases clicks from free listings by an average of 5X. Additionally, the CTR for “Popular Products” rises from 2%-10% to an average of 25%-40%.
2. Enhances Customer Trust
Having the trusted store badge next to store mentions on Google can enhance trust, as it signals to customers that the store is authentic, reliable, and trustworthy. Stores with the Top Quality Store badge typically see better click-through rates and improved performance in the conversion funnel.
I have observed stores with Top Quality Store badges experience up to a 40% increase in CTR and a 25% improvement in conversion rates.
You can add the Top Quality Store badge to your website. This works well as a trust badge for smaller brands! Learn more
3. An Edge over Competition
In a crowded brand listing, the badge distinguishes your store from competitors on Google. Shoppers are more likely to choose a store with the badge over one without it. Stores without the badge will lose out to those with it, which is especially important for smaller brands.
How Does It Work?
The Top Quality Store program monitors customer experience and satisfaction across categories like Shipping, Returns, Purchasing experience, Website experience, and Store rating to measure and determine scores ranging from 0 to 10.
The program metrics are impression-weighted averages and are only displayed in the Merchant Center. The users will see only the overall score – the store rating and not individual category scores.
To earn the “Top Quality Store” badge, the store must rank “Exceptional” in the overall quality score.
| Category | Metrics Monitored | Score (0-10) | Metric Ratings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shipping | Delivery time, shipping cost | 0 through 10 | Low, Fair, Good, Great, Exceptional |
| Returns | Return policy, ease of return process | 0 through 10 | Low, Fair, Good, Great, Exceptional |
| Browsing | Website performance, ease of navigation | 0 through 10 | Low, Fair, Good, Great, Exceptional |
| Purchasing Experience | Accepted payment options, Promotion disapproval rates | No score | Gets warning on disapproval and Rejections |
| Store Rating | Customer feedback, overall satisfaction | 0 through 10 | Low, Fair, Good, Great, Exceptional |
Each of these categories is rated based on multiple metrics, and the overall quality score ultimately determines whether a store qualifies for the Top Quality Store Badge.
How Google Calculates the Top Quality Store Scores?
Metrics such as delivery time, images per offer, and store rating have standard scores that categorize the experience as exceptional, great, good, fair, or low.
On the other hand, metrics like shipping cost and return cost are benchmarked against other stores listed on Google to determine the score.
The overall score is calculated based on impression-weighted averages.
Below is a table showcasing how Google evaluates different experiences:
| Category | Metrics Monitored | Exceptional | Great | Good | Fair | Low |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shipping experience | Delivery time | 0 to 2 days | 2 to 5 days | 5 to 8 days | 8 to 13 days | 13 to 30 days |
| Shipping cost | Benchmarked based on other stores | |||||
| Return experience | Return window | 30 to 180 days | 15 to 30 days | 5 to 7 days | 0 to 5 days | NIL |
| Return cost | Benchmarked based on other stores | |||||
| Browsing experience | High resolution images | 37% to 100% | 0 to 37% | NIL | NIL | NIL |
| Images per offer | 5 to 8 images | 4 to 5 images | 3 to 4 images | 2 to 3 images | 1 to 2 images | |
| Website speed desktop | 0 to 2 sec | 2 to 2.5 sec | 2.5 to 2.6 sec | 2.6 to 3 sec | 3 sec | |
| Website speed mobile | 0 to 2 sec | 2 to 2.5 sec | 2.5 to 2.6 sec | 2.6 to 3 sec | 3 sec | |
| Store Rating | Store Rating | 4.9 to 5 | 4.6 to 4.9 | 3.9 to 4.6 | 3 to 3.9 | 3 |
How Does the Top Quality Store Score Card Look Like?
If you have performed “exceptional” in most categories, you will see the “Overall quality score” summary in the Google Merchant Center.
Score Cards across Categories monitored
Below is an example of how Google reports scorecards across categories:
How to Enable Top Quality Store Badge?
Once the Merchant Center account is set up and has approved products, Google will automatically enroll in this program.
How to Ensure Top Quality Store Badge?
To ensure the store receives the top-quality store badge, it’s important to optimize the experience across shipping, returns, and shopping.
Shipping Experience
This measures the shipping and delivery experience the store provides to customers.
- Delivery time: The number of days it should take customers to receive their orders
- Delivery cost: The cost for customers to receive orders excluding item costs
Shopping experience Score Card
| Category | Metrics Monitored | Exceptional | Great | Good | Fair | Low |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shipping experience | Delivery time | 0 to 2 days | 2 to 5 days | 5 to 8 days | 8 to 13 days | 13 to 30 days |
| Shipping cost | Benchmarked based on other stores | |||||
Return Experience
This metric measures the return experience you provide to customers.
- Return window: The number of days customers can return an item
- Return cost: The cost for customers to return an item
Return experience Score Card
| Category | Metrics Monitored | Exceptional | Great | Good | Fair | Low |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Return experience | Return window | 30 to 180 days | 15 to 30 days | 5 to 7 days | 0 to 5 days | NIL |
| Return cost | Benchmarked based on other stores | |||||
Browsing Experience
Browsing experience measures the customer’s experience when visiting the brand’s website.
- 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 the website on the average number of images per item. More the images, the better the score will be.
- Website speed desktop: The time it takes to fully display the website’s content on desktop devices.
- Website speed mobile: The time it takes to fully display the content on the mobile version of the website.
Image quality Guidelines
- The resolution of the product images determines the image quality. Google considers images with more than 1048 pixels as high-resolution images.
- Add robots meta tags max-image-size: large to the website. This tag will help Google use the highest-quality images from your website.
- Ensure that all the products available on the website are also listed in the Merchant Center account. Merchant Center can then automatically use higher-quality images, even if the ones you uploaded were of lower quality.
Browsing experience Score Card
| Category | Metrics Monitored | Exceptional | Great | Good | Fair | Low |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Browsing experience | High resolution images | 37% to 100% | 0 to 37% | NIL | NIL | NIL |
| Images per offer | 5 to 8 images | 4 to 5 images | 3 to 4 images | 2 to 3 images | 1 to 2 images | |
| Website speed desktop | 0 to 2 sec | 2 to 2.5 sec | 2.5 to 2.6 sec | 2.6 to 3 sec | 3 sec or more | |
| Website speed mobile | 0 to 2 sec | 2 to 2.5 sec | 2.5 to 2.6 sec | 2.6 to 3 sec | 3 sec or more |
Purchase Experience
This metric measures the customer’s experience while purchasing a product from your website.
- Promotion disapproval rate: The percentage of promotions that are disapproved (only applicable when promotions are submitted to Google).
- e-Wallet types accepted: Information obtained from the website regarding the accepted number of e-wallet payment methods. The e-wallet types currently tracked by the Store Quality are PayPal, Google Wallet, Apple Pay, and Amazon Pay.
Store Rating
Store rating is a calibrated rating across Google Customer Reviews, third-party review aggregators, and other sources.
Read more about Google Customer Reviews and Store rating
Store Rating Score Card
| Category | Metrics Monitored | Exceptional | Great | Good | Fair | Low |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Store Rating | Store Rating | 4.9 to 5 | 4.6 to 4.9 | 3.9 to 4.6 | 3 to 3.9 | 3 |
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Does Google penalize stores that have poor quality?
No, Google does not penalize any store solely based on the quality rating.
2. How to opt out of the Top Quality Store program?
To opt out of the Store Quality program, you can reach out to contact support.
3. Is the Top Quality Store program available in every country?
Google currently only supports the Top Quality Store program in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and Japan.
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The score calculation is very helpful. Thank you for putting out there!