Your ads have become more visible in the search results, the click-through rate has increased by 10%, and this happened without any financial costs. Sounds tempting? Then you should definitely master an excellent tool – seller rating. This is a kind of Google seller rating that the search engine displays in advertisers’ ads.
What is Google Seller Rating?
Seller Rating is a wonderful extension that automatically appears in an ad in the form of several stars and makes it possible to distinguish your ad block from other similar ones in the search engine results. The extension works in both text ads and shopping ad campaigns.
The rating is displayed in a separate block and consists of several parts:
Rating on a five-point system.
Number of grades credited (displayed as a number in brackets).
The characteristic of the seller is the absence of delays in the delivery process, its actual terms, etc. (if relevant information is available).
Seller rating is calculated separately by country: if you were rated by 567 customers from Ukraine and 200 from Germany, then when searching in Germany, users will see that the rating was calculated based on 200 ratings.
Important! All reviews are tied to a domain, so if you change your domain name or run ads that lead to a subdomain, the rating won’t show up. At the same time, it does not matter what area the business belongs to – e-commerce, cloud solutions, services, or something else.
What rankings does Google have?
Google uses multiple metrics.
Seller rating. The value displayed in the form of asterisks characterizes the store itself, presented in a campaign with product or text advertising:
Product rating. It is an indicator of the quality of a certain product and is found in shopping ads in services such as Google Search and Google Shopping:
Google reviews. You can see them on Google Maps. When forming this rating, reviews on other services are not taken into account, however, sometimes reviews from the card are displayed in the seller’s rating:
Rating in the snippet. Derived exclusively for organic. This rating, as a rule, is used by SEO specialists in order to increase CTR, as well as positions in organic search results. To do this, a special micro-markup with a clickable rating is inserted into the page code. Visitors rate the web resource – the rating appears in the snippet:
How to get a seller rating?
When a site meets the minimum requirements, seller’s rating is enabled automatically. The store receives stars from Google if one of the following conditions is met:
At least 100 reviews per year, submitted by users in one country in any Google partner service or directly in Reviews;
Sometimes the system may display a rating even if 100 reviews have not yet been accumulated. This is extremely rare when it comes to a small organization, especially outside the United States. In this case, the rating is formed on the basis of reviews in Google and partner review sites;
The system evaluated the web resource using the Polls service. It’s also not very common for small businesses.
What conditions must be met to get a Seller rating?
The average rating does not drop below the minimum threshold of 3.5 points (although a lower rating is sometimes displayed in Purchases);
The ads indicate exactly the domain name to which the rating is linked (after all, the indicator characterizes the domain, not the name of the brand or brand).
The above conditions are mandatory, but even if they are met, the display of the extension in a certain situation is affected by the visitor’s device type, the presence of advantages in the auction, and other parameters.
How can I get a rating faster?
Getting hundreds of reviews can sometimes take a long time. But you will speed up the ranking process if:
Submit a request to those who have already purchased from you. Send a message with a proposal to evaluate the work of your online store or service according to the accumulated client base. Regular customers will most likely not mind sharing useful information;
Add a review request to the post-conversion process. Even though automatic post-deal surveys are ubiquitous and have become quite annoying, a small percentage of reviews posted in this way will be a good help in keeping your evaluation of your work relevant;
Respond to complaints. Consumers distrust companies with overwhelmingly positive ratings. Negative reviews add naturalness to the rating, and the responses to them show a high level of service.
Where does the rating data come from?
The collection of information for determining the rating is carried out through Google Customer Reviews. This service captures customer feedback on behalf of the merchant. The mechanism works in almost all regions, including Ukraine and the Russian Federation, and it looks like this: You link a web resource to Google, the system monitors purchases and, when the deal is closed, sends a message to the client asking them to rate your work.
You can become a member by logging into the Customer Reviews program. To do this, check the appropriate option in the “Program Management” section, after selecting the “Account Development” block in the Merchant Center:
Then you need to establish a connection between the web resource and the system by installing a questionnaire block on it that sends information about transactions to Google and invites the visitor to share their opinion. After receiving consent from the user, the system sends him a questionnaire:
Advice! You can participate in the program even if your offer is not a material product. A prerequisite is the presence of at least an estimated date of receipt of the product.
Reviews are also collected on the Google Polls platform (does not work in the Russian Federation and Ukraine, available in many countries in Europe and Asia, as well as in Australia and the USA) and through partner services.
Popular questions about seller ratings
Expansion makes the declaration more attractive. There is an opinion that it has a positive effect on the position of the advertiser in the auction and reduces the cost of a click.
Working with Google Shopping helps you rank faster with Google Customer Reviews, but you don’t have to have one. You must have at least one hundred user ratings from one country in Google partner services or directly in Reviews.
No, indicators are counted independently. You cannot transfer them from one service to another.
Ensure that the collected reviews are from one country and the average rating does not fall below 3.5. Take your time – sometimes it takes several weeks to update the indicators.
