Most customers rely on reviews to make a decision about what to purchase online. You can increase your sales and revenue through Google’s Product Ratings program.

What is the Product Ratings program?

When you shop on Google’s Shopping Tab, you can see product reviews show up on product listings. The Product Ratings program allows you to import your product reviews into Google Merchant Center so that when a customer views your product’s ads, they can also see your reviews. 

Why are Product Ratings important?

Having reviews shown alongside your products can have a significant impact on your clickthrough rates and conversion rates. Reviews lend your business credibility and make you look trustworthy. Additionally, social proof is a powerful tool that can convert a casual site visitor into a customer. 

What are the requirements for Product Ratings?

To be eligible for product ratings, you need to have a minimum of 50 reviews across all of your products.

You need to work with a review aggregator that Google has in its list of supported review aggregators which are:

  • Annex Cloud
  • Bazaarvoice
  • eKomi
  • Feedaty (Zoorate)
  • Feefo
  • Guaranteed Reviews Company
  • Junip
  • Kudobuzz
  • Loox
  • Okendo
  • PowerReviews
  • Reevo
  • Reseller Ratings
  • Revi.io
  • Reviews.io
  • Shopper Approved
  • Shopping Satisfaction
  • Stamped
  • TargetBay
  • TestFreaks
  • Trusted Shops
  • Trustpilot
  • TurnTo
  • Verified Reviews
  • Yotpo

If you do not work with a supported review aggregator, Google gives you the option to submit your reviews through a product feed. However, for that, Google decides your eligibility based on your review collection process and how you verify reviews, as well as the number of 1-5 star reviews you have on your site.   

How to sign up for Product Ratings?

In your Google Merchant Center account, in the left-hand tab, click on Growth > Manage Programs:

Under product ratings, click on ‘Get started’:

Clicking on this link takes you to a page where you have to fill out a Google support form (if you want to manually submit your reviews).

If you work with an approved review aggregator, you need to find the option in your review app to import your reviews to GMC. Contact the review app’s support if you can’t find that option.

To submit the reviews manually, you will have to create an XML feed with your reviews and submit that feed to GMC.

There’s a third option that allows you to show your product reviews. You can opt for Google Customer Reviews, add a piece of code on your website that allows Google to contact your customers to ask for a product review. 

What Method Should You Pick?

Out of these three options, submitting reviews manually allows you to be completely independent of any third-party tools. However, this option requires you to create an XML feed which can be a difficult process without developers.

Using a review aggregator is another good option but the tools cost money to use so that can be a downside for some.

Google Customer Reviews are free but the biggest downside of this tool is that you cannot import your existing reviews. Once you implement the code that gets you started with this tool, your reviews only start collecting from that point onwards.

Final Thoughts

Product Ratings are a powerful tool and with it, you can see a significant improvement in performance. Make sure that you have enough reviews and encourage your customers to leave reviews on your products.