Driving Store Ratings for Trustpilot Merchants on Google

Google has been expanding the presence of the Google Store Rating across its products, recently updating use cases for Store Ratings on its Help Center. As a Google partner (with over 10 years of experience working with them) actively working with Google to understand how we can help more of our merchants achieve a Store Rating, we wanted to share a few learnings on how you should make sure you’re set up for success:

• why are reviews are so important on Google

• what businesses need to generate a Store Rating and review insights 

• how a business like yours can benefit might be able to drive significantly more qualified traffic to your site on Google

We also cover three quick steps to get a Store Rating via Trustpilot in our quick-start guide at the bottom of the page.

Google reports having “over a billion shopping sessions on its platform each day.” Shoppers tell Google that while they are interested in discovering new stores online, they can be nervous about buying from unfamiliar stores they don’t know. Google wants to help these shoppers know they are shopping with a reputable retailer and can feel confident making an informed purchase. 67% of holiday shoppers agreed Google helped them find new products, services or brands in a study performed in 2022.

Store ratings really help these shoppers find businesses that offer high quality customer experiences, helping to build trust and enabling more informed purchasing decisions.

Store ratings on Google Search may appear on organic search results, Text Ads, Product Listing Ads, and more. When they appear, they  can help you grow your business by driving purchase confidence and resulting in high-quality clicks to your website.

Google also advises that you can check the performance of your store ratings for Text Ads in the “Account-level automated assets” report in Google Ads. Learn more About campaign level asset reporting for responsive search ads.

Store Ratings on Paid Formats

Store Ratings on Rich Search Results 

Combining insights from our merchants who’ve benefited from a Store Rating and resources Google shares with merchants and partners, we believe this may help businesses at three key stages of the Shopping journey:

Discovering your Business
Ratings may help you visually stand out on Google, attracting shoppers who want to hear from other users as they explore options.

Validating your Shopping Experience
Having reviews on your listing may enable shoppers to validate specific needs they want to meet by drilling deep into proof from other users, instilling confidence and traffic to your website.

Convert & Retain
The users who click to your website already have important information from reviews that helps them make a more informed decision (and potentially be more ready to purchase). They also know they can have an open conversation with your brand through reviews and review replies.

We sometimes hear from merchants that they expect the only way to get a Store Rating on Google is through reviews collected by Google. This is not the case - Google also collects reviews from independent websites that users and merchants rely on for reviews (like Trustpilot) who collect automatic reviews from customers based on shopping experiences.

This means that customer reviews collected through Trustpilot's automated invitations can count toward your business’s Google Store Rating.

Using a Google third-party partner like Trustpilot allows you to integrate review collection into your shopping workflow, collecting reviews at natural points in the shopper's journey, like after delivery, based on data we receive from your platform.

How can my business qualify for store ratings? For ratings to appear in a particular country, your business needs enough unique reviews for the country within the last 24 months to allow Google to confidently calculate a store rating score. The number of reviews needed can vary by merchant, but according to Google “most merchants are able to obtain a rating after collecting 100 or more eligible reviews.”

It's worth noting that Google generally requires these reviews to be post-fulfillment reviews. Additionally, both of the following criteria must also be met:

• Average, composite, rating of 3.5 or more stars for text ads

• Unpaid listings can show store ratings if the average rating is less than 3.5 stars

The ad’s visible URL domain must also match the domain for which we have the ratings.

Reviews aren't added in real-time from Trustpilot to Google, so you may notice a delay between receiving a new review and its addition to your rating. The same is true when a review is removed from a store rating website. If you notice your reviews have stopped appearing, make sure that the store name and registered domain match in your Google Merchant Center account and Trustpilot account.

Google also may limit the Store Rating to reviews from a specific country, and may filter out reviews when the underlying feedback is unrelated to what's being advertised in a specific ad. When checking your store rating, always make sure that you check the country code that’s listed in the URL (e.g. “US”).

Store ratings checker:

Replace {yourwebsite} with your business domain. If loads for a country other than your primary market, update the country code flag (e.g. change c=AU to c=US) in the URL

https://www.google.com/shopping/ratings/account/lookup?q={yourwebsite}

I need a Store Rating! How can I quickly get started?

We would highlight three major key steps to generating a Store Rating:

1. Launch your integration quickly. Choose a supported review partner, such as TrustPilot, well suited to your business needs. Make sure to consider whether the partner is able to integrate with your e-commerce platform and their feature offering for review collection. Trustpilot offers a very simple way to integrate with your e-commerce platform, like our free Shopify app, as well as an even simpler way to collect reviews by adding Trustpilot to your order emails.

2. Make sure you are regularly collecting enough post-fulfillment reviews. Begin collecting reviews as soon as possible to build a strong foundation of reviews implementing an automated collection system to customers who’ve placed orders to ensure your reviews are post-fulfillment.

3. Optimize your review collection approach to improve your funnel. Consider optimizing your approach to help shoppers understand the importance of leaving a review to your business. This can include personalizing the review collection request to your brand, sending a reminder email to customers who allow such emails, or responding to reviewers to help them know you pay attention to feedback. Identify your review funnel and if you see bottlenecks, work with your review partner to remove them and make review collection simpler for your customers.

• The Product Ratings program allows you to display aggregated reviews for your products to customers shopping on Google. This article on Google will help you understand the benefits of participation. Product Ratings are shown in ads and free product listings, appearing as 1 to 5-star ratings that also display the total number of reviews for the product. These ratings and reviews help with product research and purchase decisions. Google reports that “this can drive more qualified customers to your product pages.” 

• The Top Quality Store program recognizes merchants who consistently go above and beyond to provide their customers an exceptional shopping experience. This article on Google will help you understand the benefits of the Top Quality Store badge and how to earn it. Earning the badge also benefits from a merchant collecting reviews that qualify for Store Ratings.