We all rely more and more on ratings when making a purchase or a booking. Google are introducing product ratings on their Product Listing Ads to help customers make a decision. This will no doubt increase retailer’s click-thru rates and conversion for those products with the highest ratings, giving consumers another reason to buy.
When shoppers start to look for products online, they will start to see product ratings, in a form of a 5 star rating. The ratings will be on Product Listing Ads across Google and Google shopping. The ratings are formed and compiled from a number of different sources:
- Merchants
- Third party aggregators
- Editorial sites
- Users
Reviews are important and play a big part in shoppers making decisions when buying. By making the information easily seen on the Product Listing Ads, shoppers will think twice before scrolling away.
Google believe that the ratings will help change and grow a products recognition across Google Shopping, and could more importantly help merchants by driving more controlled traffic through the product ads.
How to enable product ratings on your Product Listing Ads
From now until October 2014 Google are offering a grace period, allowing all product ratings that to be shown on all Product Listing Ads. This is to give merchants time to collect and share their review data. From October onwards product ratings will only be available to those who choose to share all their product reviews with Google directly or via one of the approved third party aggregators.
It’s also worth pointing out that just because a product may have a review, a rating may not always be shown, because product ratings will be one of many extensions that could be shown on the ads.
Product ratings will not be available across all territories initially but will be rolled out throughout 2014.
How to share your review content
In order to produce ratings on your product listing ads, you will have to submit your review content to google by completing a form. For merchants targeting other territories, they will have to wait a little longer to open up product ratings, as there are plans to bring the changes in the coming months.