Have you gone through the whole marketing process of creating an inspiring ad copy and an optimized bidding strategy and are still not getting the results you desire? Is the competition leaving you behind in the race for customers and sales? If this is so, you should go for Google seller ratings to get more qualified leads and click-through so that your site sees more footfalls, sales, and conversions.
Before going into the benefits of seller ratings Google ads, it will be relevant to study the concept in some detail.
What is Google Seller Rating?
A seller rating is a part of Google ads extension and is shown by the number of stars on a scale of one to five. Various factors are taken into account for arriving at the rating, typically feedback on specific parameters from Google trusted sources. The discretion is on Google to display the star ratings and in some cases, it might choose not to do so at all. The star ratings are put upon the body of the ad itself.
Arriving at Google Seller Ratings
Several factors are taken into account for arriving at seller ratings Google ads. For e-commerce sites, average delivery times for ordered items and levels of inventory are some of the determining parameters.
It all started with displaying the worth of products and services to potential customers on e-commerce sites, giving them an estimate of the value of what they want to buy through the number of stars on the product. But when its advantages became obvious, other industries too jumped on the bandwagon and found a way to increase click-through rates, sales, and conversions.
Arriving at the seller ratings Google ads is not a random exercise. There are meticulously laid out guidelines that have to be followed to be eligible for them.
• Unique reviews – Google had stipulated that there should be at least 30 reviews in the preceding 12 months to award ratings but this has been recently increased to 150 in the same period. The reason given by the Support team of Google’s AdWords is as follows –
“Our tech team found that the historical minimum of 30 reviews was prone to some quality issues. Increasing the threshold of required reviews allows us to have additional data on which to generate Seller Ratings, allowing for more stable scores to be generated. They felt that producing high quality and stable signal in fewer places is more beneficial to users.”
• Composite rating – The composite rating should not be less than 3.5 if the same has to be displayed.
• Source of the reviews – The source of the reviews should be from what is fixed by Google. These include Google Trusted Stores and Google Consumer Surveys. However, reviews from a few third party sites like Bizrate, StellaService, PriceGrabber, Bazaarvoice, and Trusted Shops are also accepted by Google to award ratings.
One of the primary advantages of seller ratings Google ads is that the rating is visible on both desktops and mobile ads and hence they can be seen regardless of the device being used.
Gains From Google Seller Ratings
The final question is what can Google ads seller ratings do for your business?
Customers evaluate the quality of a product through star ratings and what has been the experience of other buyers. Small businesses can establish their brand quickly in the market as good ratings speak volumes for the brand. Further, Google seller ratings can run at the same time with other ad extensions and thus the cost per click is decreased while the ad quality score is increased.
Even though seller ratings are more popular in a few sectors (e-commerce for example) than others, you can still use it to get ahead of the competition regardless of the business you might be in.
