Companies face ever-stiffer competition for the best real estate on Google search results. One way to stand out in the crowd is to encourage your customers to review and rate your business online. Google Seller Ratings are a great way to leverage that customer feedback to improve your business listings in search.

Below is a quick guide to Google Seller Ratings, including how to use them and why they’re so valuable.

What Are Google Seller Ratings?

Google Seller Ratings are an automated Google Ads (formerly AdWords) extension for businesses doing paid advertising on Google. When a business enables Google Seller Ratings, users can see the ratings when they search for that business online. The ratings appear in paid Google text search ads, search network campaigns and Google Shopping ads.

Google Seller Ratings are displayed on a 1-5 scale, have a corresponding number of gold stars and a total number of Google reviews, the latter of which is linked for further details. Clicking on the link opens up a pop-up window that displays the reviews, with a default view of “most relevant.” You can also sort by recency, highest rating and lowest rating. You can “write a review” in a box that pops up another window, where users can rate an advertiser and leave comments.

In most cases, Google displays these ratings only when an advertiser has:

• At least 100 unique ratings for a particular country
• 100 or more unique ratings from the past 12 months
• A composite rating of at least 3.5 stars

Google does not charge for the seller ratings, and advertisers can choose to disable the feature. To ensure that seller ratings are enabled, it’s important to configure your ad campaigns properly. Your campaign type must be one of the following:

• Search Network with Display Select with the subtype “All Features” selected
• Search Network only with the subtype “All Features” selected

Make it easy for your customers to leave a great review when they’re done making an online purchase.

What Are the Benefits of Google Seller Ratings?

Google Seller Ratings deliver multiple benefits to businesses:

• Buyers know the company is reputable and delivers a quality product or service.
• Ad click-through rates increase (Google notes the rate increase can be as much as 10%) and the cost per click (CPC) decreases.
• Ads attract more qualified leads.
• The company stands out with a more independent assessment of quality and service.

Related: Google Reviews Come Back – But Not For Everyone

Where Do Google Seller Ratings Come From?

Google aggregates its seller ratings from several sources, though it remains protective of its processes and calculations related to seller ratings. For example, Google does not share its proprietary algorithms for aggregating the reviews it uses to calculate your Google Seller Rating. However, it does provide insight into the sources of those reviews and ratings:

• Google Customer Reviews, a free program Google began in 2017 to collect comments after purchases are made
• Google-led shopping research that reveals aggregated performance metrics
• Ratings from Google Consumer Surveys, which collect data for some domains and businesses via a market research platform
• Shopping reviews

The ratings also come from third-party sources, including Reputation, which generate independent reviews.

How to Get More Online Reviews

Customer reviews are key to Google Seller Ratings. As mentioned, a company often needs to cross the threshold of 100 reviews per country before Google will display its seller ratings. But for many businesses, the process of getting additional reviews can be arduous. That’s why companies often turn to Reputation to deliver more reviews that can add value to your ad buys.

As a Google partner for generating verified online reviews, Reputation is among a small handful of companies worldwide that will deliver reviews that directly impact your Google Seller Ratings.

Related: Get More Google Reviews Fast with Review Booster

Our approach is embedded in our services that manage your paid media channels to help meet your business needs. We deliver timely, helpful reviews that can be used for Google Seller Ratings and other marketing initiatives. Our process has three overarching ways to empower your business:

• Capture feedback on your customers’ experiences
• Automatically feed customers’ reviews and ratings information to Google for Google Seller Ratings
• Improve ad visibility

We can also manage key elements of your Google Ads strategy. These include:

• Managed Services. We build and manage campaigns and sites to improve click-through rates and reduce cost per click. Reputation.com will:
  • Optimize your ad spend and click-through engagement
  • Add the Google Seller Ratings extension to your ads
  • Develop customized, responsive landing pages
  • Manage integrated search campaigns at the brand, regional and local levels
• Surveys. Our customized survey tools add more insights and functionality to your customer engagement that will:
  • Engage customers on all devices
  • Use multiple survey tools, including conversational SMS-based surveys
  • Leverage your CRM database
  • Respond to and act on customer issues with an enterprise-level ticketing system
  • Analyze survey and comment feedback across variables, including demographics, locations and time
• Locational Scaling. Leverage the power of your reviews with:
  • Customer listening of social media, reviews and more than 80 million websites
  • Boost search engine findability and conversions
  • Amplify reviews on your website for added credibility

Reputation helps you manage reviews at every stage of the customer journey. With Reputation as your strategic partner, you gain increased visibility online, more business and better insights that can drive improvements to internal processes and customer service.

To learn more about how we can help you improve your online reputation, download our free guide to Top Trends for Online Reputation Management.