Google Reviews

Google have two different types of reviews

1. Google Customer Reviews - best suited to ecommerce businesses that process orders through their website and want to increase customer confidence using verified, independent feedback.  They contribute to your store/seller rating.  It is particularly valuable for retailers advertising on Google Shopping or Google Ads, as strong seller ratings can improve the visibility and credibility of their listings.
2. Google Business Profile reviews  - are customer reviews left on a business's Google Business Profile, which appear in Google Search and Google Maps.  They are ideal for businesses with a physical location or those that serve customers in a local area.

1) Google Customer Reviews

You can collect google customer reviews on your website which will contribute to your store/seller rating.

Review Collection (Google Customer Reviews)

The retailer sets up Google Customer Reviews in  the Google Merchant Center.  

A  small “survey opt-in” script is added to the code on your order confirmation/thank-you page. This script 

• passes Google the order details needed to collect a review (order ID, customer email, country/language, and estimated delivery date) and 

• shows an opt-in prompt to your customer when an order is placed (See "Share your Opinion" example below)

If the shopper opts in, Google emails them a review survey after the estimated delivery date.  See an example email below from google sent to a customer.

Google has an extra step in the process of collecting reviews - they require customers to opt in to receiving a request to review, this means that the retailer may not generate as many reviews from their orders as they would with TrustPilot, reviews.io or other 3rd party review platforms .

The responses to these emails contribute to the merchants store/seller rating. 

The google seller/store rating

Once you have enough "Google Customer Reviews", your seller/store rating may appears in a number of places.  

• Google Search Ads — stars appear automatically in your search ads once you hit the required number of reviews, showing below your ad URL. 
• Google Shopping — when someone clicks a product in the Shopping tab, your store rating shows right next to the store name.
• Rich results in organic search — when a shopper searches for a specific store or product, Google may also include a star rating out of 5 along with the total number of reviews next to the store's name in organic search results, even if the result is not an ad.
• You can also embed the store widget/badge on your site to display your rating once you have enough data.  When the widget code is implemented on your pages, one of the following widgets will be displayed (Google decide which badge will be displayed):

Note a large number of reviews are needed - many sources saying that you need 100+ reviews in the last 12 months in a country to get a seller rating.

Reviews from other approved review partners (Trustpilot, Reviews.io, etc.) can also be used by google for the seller rating.

To see the Google's Seller Ratings page for your business see https://www.google.com/shopping/ratings/account/lookup?q=yourdomain.com.  Replace yourdomain.com with your website's domain.  Here you can see the "Google Customer Reviews" collected through google.  It also shows reviews collected from google approved review partners.

How to set up up "Google Customer Reviews"?

The following article from google explains the process  Google Review - Onboarding & Integration

There are a number of steps to setting this up including 

• Setting up your google merchant account  (merchants.google.com) (if you have not already done so) 

• In merchants.google.com the retailer opts in to/ activates google customer review and agrees to the Google Customer Reviews program.

• Magico will request some data from you for the Opt-In survey and will set this up on your website.  
  • Merchant Id or Javascript code for opt in survey
  • Estimated number of days from Order Date to Delivery Date for an Irish delivery
  • Estimated number of days from Order Date to Delivery Date for an international delivery
• Once you have enough google reviews collected you may wish to add the store widget/badge to the website Magico will help you set this up.  There is standard code for this but we may need to look at where on your website to locate it depending on what else is on your website.

Contact helpdesk and we will help you to set this up.

2) Google Business Profile reviews 

These are customer reviews left on a business's Google Business Profile, which appear in Google Search and Google Maps.  They are particularly valuable for businesses that rely on local search, as a strong review profile can improve visibility in Google Search and Maps.

Review collection(Google Business Profile reviews)

Google does not provide a built-in mechanism to automatically invite customers to leave a "Google Business Profile Review" after an online purchase.  But you can email a customer thanking them for their purchase and asking them to leave a review.  Log in to your Google Business Profile (https://business.google.com/) and click the "Ask for reviews"  to get a url where they can leave a Google review for your business.  

Make sure to follow Googles guidelines on requesting Google reviews eg

• Ask all customers fairly rather than selectively requesting reviews only from satisfied customers.
• Never offer incentives (such as discounts or vouchers) in exchange for a review.

You can send these from your email marketing company - for example in Klaviyo you could set up a flow to send review requests a few days after the fulfilled order event.  These could also be sent from the website eg in the ORDER DISPATCHED or ORDER READY FOR COLLECTION email.

Widgets (Google Business Profile reviews)

Google don't provide any widgets for your website for Google Business Profile reviews but there are many third party companies that can provide widgets eg Elfsight, Trustindex, EmbedSocial, and SociableKIT.  Generally these companies provide a piece of javascript that can be added at chosen places on the website.

You could also add a "Review us on Google" link to your website.

The following google support articles may be helpful

https://support.google.com/business/answer/3474122 - Google's official guide on how to ask customers for reviews and obtain your review link

https://support.google.com/contributionpolicy/answer/7400114  - Details Google's policies on reviews, including prohibited content and best practices for requesting reviews.

https://support.google.com/business/answer/3474050 - Explains how reviews work, how to respond to them, and how to manage your business's reviews.