Store ratings showing in organic results

Google has been testing showing store ratings in organic search results since 2021. Over the last few weeks, I've been seeing more and more store ratings in organic search results. You may also see it called seller ratings or the like as Google tests different things.

The biggest appeal of using store ratings is that the reviews can show for non-product pages. Something Shopify merchants ask me for all the time.

Google only wants you to add product and review structured data on product pages. They won't allow review markup for collection pages or organization reviews. That's why JSON-LD for SEO only adds review markup to products.

Check your store ratings

You can check to see if your store has store ratings with this URL: https://www.google.com/shopping/ratings/account/lookup?q=yourwebsite

Replace yourwebsite with your domain. Clicking on the link won't work :)

If you don't see any store ratings, you may not meet their requirements yet, the domains don't match the rating data submissions, or Google's algorithm hasn't decided to award store ratings.

Google's search results don't always make sense

There is still some mystery around store ratings in organic results. Not that I expect Google to spell it out for us.

Triple Mountain is showing the store rating Rich Result on a collection page, but they don't know how. Eleda, Triple Mountain's founder, shared this bit of insight with me:

Not only did I do nothing, I don't know where the "256 ratings" are coming from.

In case you were wondering, there is no review or product structured data on the collection page, further proof that store ratings do not come from structured data.

Don't expect the number of store ratings to match your review count across any given platform. Triple Mountain's store ratings appear to all come from Trustpilot. Yet they have over 1000 reviews on TrustPilot, 8 reviews on Google Business, and 34 reviews on Facebook.

Where do store ratings come from?

Store ratings are an aggregate of your customers' experiences. You may now see store ratings in organic results, free shopping listings, and paid ads.

In Merchant Center, you may be able to opt-in to Customer Reviews as well in their Manage programs section.

Store ratings are a different process from those on your product pages and come from the following sources:

1. Google Customer Reviews managed in Google Merchant Center
2. Shopping reviews when provided by Google's review partners.
3. Aggregated performance metrics from Google-led shopping research (which is very vague)

Whereas product reviews included in a Rich Result come from structured data.

Store rating criteria

I'll note that Google's docs do not address organic result. They call it unpaid vs free listing or paid ads. But I can assure you that the screenshot above is from an organic search result.

The store ratings may show when Google has received or collected enough unique reviews within the last 12 months across Google Customer Reviews or via their review partners. For most, that's after collecting 100+ eligible reviews, but this number may vary.

You need at least 3.5 stars review rating and the URL for your site must match the URL with the ratings.

Just because you meet their requirements, doesn't guarantee store ratings will be shown. As with everything, Google determines what data to show based on its algorithms.

Since Google's criteria is a minimum number of reviews within the last 12 months, my guess is that the store rating only shows the last 12 months of data as well. This would explain the discrepancy for Triple Mountain, but it does make it a bit challenging to match up.

If you're still debating about collecting company or product reviews, this may be a good reason to collect company reviews. Just make sure reviews are collected and submitted from an approved vendor.