Seller Rating

Understanding Seller Rating

Seller Ratings differ from product ratings. Product ratings describe a single SKU, while seller ratings describe the store as a whole — shipping speed, customer service, returns, and post-purchase experience. Google sources seller ratings from its own Google Customer Reviews program, approved third-party review aggregators, and Shopping research that evaluates store-level performance signals.

To display the seller rating in ads, Google requires a minimum of 100 unique reviews in the past 12 months for the country where the ad is shown, plus an average rating of 3.5 stars or higher. The stars appear as a rating annotation beneath the headline of a text ad and inside Shopping listings, and they typically lift CTR by 10-17% compared to the same ad without the annotation.

The mechanics for earning the rating involve enrolling in Google Customer Reviews (or an approved partner), requesting post-delivery feedback, and maintaining a healthy review velocity so the rolling 12-month window never dips below the 100-review floor. Merchants in small markets sometimes struggle to hit the threshold — in that case the rating displays only in countries that do meet the bar.

Seller ratings sit alongside product ratings in the search results. A well-optimized Shopping listing can show both a product star rating from review snippets AND a seller star rating on the merchant account, creating a double social-proof effect that separates trusted stores from generic listings. For competitive queries this double signal is often the difference between a click and a scroll-past.