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Banner - New Consumer Insights: 7 Must-knows for this holiday season

### Neue Verbrauchereinblicke: Ihr Wegweiser für die bevorstehende Weihnachtssaison

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Entdecken Sie die neuesten Trends zur Steigerung Ihrer Präsenz in der Online-Suche und für Ihr Online-Reputationsmanagement – mit Kundenbeispielen, datengestützten Insights, Webinaren und Videos rund um Kundenbewertungen.

Trustpilot-Blog: Nutzen Sie Ihre Bewertungen optimal

Reviews - Get Seen in Search

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Trustpilot Rich Snippets Guide

Rich Snippets Stars are ratings and reviews for your company that show off your online reputation and overall quality of business to potential customers. These yellow stars help your website standout in Google's SERPs and increase your CTR.

Yes, good SEO takes effort – and websites who make the effort are likely to benefit in the long run – but there are some tools that can boost your site’s organic traffic in incredibly simple ways. 

Rich Snippets are a little-known SEO hack that can really boost results for your business in organic search. Best of all, what you need in order to qualify for them is really easy to implement, so if you’re a busy marketer looking for a quick and effective win – this one’s for you. 

## First up, what are Rich Snippets?

Simply put, Rich Snippets are those helpful star ratings you sometimes see under organic search results. 

According to [Google’s developer site](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/review-snippet "Review Snippet - Google search central"), a Rich Snippet is a short excerpt of a review or rating from a trusted review website, most commonly displayed as an average of the aggregate rating scores from many reviewers. 

Basically, when Google finds [structured data](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-structured-data "Understand how structured data works") from your reviews or ratings on your website, they’re able to display your site content as a [rich result](https://search.google.com/test/rich-results "Rich results test") — which enhances your listings’ appearance in organic search, and tends to drive a lot more traffic. 

Here’s an example of Rich Snippets in action:


Islandsurf.com's product pages show up as rich snippet results in organic search

Review snippets are a certain type of rich result that improves organic SEO

IslandSurf.com rich snippets

Islandsurf.com rich snippets

Having their star rating and quantity of reviews visible right in search results helps [IslandSurf.com](https://www.islandersoutfitter.com/ "Islanders Outfitter") get potential customers to their site faster by removing the need to research their [brand reputation](https://business.trustpilot.com/guides-reports/build-trusted-brand/6-ways-to-make-trust-your-essential-brand-differentiator "The value of a trustworthy brand reputation"). 

Before shoppers even click on the link, they know upfront that the business has a solid rating and therefore can be trusted with their hard-earned money. This gives them a better idea of what kind of experience they’ll have with the company, and increases the odds that they’ll click on that result. 

In fact, studies show that having Rich Snippets visible on your search listings can drive [20-30% more organic traffic](https://www.perficient.com/insights/research-hub/featured-snippets-guide "Featured snippets resource center"), and generate [677% more revenue from organic traffic](https://searchengineland.com/seo-featured-snippets-leads-big-gains-236212 "SEO for featured snippets"). 

Now that the SEO value of these rich results is clear, the question becomes — 

## How do I get Rich Snippets on my product pages in organic search?

It’s most common to think of paid listings when you’re thinking about stars showing up in search results, but many people don’t realize that collecting product reviews can help you qualify for Rich Snippets in organic search. 

Once you’ve started collecting and displaying product reviews through a [product review widget](https://business.trustpilot.com/features/product-reviews "Product reviews") with valid structured data, it’s time to tell Google to re-crawl your product pages. 

Depending on how many products you sell on your site, it may make sense to have Google crawl your most popular products first. Here’s what you’ll need to do: 
- Log in to your Google Search Console and select your website.
- In the Inspect any URL in "your site's name" field, enter the URL of the page that contains the TrustBox.
- Once the URL data has been retrieved, click Request Indexing.
Repeat this process for all the URLs that contain the same TrustBox.


URL inspector

URL Inspector

If you get a message that says "URL is not on Google", click the Test Live URL button to find out why Google can't crawl your page.

Once Google has indexed your pages, your review snippets should begin to appear in their search results. 

You can also use this [handy tool](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9012289?hl=en "URL Inspection Tool") to test your URLs and troubleshoot your results.

## Getting the most organic traffic out of your Rich Snippets 

Once you’ve qualified for Rich Snippets, [Google Search Console](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://searchengineland.com/google-search-console-adds-review-snippets-performance-enhancement-and-testing-reports-328925&sa=D&source=editors&ust=1615911866525000&usg=AOvVaw3KhAQ3et4CgnhHPCEkkpYX "Google Search Console") provides some really helpful tools to give you insight on how well those pages are performing, and help you debug any issues on pages where the reviews aren’t showing in the search results just yet. 

Google's Review Snippet Enhancement Report

Review snippet enhancement report 

The [Review Snippet Enhancement Report](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2020/02/review-snippets#:~:text=it%20to%20production.-,Review%20snippet%20Enhancement%20report,markup%20implemented%20on%20your%20site. "New reports for review snippets in Google Console") shows you errors, warnings, and valid pages for markup implemented on your site. It’s extremely helpful in not only identifying errors, but showing you how to fix them so you can enjoy the benefits of review snippets on all of your qualifying pages. 

Review snippets performance report 

You can also uncover more details about your Rich Snippet performance in Google Search Console’s [Performance Report](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7576553 "Performance report (Search Console Help) "). There, you can uncover how well your Rich Snippets are performing in search in terms of impressions, clicks, and CTR — and delve deeper into even more parameters and metrics. 

## Ready to earn Rich Snippets on your search listings?

The many benefits of Rich Snippets all begin with choosing a trustworthy product review provider with valid structured data. It’s not hard to do — our [TrustBox widgets](https://business.trustpilot.com/features/trustbox-widgets "Trustpilot widgets") and [eCommerce integrations](https://business.trustpilot.com/partners/type/apps "Trustpilot Ecommerce integrations") let you make your product review data discoverable to search engines in just a few clicks. 

If your review statistics meet [Google’s requirements](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/review-snippet "Review Snippet - Google"), your product pages will start showing up with star ratings in search results in no time.  

Can’t get enough of this stuff? Don’t miss [The complete guide to marketing with customer reviews: 2021 update](https://business.trustpilot.com/guides-reports/browsers-to-buyers/the-complete-guide-to-reviews "The complete guide to marketing with customer reviews") for even more ways to improve your organic search performance with your customer reviews.  

### Useful links

* [Google structured data testing tool](https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/)
* [Review Snippet FAQ](https://support.trustpilot.com/hc/en-us/articles/227922808-How-to-Guide-Get-Rich-Snippets-for-SEO-With-Service-Review-TrustBoxes#frequently-questions)
* [Trustpilot reviews guidelines](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/reviews#guidelines)
* [Spammy Structured Markup Penalty and Recovery – Use Schema Markup With Caution](http://searchengineland.com/spammy-structured-markup-penalty-recovery-use-schema-markup-caution-223289)
* [Google drops product Review Snippets from airline pricing websites](http://searchengineland.com/google-drops-price-rich-snippets-airline-pricing-web-sites-248737)
* [How-to Guide: Get Review Snippets for SEO With Service Review TrustBoxes](https://support.trustpilot.com/hc/en-us/articles/227922808)

How to improve your organic SEO with Rich Snippets

SEO best practices to boost your sales

To help you improve your eCommerce SEO, we’ve put together these 5 best practices that will increase your visibility on search engines, improve your consumers’ experiences, and boost your sales for good.

Having a good eCommerce SEO strategy means ongoing maintenance of both your website and your content, which can get challenging at times. 

So to help you improve your eCommerce SEO, we’ve put together these 5 best practices that will increase your visibility on search engines, improve your consumers’ experiences, and boost your sales for good.

## SEO best practices to power your business forward

### 1. Extensive keyword research is a must

Keyword research allows you to find trends and search terms that people enter on search engines and ensures you create the right type of content to improve your chances of being visible on search engine results page (SERPS).

If you’ve never thought about your eCommerce SEO keyword strategy before, here’s a step by step guide on how to do your keyword research properly:

1. List all important topics that are relevant to your business.
2. Find keywords that match those topics.
3. Research related search terms on search engines
4. Pick a bunch of short keywords as well as longer ones (e.g. ‘coffee cups’ vs. ‘coffee cups with lids’)
5. See how your competitors rank for those keywords
6. Use a keyword tool like [Keyword Planner](https://ads.google.com/intl/en_uk/home/tools/keyword-planner/) to cut down the list based on the average number of searches per keyword.

Your final list of keywords can be used to optimise your site’s pages. You’ll use them to make your titles, copy, and images more relevant and most of all, more visible on search engines. You’ll learn how to optimise your pages with keywords in the next section...

### 2. Your product pages need to be optimised

Improving your eCommerce SEO means ranking for your products pages too! 

One of the best ways to do this if you have an eCommerce shop, is to optimise each and every product page. If you’re unsure where to start, we put together this list of ‘essentials’ in order for your product pages to be fully search engine optimised:

- __Don’t forget your images:__ One of the best and simplest ways to optimise your images is to add ‘alt’ tags (keywords that describe what is represented) to each photo. You can also name your images with keywords.

- __Use keywords in your titles:__ Use your product keywords in your product titles. If you’re trying to optimise your ‘suitcase’ product page, add this keyword to your page title. For example, Igloo Coolers uses keywords for the product, features, and design in their titles, which is likely to boost their SEO efforts:

optimise your product pages for seo 

- __Write quality content and include long-tail keywords in your copy:__ Long-tail keywords are phrases made of 3 or more keywords. When included in your copy, they can help drive a lot of traffic. One way to find popular long-tail keywords is to start typing your keyword into Google. Below, is an example of a long-tail keyword search for the keyword ‘coffee cups’:


find out what people search on google

Of course, if you followed step 1, you have a library of keywords you’d like to use.


- __Use relevant URLs:__ You might not think that a keyword-rich URL can make you jump to #1 on Google, but including keywords that are relevant to your eCommerce site or product can still help you considerably and is something that can easily be done.

### 3. Don’t underestimate the power of user experience

[Great user experience is important](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/5-reasons-why-customer-experience-is-the-pulse-of-every-business) to maintain customer satisfaction, but it’s also essential to good eCommerce SEO. Google is constantly trying to provide the best content out there to its users, and to ensure that your eCommerce site is optimised, you need to guarantee that it provides the best user experience.

We put this list together to help you create ever improving experiences for everyone, and improve your eCommerce SEO:

- __Remove all duplicate content:__ Duplicate content can severely affect your eCommerce SEO. [Siteliner](http://www.siteliner.com/) can help you identify your duplicate product pages and remove them.

- __Don’t forget the three-click rule:__ This is a web design rule suggesting that a user should be able to find any information they need within your website in no more than 3 clicks. This keeps your site simple and organised and helps Google read your website’s content better and understand its hierarchy. If it’s correctly done, this can improve your overall site’s ranking.

- __Improve your website speed:__ A slow load time will hurt you on Google, as loading speed has recently become a [search ranking factor](https://yoast.com/page-speed-ranking-factor/). The [GooglePageSpeed](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/) tools can help you cut down your loading time, which will also improve your sales, as [47%](https://www.akamai.com/us/en/about/news/) of users expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less.

- __Make sure your mobile site is functional:__ A fully responsive website design is  a must, especially in the eCommerce industry, where [67%](https://www.internetsearchinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/seo-tips-for-ecommerce-websites.jpg) of shoppers are more likely to make a purchase on a mobile-friendly website. And with[ Google moving more sites to mobile-first indexing](https://searchengineland.com/google-move-sites-mobile-first-index-within-next-several-weeks-292660), you better make sure yours is responsive if you want to retain customers whilst boosting your SEO rankings!

### 4. Interactive content is key

[Regularly updated content is really important](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/creating-relevant-content-throughout-the-customer-journey) in order for you to continue to rank well in Google’s listings. Optimising your eCommerce SEO with fresh content can be challenging, but by adding more interactive content to your site, you’re making sure that your content is regularly, and most of all automatically, updated. Here’s a list of interactive content recommendations that will ensure your website’s content stays updated and therefore SEO-optimised.

- __Customer reviews can help you:__ If you don’t have any reviews, you might want to consider a review collection and management strategy. Why? Because reviews will boost your SEO whilst creating fresh, relevant content, and building trust with consumers.

Example of on-site Trustpilot customer reviews

on-site Trustpilot customer reviews

- __Social media shares are great:__ This helps produce constant interactions on your site. Social proof, like social media shares, is used by Google to indicate the value of your pages. 

- __Live chats help too:__ Having a live chat indicates that your eCommerce shop is ready to engage with consumers on a deeper level, which will help increase your customer interactions, and your sales too. Google can detect this, which will help boost your eCommerce SEO efforts. 

LookFantastic offers a live chat on all pages

### 5. Good links (really) matter

Good content is important, we can all agree on this. But today, backlinks are still [more valued](https://backlinko.com/search-engine-ranking) by Google.

Some of you might know how challenging it is to get good quality links. No matter what your eCommerce shop sells, you can write great content that people will want to link to. There is no ‘boring’ industry. However, that doesn’t mean it’ll be easy. 

It’s up to you to choose whether or not you will write about your products, or about other topics - related to your industry. The latter’s advantage is that you can probably write a lot more content, about a lot more different topics. A great brand using this technique is Red Bull:


Redbull content strategy

The brand chooses *not* to write about their energy drinks. Instead, they write about things that their audience could be interested in: adventures, travels, challenges, sports, and more.

This will help you gain backlinks and social links, and ‘tell’ Google that your content is valuable enough to spark interest, which will improve your site’s overall ranking.

If you’re already doing something similar, here’s another technique to boost your backlinks...

Looking at your competitors’ backlinks can help you make a difference. By knowing where your competitors get their inbound links from, you can put a list of sites to approach for natural backlinks to your own content. 

For example, if your eCommerce shop sells beauty products, why not find out what sites link to other online beauty stores? This should help you identify sites that are interested in your industry and the type of content you write, and therefore build your backlink strategy in order to improve your eCommerce SEO.

You can use [Monitor Backlinks](https://monitorbacklinks.com/), which is a free tool, or [Majestic](https://majestic.com/) if you wish to invest in a more in-depth SEO tool. 

We’d like to remind you that we *do not* recommend using any Black Hat SEO techniques (like buying backlinks) to boost your eCommerce SEO as these could seriously harm your rankings and website.

These 5 SEO best practices should help you improve your eCommerce site’s overall ranking on search engines. We hope you found this article insightful, and we’d love to know what else helped your business boost its SEO.

Tell us what worked for you! Tweet us at @Trustpilot using #onTheBlog, or download a free copy of our Complete Guide to Reviews below.


Read Trustpilot's Complete Guide To Reviews

5 eCommerce SEO best practices that will boost your sales for good

Glasses on pink background

Learning from the google experts

Ever wondered how online reviews can help you become the star of Google SERPs for both organic and paid search marketing? This article holds the answers to all of your questions!

That's why we asked digital marketing experts from Home Logic, Evosite, and of course our internal experts at Trustpilot, to share their thoughts on the crucial role of online reviews in search marketing. 

Let's dive in. 

Google has such a massive impact on the digital marketing industry, yet many companies, particularly eCommerce companies, aren’t optimising their search strategies and incorporating Google in their business strategy.

Our established panel of experts have provided a wide range of advice that any company can incorporate to start seeing better results in their search visibility, traffic conversions, and paid search campaigns.

## Reviews will improve your search marketing performance

*__Ash Rama, Global Head of Training at Trustpilot__*

Collecting reviews is an easy way to create fresh content every day, improve your on *and* [off-page SEO](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/get-seen-in-search/why-does-google-care-if-your-business-has-online-reviews-in-2019), and build a reputation using your customers’ authentic voice. 

Choosing to collect Product reviews on a trusted third-party platform like Trustpilot can also lead to Product Reviews Review Snippets in organic search.

If your brand has an active presence and profile page on Trustpilot (which is in the top 1% of the most visited sites in the world, giving it an impressive domain authority), it's highly likely that your profile will be displayed at the top of search results, complete with shiny gold [Review Snippets](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/get-seen-in-search/google-rich-snippet-update-what-it-means-for-businesses).

Reviews can also optimise your PPC campaigns by powering [Google Seller Ratings](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/get-seen-in-search/why-wont-my-google-seller-ratings-show-up-and-4-other-gsr-questions) (GSRs).

Google Seller Ratings appear in paid ads, and are a powerful tool to boost your campaigns across Google and Bing. GSRs help boost your conversion rate and lower your bounce rate. 

Bonus: Your reviews can also appear in Google Shopping, which helps shorten the decision-making time for a consumer looking to make a purchase.

## Turning traffic into revenue with reviews

*__Charlie Clark, Digital Marketing Manager at Home Logic and owner of [Minty Digital](https://www.mintydigital.com/)__*

[Home Logic](https://www.homelogic.co.uk/) is a home solutions company whose mission is to bring innovative, eco-friendly and cost effective energy saving solutions to the homes of the UK.

Charlie was working hard to improve traffic, sales, and brand reputation for the organisation when he decided to invest in Trustpilot.

With over billions of websites on the internet, it’s crucial to implement the correct digital strategy to boost your online visibility. But ensuring you’re visible from a search perspective is only the first step towards a viable search strategy.

[92%](https://www.vendasta.com/blog/50-stats-you-need-to-know-about-online-reviews) of consumers now read online reviews, and more than [80%](https://www.vendasta.com/blog/50-stats-you-need-to-know-about-online-reviews) of people trust reviews as much as personal recommendation. With competition getting tougher than ever, it’s essential to give a professional, trustworthy and reliable image to potential buyers.

Social proof led Home Logic to better marketing. Customer feedback helped the business increase click-through rate by 20%, and their latest PPC competitor campaign saw a 90% conversion rate increase thanks to Google Seller Ratings!

Example of Home Logic Google Seller Ratings

Google Seller Ratings from Home Logic company

GSRs significantly lowered Home Logic’s cost per conversion, and online reviews helped the company’s website reach Google’s first page.

Their overall organic traffic also saw a 412% uplift YoY, helping Home Logic reach over £250,000 of revenue in Q1, compared to £300,000 in the whole of 2016.

## Being successful in the world of digital

*__Aran Reeks, Head of Client Strategy & Tom Sangers, Head of Search at Evosite__*

[Evosite](https://www.evosite.co.uk/) is a digital agency specialised in eCommerce, conversion rate optimisation, business systems integration, web design, and development. Aran Reeks and Tom Sangers traveled to London from Taunton to share unique insights to help you succeed in the world of digital.

This year, the UK will become the first country in the world where half of all advertising spend goes on digital media. It’s clear that the digital realm takes first priority for companies and spend is likely to increase as the years pass by.

Search is now worth £3.77 billion, and in this new digital era, it’s getting harder and harder for companies to set their objectives and optimise their websites to achieve them.

To drive more conversions with optimised paid search campaigns, you’ll need to understand your customers and their needs in order to create relevant campaigns. This starts with analysing your data, understanding your audience’s behaviour, and finding new insights.

This data will help you personalise your ads (by location, demographics, age, gender, income or interests) to stand out from competitors.

The Evosite digital experts also recommend sticking to PPC’s best practices like mobile bid adjustment, ad extensions, test ads running, location targeting, negative keywords, and review extensions.

But optimising paid search isn’t enough to grow revenue. To transform new traffic into sales, you also need to make sure your user experience is close to perfection.

It’s getting tougher to keep the user’s attention, which is why your website should be entirely optimised. Keep visitors focused long enough to convert them.

Reduce uncertainty, uncover areas of weakness on your website, and improve customer experience to stay ahead of competition and grow revenue.

By keeping your customers happy and satisfied, you’re more likely to see them return, spend more and recommend your business to others.

*So where does optimisation start?*

Evosite advise reviewing all of your account's history, including all keywords, adverts, impressions, and clicks to identify where you can make improvements to your ROI.

And as digital continues to take over, consumers are proactively looking for reviews. Third-party validation has become essential, which is why collecting reviews is a good way to appease consumers who have taken up a new way of making a purchase decision, while also improving your search and paid search performance.

If this sounds of interest, you can learn more about reviews and SEO by checking out our complete guide to reviews below:

Becoming a Google Star with online reviews: learning from the experts

google seller ratings questions trustpilot 2020

Ever wonder how to earn Google Seller Ratings and make sure they show up to boost your CTR in paid search results? This article answers all of your questions about GSRs and more.  

If you’ve ever typed into Google’s search bar, you’ve seen Google Seller Ratings in action. In essence, it’s a star rating that displays underneath the URL on your Google Ads. While most often associated with eCommerce companies, any company with a digital presence can take advantage of Google Seller Ratings. Take a look at the example below, on how a mortgage broker can have GSRs display on their search ads.

example-of-google-seller-rating

Google has said that the seller ratings extension benefits both searchers and businesses, as it increases click-through rate by [10%](https://adwords.googleblog.com/2011/04/5-simple-ways-to-improve-your-adwords.html) on average which can lead to a higher quality score.

GSRs just made your job a bit easier!

So, how do you get GSRs to display in your search ads? That’s just one of the major questions we’ll be tackling here.

### Google Seller Ratings – August 2020 Update

In August 2020, Google [made some changes to the Google Seller Ratings requirements](https://developers.google.com/merchant-review-feeds/publisherguideline). Here's what businesses should know and follow before trying to earn Google Seller Ratings:

- __Businesses are not allowed to offer their customers financial incentives__ to write reviews of any kind. This includes anything from free samples, gift cards, discounts on future purchases, to anything of monetary value.
- __Each business eligible for seller ratings must have a page that is public__, visible, and discoverable via search engines with all reviews shown. For example, the business pages should be included in the sitemap shared with search engines.
- __Customers must have completed their review within 90 days__ of receiving an invitation from the retailer.
- __Your listing must only display reviews collected through your current review platform__, and only these are eligible for submission to the Google feed. If you imported reviews before the 1st of July 2020, this change will not affect you.
- __Businesses are not able to remove or moderate their reviews (from current or previous provider)__. However, reviews from the current provider may be flagged and will be removed if the content contains hateful, violent, or inappropriate content, advertising or spam, is off-topic, or contains conflicts of interest.

If you have any other questions about Google Seller Ratings and how to acquire them, keep on reading!


### Question #1: How can I get Google Seller Ratings?

[As of November 2018](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/reviews/get-seen-in-search/google-new-seller-ratings-threshold-100), Google is now displaying Seller Ratings on a per-country basis to better reflect your customers’ experience in a specific country. Google has also lowered the Seller Ratings threshold of reviews required to 100 per country, instead of 150 global reviews. The reviews from users in a particular country will only contribute to the company’s rating in that country.

To collect Seller Ratings, you will need to maintain a high standard of service, so that __your average review score is above 3.5/5__. 

Next, you’ll need to be collecting enough reviews. You will need to have __at least 100 reviews in the last 12 months in a given country__, for your business to be eligible for GSR in that country. This means that you need to send invitations to your customers to invite them to review your services. 



### Question #2: Why aren’t my Google Seller Ratings showing?

There are a couple of reasons why your Google Ratings aren’t showing up. Because Seller Ratings is an automated ad extension, you can’t set them up or have any control over whether or not they show.

To make sure you’ve ticked all the boxes that factor into GSRs, here’s a handy list to keep in mind.

* Do you have more than 100 unique reviews per country from a review platform?
* Have they all been written in the past 12 months?
* Do you have an average score of 3.5 stars out of 5, or above?


__Tip: Still not showing?__

Note - a recent Google update recently opened up GSRs globally. Previously, GSRs was limited to specific domains but this is no longer the case!

We can also help you [check](https://www.google.com/shopping/seller?q=[domain.com) if Google has added the reviews to their Merchant review page.

Now that you know why your Seller Ratings aren’t showing, the next step is to learn why your Google stars might not show up every time you search for them.

### Question #3 Why do Google Seller Ratings show up only sometimes on the same search terms, and how often can I expect it to show?

Sometimes Google Seller Ratings don’t show with your ads. And sometimes they do. Don’t panic, that doesn’t necessarily mean that something is wrong.

You’ve already made sure that your ads were optimised by ticking all the boxes on the above list, so let’s go through what could be happening…

* Google is determining the best time to show the extension based on the intent of the query.
* The search engine will also take into consideration the recency of the search, as well as the cached results
* If someone searches the same keyword over and over again to check their extensions, both paid and organic results will be affected, and the extension will not always appear as Google shows them only a certain number of times.


__Tip:__ Check whether or not your extension is showing from a different device or a different IP address. If it shows, you know you have Google Seller Ratings, and Google is determining whether or not to show them.

### Question #4 How do I make my Google Seller Ratings show more often?

Seller Ratings don’t always appear regularly, but you can take steps to make them more likely to appear with your Search Network ads.

Google has provided [additional tips](https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/7233787) to increase your chances of having GSRs show up in your ads. A fairly obvious tip is to be a great business so your reviews are not only high but also so customers will be encouraged to leave reviews about the great experience they had at any point in their buying journey.

But they also encourage to keep your business name and URL consistent across the websites where your reviews live. Google aggregate reviews from multiple sources to power GSRs so be sure that your URL and name is consistent across review sites and that Google isn’t accidentally aggregating the wrong reviews or ignoring your reviews.

### Question #5 How do I track my GSR performance?

You can track your traffic attributed to GSR by going into your Google Ads account and checking your Automated Extension Report.

This report tracks all data that comes from any Google Ads extension you might have. Based on the results, you can see how often the Seller Ratings show as well as the ad groups they correspond to.

example-of-gsr-report

You’ll find more great examples of GSR reports [here](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/use-google-seller-ratings-beat-competition/127795/).

Tracking your results will allow you understand the performance of your ads with and without extension, and compare click-through rate and cost.

Now that Google isn’t a mystery anymore, set up your Seller Rating Extension today and leverage your user-generated content to grow your business’s visibility and trust on search engines.

If you'd like to find out more about the importance of reviews to improve your visibility in search, give our Complete Guide to Reviews a read below!

How to earn Google Seller Ratings following the August 2020 update

New google shopping announcements

With Google’s new Google Shopping announcements, retailers are going to have to find new ways to stand out from other listings to sell products directly on Google Shopping. Here's how reviews can help.

So it came as no surprise when in April, Google announced that [it’s now free to sell on Google](https://blog.google/products/shopping/its-now-free-to-sell-on-google/), making it easier for retailers to gain visibility and sell on Google Shopping.

## What is Google Shopping and how does it work?

For those of you who might not be familiar with [Google Shopping](https://support.google.com/faqs/answer/2987537?hl=en), it enables users to view product information from merchants that is updated on a regular basis by the merchants. Online retailers, who are part of the Google Merchant network, submit feeds containing product information to Google Shopping, and pay each time someone clicks to their website or makes a purchase directly from their site. But following Google’s April announcement, this has now changed.



Google Shopping explained

## It’s now free to sell on Google

Since April, the US Google shopping tabs primarily consist of free listings, helping retailers get more visibility and better connect with consumers, whether or not they already advertise on Google. 

This change has meant that smaller businesses have had more exposure during the coronavirus pandemic, given them a greater chance of successfully selling online.

The changes aren’t live globally yet. This was announced in April 2020 for the US market, and will be expanded globally by the end of the year. 



Show your product in free listings on Google

## Google has also removed commission fees

In July, Google also announced that [‘Buy on Google’ is now commission-free](https://blog.google/products/shopping/buy-on-google-is-zero-commission/). By removing commission fees, Google has lowered the cost of doing business online, and brands no longer have to pay a fee for purchases made through Google Shopping. This new announcement makes it even easier for retailers to sell directly on the platform. 


Buy on Google no commission

Google also announced two new integrations, with Paypal and Shopify, meaning retailers and consumers now have more payment options when selling or shopping on Google Shopping. If a retailer wants to sell directly on Google, they can get started even faster and continue using the tools that already work well on their website.


## What these changes mean for retailers, and how reviews can help

eCommerce businesses usually measure their performance through website traffic, click-through rates and on-site conversions. With Google’s new announcement, retailers are going to have to find new ways to stand out from other listings to sell products directly on Google Shopping. 

This year, we observed an [11% decline in trust globally](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/reviews/build-trusted-brand/4-things-every-business-owner-should-know-about-the-state-of-reviews), with only 71% of people admitting they trust consumer brands. This only proves how challenging it can be to build trust and credibility through a Google shopping listing, especially when consumers don’t visit your website or social channels. 

[Trusted Google Reviews Partners like Trustpilot](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/features/review-seo) allow retailers to have their online reviews displayed directly on their product listings on Google Shopping. That’s important because today, [89% of global consumers check online reviews](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/guides-reports/build-trusted-brand/the-critical-role-of-reviews-in-internet-trust) as part of their online buying journey, and 49% of global consumers consider positive reviews one of their top 3 purchase influences. Showcasing a trust signal such as your rating or reviews can help you differentiate yourself from other competitors in Google Shopping.

So how can you start displaying your Trustpilot reviews on your free product listings in Google?

An eCommerce website can get rated when using one of the review services that makes you [qualified for Google Seller Ratings](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/reviews/get-seen-in-search/google-new-seller-ratings-threshold-100). If qualified, your Trustpilot rating will automatically appear in Google Shopping without any action required from your side.

Being as transparent as possible helps consumers make more informed decisions, and helps boost consumer trust in businesses. You can find out more about the importance of trust signals to boost conversions in Google Shopping [here](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/guides-reports/build-trusted-brand/why-and-how-social-proof-influences-consumers), or request a free demo below to learn how Trustpilot can help you collect and showcase your reviews in Google shopping.

What the new Google Shopping updates mean for reviews

Why does Google care if your business has online reviews?

These days Google expects to see reviews about your business because they help search engines understand the quality of your product or service. This improves your off-page SEO, which can help you climb to the top of organic search results.

Maybe it’s because Amazon taught us to rely on ratings and reviews, or maybe it’s because we’ve always been social creatures, eager to hear about what others did when faced with similar decisions. 

Maybe it’s because Google tends to show us search results that feature reviews and ratings. 

Whatever the root cause, there’s no question that ratings and reviews help shoppers on their quest for the perfect purchase, or that they work wonders for businesses of just about any size.

Whether you need to improve your [online reputation](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/build-trusted-brand/trustpilot-guide-to-social-media-reputation-management), create a [feedback loop with your customers](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/how-to-keep-existing-customers-happy-and-buying), step up your [user-generated content](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/build-trusted-brand/4-great-examples-of-user-generated-content) game, or boost [on-site conversions](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/how-great-sites-convert-visitors-to-customers) — a review strategy can help with all of that. 

But perhaps the most underrated benefit of collecting reviews is that, when implemented properly, reviews can help Google better understand your site. That’s a huge win for organic SEO. 

Between more and more businesses emerging each day (who are, to say the least, also trying to stand out in organic search), and paid advertising becoming [less effective](https://business.trustpilot.com/guides-reports/build-trusted-brand/can-online-reviews-revive-consumer-trust-in-advertising) in saturated markets, ranking well in organic search results is a true asset for any business.

When your potential customers are off consulting the internet for help making their next purchase, wouldn’t you want to put yourself right where they can see you?

## Reviews can help you rank higher in organic search results

Unlike paid advertising campaigns, which don't always [delight consumers](https://searchengineland.com/4-reasons-why-your-ad-is-fatiguing-206706), doing what you can to improve your organic Search Engine Results Page (SERP) ranking can really move the needle — with less risk of potential customers getting fed up with your brand.

If we had to quantify the importance of your organic search ranking, a staggering [91.5% of organic traffic](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-101/seo-statistics/) share goes to sites listed on the first page of results. Don’t shoot the messenger, but if you’re not ranking anywhere near the first page of results, you’re probably not getting seen in organic search.

Make no mistake. Ranking on the first page in Google SERPs is a challenge for businesses of all shapes and sizes, and it certainly doesn’t happen overnight. The good news is that other aspects of your broader marketing strategy, like review collection, [can do double duty to help you with organic SEO](https://velstar.co.uk/velstar-asks-trustpilot-how-do-reviews-impact-seo-and-why-do-they-matter/).

### How do we know that reviews and ratings are meaningful to *the powers that be* at Google in 2020?

According to [Moz's 2018 Local Search Ranking Factors](https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors), review signals like [quantity](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/build-trusted-brand/3-reasons-why-you-really-need-to-get-more-reviews), velocity, and diversity came in as the 3rd most important factor in how Google ranks local businesses in its “Local Pack” SERP. Some sources consider review signals to be even more important in 2019. That’s a pretty big deal, especially if you do a lot of local business.

And if you’re not a brick and mortar business, the SEO community believes you’ll still see serious SEO benefits from gathering reviews. Common understanding is that Google uses them to derive [brand signals](https://moz.com/blog/the-next-generation-of-ranking-signals), which can boost your site’s domain authority and eventually your position in search.

Because Google’s goal is to serve up high quality and reputable results, they’re on the lookout brand signals that can help them separate the “brands” (who, among other indicators, have proof of a satisfied customer base) from the “generics” (the sites that Google classifies as having a poor user experience).  


Brand sites versus generics 

Simply put, Google appreciates when some of the guesswork around a website’s quality is done for them, so it’s a good idea to use independent (read: trusted) online platforms to gather reviews.

## The role of reviews in off-page SEO

In answering why Google cares about online reviews, we have to touch on the role reviews play in off-page SEO. As the name suggests, off-page SEO (also called off-site SEO) refers to the actions you take outside of your actual website to impact your rankings in organic search.

This is a high level look at how it works:

Off page SEO

Off-page SEO

By incorporating some off-page SEO techniques into your overall strategy — like building a presence on social media and third-party review platforms — you signal to Google that you’re a brand.

Most businesses have an on-page SEO strategy to help with organic search, but fewer are spending significant energy on off-page opportunities. Pulling some key levers for off-page SEO could be the competitive advantage your business needs to rise to the top of organic search results.

### Your presence on third-party review platforms can help you climb to the top of search 

When people search for reviews of your brand, what do they find? Business profile pages on Trustpilot tend to appear as a top search result, often with [Review Snippet stars](https://business.trustpilot.com/features/review-seo), and are backed by the credibility of a review platform built for people and businesses. 

But why do the Trustpilot profile pages tend to surface at the top of SERPs?

It all goes back to the concept of [domain authority](https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority). We don’t mean to brag, but Trustpilot’s domain authority is strong. In fact, as of 2019, Trustpilot is among the top 1% of most visited sites in the world and 0.35% of all Google searches include a Trustpilot business profile page — and for some additional context, there are about [63,000 Google searches](https://seotribunal.com/blog/google-stats-and-facts/) every second of every day.

The more reviews you get, and the more you enrich the content on your business profile page (think: company contact information, mission statement, social media profiles), the more content you provide for both search engines to associate your brand with ours, and show your profile page at the top of search results. 


Third Party Review Platforms Can Help You Climb to Top Of Search Results

### Google changes. Reviews are likely here to stay. 

According to [Moz](https://moz.com/learn/seo/off-site-seo), off-site SEO-related factors like third-party reviews carry more than 50% of the ranking factor weight. Though search engines are constantly evolving, factors like relevance, trustworthiness, and authority will likely always play a role in a page’s ability to rank, and building up your online presence with reviews can help businesses crush all three of those criteria.

At the end of the day, you want both your customers and Google to think of you as a brand. You can make all the on-page SEO optimizations you want, but Google will still be looking out for your brand’s reputation on [third-party platforms](https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/02/26/can-independent-review-platforms-make-google-love-site/).



## An ever-improving brand reputation

Most businesses spend a lot of time optimizing their websites for what they think Google wants to see, but __what your customers want to see is still incredibly important__. When a person searches for reviews of your company, they’re looking for a neutral third-party source of information.

Profiles on third-party review sites like Trustpilot tend to rank highly thanks to their strong domain authority, helping them stand out in organic search. They’re a great way to highlight your reputation to potential customers.



Brand reputation on third party platforms helps SEO

Choosing to build your online presence on a platform that’s likely to appear at the top of search is an advantage. But choosing a review platform known for [transparency and openness](https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/330528) is the fast track to a brand reputation that consumers can not only easily find, but also easily trust.

If you want to learn more, here are some other useful links that will help you get started improving your organic search performance with online reviews.

Trustpilot is a leading online review platform. Ready to start showing off your reputation in search results? Click the banner below to learn more about the many ways we can help.


May 2019 CTA Animated Gif: Let Your Business Shine with TP Stars

Trustpilot location reviews why they're so important

Your company's locations can now rank higher in search results, because they're backed by the credibility of a review platform trusted by consumers and businesses around the world.

Mobile devices are designed to point us towards local businesses, and Google and Bing are well aware of online shoppers’ locations, which is why search engines are starting to prioritise local results. In this article, we’ll cover what local search is, why it is important, and how Trustpilot and location reviews could help you stand out from your competitors.

## Why location search is important

Local search can be extremely competitive, but there are many ways for multi-location businesses and franchises to stand out today. This can be done by either optimising your webpage, appearing in the Knowledge graph, or using products such as [location reviews](https://business.trustpilot.com/features/location-reviews), which can help deliver a steady stream of customer reviews.

Even though eCommerce has demonstrated its importance in 2020, local search is still growing fast. Today, [61%](https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/data/shopping-preference-statistics/) would rather shop from brands that also have a physical location than ones that are available online only. In fact, according to Google, “near me” searches are becoming a prevalent factor in how we all make our purchasing decisions. [Google explains](https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/consumer-insights/near-me-searches/):

“You might typically associate a ‘near me’ search with something like ‘restaurants near me’ or ‘gas stations near me’, but we’re seeing growth in ‘near me’ searches for very specific items, from ‘cowboy boots near me,’ to ‘where to get a facial near me,’ and ‘tarragon near me.’”

If we look at [Google Trends](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=near%20me), we can observe that "near me" searches have gone up by over 500% in the past five years. [Forrester](https://marketingland.com/reports-digital-especially-mobile-driving-trillions-offline-retail-spending-207037) predicted that by 2021, mobile would be driving $1.4 trillion in local sales in the U.S. We all know from personal experience how frequently we use our phones, which - this is no secret - track our location in order to show us the most relevant and local search results. 


Location reviews infographic Google Trustpilot

Today’s consumers are trying to buy from more local stores, in a desire to help out local businesses. And although eCommerce is continuing to grow, 90% of worldwide retail sales still take place in physical stores, according to [a Deloitte report](https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Documents/consumer-industrial-products/cip-2018-global-powers-retailing.pdf). But for physical stores to compete with the convenience and endless aisle assortment offered online, meaningful customer experiences and brand engagement is crucial.

## How to stand out from the crowd

Did you know that [97%](https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/) of consumers go online to find local businesses, and [76%](https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/data/mobile-location-searches-to-store-visit-data/) of people who search on their smartphones for something nearby usually visit a business within a day?

If you are not present in the first two pages of local search results, your chances of being visible to consumers are extremely low, and so are your chances of getting new offline customers through Google. 

So how can consumers find you in this highly competitive environment? And how do you stay on top of local search results?

Businesses with multiple physical locations, or even franchises, should start thinking about current consumer trends, and how they can adapt to the new digital rules of shoppers’ behaviour today. Here’s a list of things you could do to improve your ranking:

- Make your site mobile-friendly and responsive to make it easier for consumers to search your store. Google loves mobile-friendly sites and gives them priority in search results. 
- Add schema markups for your [organisation](https://schema.org/Organization) or [local businesses](https://schema.org/LocalBusiness). This helps search engines understand your information better, and helps provide Google with enough information to include your local businesses into the Knowledge graph. 
- Create a URL structure with different pages for different locations. This makes it easier for search engines to gather relevant information, including the NAP (name, address, and phone number) for each location, as well as working hours. Don’t forget to list your branches on Google my Business too.
- Use review platforms to your advantage. According to a Canvas8 report, today, 89% of consumers report checking reviews before making purchases, whether online or offline. Some open review platforms such as Trustpilot can connect you with your customers, and more importantly promote their experience. Collecting location reviews is always a great way to share your reputation online.


## Mastering local search with Trustpilot reviews

To help local businesses stand out from the competition when lockdown comes to an end, we are introducing a new feature: [Location reviews](https://business.trustpilot.com/features/location-reviews). Location reviews are here to help multi-location businesses and franchises better manage their local branches’ reputation when stores reopen.

Web Manager at AutoMester

This product is completely free, so any business can set up Trustpilot location reviews to start ranking in relevant local search results now. But how does that work, you may ask? 

Well, all business profile pages on Trustpilot, free or paid, rank amongst top search results because of Trustpilot’s high page authority. This authority is earned through tens of millions of visits and reviews the platform gets each month, ranking it amongst the top 400 most visited websites in the world, [according to Alexa](https://www.alexa.com/topsites). 

Once you set up different locations on Trustpilot, you will automatically create different profile pages for each of your locations, and start collecting reviews for them. The more reviews you have, the higher your profile pages will rank on Google, because reviews provide a stream of fresh content and increase consumer traffic to the profile page. All of which is great for SEO.

Adding location widgets to your location pages will help optimise those pages with location metadata, telling search engines to include those pages in local results. In addition, widgets can also help you increase trust and conversion rates, [you can read more about that here](https://business.trustpilot.com/features/trustbox-widgets).

Marketing Manager at Omega Rental Cars Limited

If you’re interested in location reviews and would like to prepare your business for life after lockdown by starting to rank higher in local search results now, find out how to optimise your pages today to gain competitive advantage in a couple of weeks. Sign up for a free location reviews demo.

Using location reviews to stand out in search after lockdown

product reviews and photos trustpilot launch

Product reviews are a great way to include user-generated content from real customers. In this article, we’ve gathered the five biggest reasons you should be collecting reviews for each of your products. 

Product reviews are especially helpful when they include user-generated content from real customers, and that’s exactly why we’re happy to offer that capability with our [Product Reviews](https://business.trustpilot.com/features/product-reviews) feature. To help you make the most of it, we’ve gathered the five biggest reasons you should be collecting reviews for each of your products. 

intro stats

intro stats product reviews efficiency

## 1. Product reviews increase sales and average order value

With [89% of consumers checking reviews online before making purchases](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/build-trusted-brand/4-things-every-business-owner-should-know-about-the-state-of-reviews), it’s undeniably important for businesses to collect and showcase reviews about their service. But for many businesses selling products, service-level reviews aren’t always enough. Providing consumers with reviews about your business is certainly helpful, but depending on the types of products you offer, a customer may need more information than is typically available in a service-level review. Do you offer a wide range of products? If so, a review from a customer who bought a hairdryer isn’t necessarily relevant to a potential customer shopping for shampoo. 

AnnSummers Product Reviews on page example

And if you sell something like clothing, where consumers can be particular about things like quality and fit, specific reviews for each product are crucial for sales because customers — even those who have purchased other items from you in the past —need to feel confident in the specific products they’re considering. By showcasing reviews for all of your products, you’re boosting consumer confidence, and credibility for your brand. 

Just how effective can product reviews be? British multinational retailer, Ann Summers, found that going from no reviews to even just a 1-star rating [increased their conversions by 76%](https://business.trustpilot.com/customer-stories/get-seen-in-search/ann-summers-uses-product-reviews-to-increase-sales-up-to-230). Product reviews with higher ratings saw even higher conversion rates. Overall their ecommerce store saw up to a 230% increase in conversions by leveraging product reviews throughout their customer journey.

Conversion increase

Conversion increase graph

In one of our other case studies danish toy store, Legeakademiet, saw a [4.43% revenue increase](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/customer-stories/training-education/how-product-reviews-increased-legeakademiet-revenue) from displaying product reviews on their website, which is more than a 200,000 EUR turnover increase for them. This was very impressive as only 20% of their products had any product reviews when they ran the split-test.

Quote image

Legeakademiet.dk Client Lead at S360

## 2. Product reviews provide fresh user-generated content

[User-generated content](https://blog.hootsuite.com/user-generated-content-ugc/) (UGC) is content that is created by consumers, rather than brands. In today’s world, where consumers are [inundated with brand messaging](https://business.trustpilot.com/guides-reports/learn-from-customers/trustworthiness-in-advertising-what-consumers-have-to-say) and more purchasing options than ever, UGC is particularly useful in building social proof (the concept of people following the actions of the masses), helping consumers feel FOMO around your products once they see that other consumers have enjoyed it. 

There are plenty of stats to speak to the power of UGC. Consumers are [2x more likely](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190220005302/en/Stackla-Survey-Reveals-Disconnect-Content-Consumers-Marketers) to say UGC is more authentic compared to branded content. On-site consumer reviews can [increase conversions by 74%](https://www.3dcart.com/ecommerce-university/why-your-eCommerce-store-needs-user-generated-content.html). And 92% of consumers [trust word of mouth more](https://blog.zoominfo.com/user-generated-content/) than any type of advertising. 

When it comes to product reviews, UGC can be particularly powerful when imagery or videos are included. With so much uncertainty around online shopping, consumers wonder whether a product will end up looking completely different than the promotional product shots they saw at checkout. When customers upload photos along with their product reviews, it gives new shoppers the confidence to purchase that same product and know they’ll receive what they’re expecting. Depending on the product, video can be even more helpful here to showcase the different elements of a product. 

Trustpilot’s [Product Reviews photo feature](https://business.trustpilot.com/features/product-reviews) makes it super easy to collect and display  user-generated photos with your product reviews as it’s seamlessly embedded.

product reviews photo feature full release

User-generated photos of your products can also be used to create ads for social media as shown above. As Simona highlights below, these can be effective to build that all important transparency between your products and your customers.

Digital Marketing Manager at houseofbaukjen.com

houseofbaukjen.com customer example

Consumers love to engage with short videos, and that’s not just limited to TikTok. 84% of people say they’ve [been convinced to buy a product or service](https://www.wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/ "Video Marketing Statistics 2021") by watching a brand’s video and 69% of people said that to learn about a product or service they’d [prefer to watch a short video](https://www.wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/ "Video Marketing Statistics 2021"). 

Our Video for Product Reviews feature gives your customers a more interactive way to leave you reviews. It can also give you really valuable insights into how your products look when they finally make it to your customers. But the best part of videos with reviews is that it can help you tap into younger markets and give you fresh video content to leverage in throughout your customer journey and marketing channels. 


Product reviews with video

Imagine if instead of generic and produced videos on your site, you could easily integrate videos of your customers talking about how much they liked their purchase right onto your site. These kinds of videos will come across as a lot more authentic and genuine – they’re a lot more cost-effective as well.

## 3. Product reviews improve your SEO 

SEO is particularly challenging for ecommerce sites. With so many different product pages (and constant churn as new products are added or taken away), it can be much harder to optimize for ecommerce than service-based sites. 

Product reviews primarily help your site’s SEO by giving you continuously fresh content, [which Google loves](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/build-trusted-brand/why-does-google-care-if-your-business-has-online-reviews-in-2019). Some product reviews can be quite detailed, which can help expand a given product’s query reach and [ultimately rank for longer tail keywords](https://moz.com/blog/long-tail-seo-target-low-volume-keywords-whiteboard-friday). 

product reviews example

SEO is also impacted by the length of time people spend on your site. About [70% of consumers](https://neilpatel.com/blog/seo-errors-ecommerce-websites/) are looking for reviews on products when they enter an ecommerce site. If your site doesn’t have any, a large percent of visitors searching will quickly leave your site. This can affect site metrics like bounce rate and time on site, [both of which can negatively impact your SEO](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-search-rankings-traffic-drop/264617/#close). This also means you’re missing out on a large chunk of potential customers. 

Last but not least, depending on how you leverage them, product reviews can also help get your star rating to display in search results through [review snippets](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/browsers-to-buyers/how-to-boost-your-seo-with-trustpilots-seo-product-review-trustbox). These little gold stars help your page stand out on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) so much so that  some Trustpilot customers have been able to [increase click-through rates by up to 35%](https://support.trustpilot.com/hc/en-us/articles/203925668-SEO-Benefits-of-Product-Reviews).

rich snippets and product reviews example

review snippets and product reviews example

Fresh content and review snippets only need to be set up once when you implement your product review solution. This is a great way to automate some of your SEO efforts for your product pages, saving you both time and money.

## 4. Increase CTR on Google Shopping and add photos to your product reviews

Did you know that product reviews can also help you get stars on Google Shopping, as well as increase your [CTR up to 15%](http://content.trustpilot.com/pdf/Google_Product_Ratings_PLA_Case_Studies.pdf)?

These are displayed both on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), and in Google Shopping.


superdry google shopping product reviews example

In 2019, Google found that [50% of digital shoppers](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9522897?hl=en) admitted that images help them decide what to buy online. To help shoppers feel more confident in their online purchases, Google [introduced user-generated images in product reviews on Google Shopping](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9522897?hl=en).

Customer photos attached to product reviews on Google Shopping

By collecting product reviews with Trustpilot Product Reviews, your product review photos will automatically be fed to Google so they can appear on your Shopping Ads if they qualify. It’s currently only available in the US, and on mobile devices, but Google has plans to expand [across more Google properties and countries](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9522897?hl=en).

## 5. Optimized inventory management and product selection

Collecting product reviews can give your business valuable [consumer insights](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/what-are-consumer-insights-and-how-do-i-use-them). Understanding which products your customers really love can help you keep up with demand and stock  products with similar attributes down the line. 

These same insights allow you to identify and remove poorly rated products from your site, lowering the risk that one of your happy customers will become dissatisfied with a future purchase. This, in turn, can drastically improve your customer lifetime value. 

And don’t forget about products with mediocre ratings! If you have products that consistently get 3 star ratings, digging into the content of those reviews can help you tweak the product, improve it for future customers, and hopefully turn it into a 5 star product.  

This is another thing [Legeakademit does with their product reviews](https://business.trustpilot.com/customer-stories/training-education/how-product-reviews-increased-legeakademiet-revenue). Ann Reimer, Founder & Partner shared that: “Through product reviews, customers tell us which products to get more of and which to remove. [Product reviews] help us pick the right products just as much as they help our customers.” In today’s online marketplace this is the kind of mindset all companies should have. Reviews aren’t just a way to help consumers, they also help businesses to know exactly how to satisfy their customers. 

### Boost your sales with Product Reviews today

If you’re selling something online, product reviews can bring your business great benefits in terms of conversion, SEO, and product development. Collecting and leveraging product reviews doesn’t take a long time either, so if you’re ready to start seeing these benefits today, click the link below.

Download our complete guide to reviews

Complete Guide to Reviews CTA Banner new link

product reviews and photos

5 Ways product reviews can accelerate your business

seo and visibility + reviews

5 Reasons why it's essential to build a great reputation as a business when it comes to search engine optimisation, especially in uncertain times.

Yes, SEO can often be complicated and technical, especially in times like these. A website can be optimised to have all the SEO bells and whistles, but if its brand reputation is subpar, that could have an impact on performance. In this article, we’ll be discussing the importance of a good reputation when it comes to search engine optimisation, especially in uncertain times.

### Word of mouth is one of the best forms of marketing

Before the age of the internet and eCommerce, businesses relied on traditional forms of marketing to grow their business. One of the best forms of marketing out there is word of mouth. Providing a great experience and service for one person means they’re more likely to become not just a repeat customer, but also a brand advocate. They help spread the word of the great service they just received, which then results in better brand reputation.

However, this form of marketing can only work if you conduct good business. Good business in this context means ensuring customer experience and satisfaction is your highest priority. In the eCommerce world, this would mean fast delivery turnarounds, seamless returns policy, great customer service, and also great prices. If you get those things right, the abundance of digital mechanisms available can help streamline the rest. Which leads us to the next section.


### The importance of reputation & reviews

Humans are naturally curious, and they are particularly curious if they have not heard of your brand before. If you have a great product on offer at a great price, let’s say 10% cheaper than the competition, but you’re a start-up brand, users are more likely to start asking questions, such as:

- Who are these guys?
- Why are they offering this product at a cheaper price?
- Are these guys legit, is this a scam?
- Am I going to get ripped off?

Which is why it is so important to ensure that you have a well-designed website, and more importantly ensure that your trust signals are obvious: SSL certificate (HTTPs), secure checkout, payment options, privacy policy, shipping policy, returns policy, and reviews and testimonials. Browsing websites is second nature to most users, and today’s shoppers are subconsciously looking for these cues to determine legitimacy and authenticity of a website. These trust signals also contribute to Google’s evaluation of E-A-T of a website as part of their algorithms, which we will cover in later sections of this article.


Google searches

Start typing in any brand name in Google and do not hit “enter”, you will get a list of suggested queries in a drop-down. These suggestions are referred to as Google Auto-suggest, and it is a common occurrence to see “brand + reviews” as a suggestion. Queries appear on this list because they are popular. Which is why it is important to ensure that you have positive reviews floating out there on the Internet, especially during times of uncertainty.

Google Search Engine Results Page

If users aren’t familiar with your brand or website, they are going to search for your “brand + review” in Google in order to conduct their own research. It is said that [88%](https://searchengineland.com/88-consumers-trust-online-reviews-much-personal-recommendations-195803) of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, and it is no surprise that reviews provide efficient social proof. 

### How customer reviews impact SEO

If implemented and executed accurately, user generated product reviews provide social proof that the product is legitimate and the number of reviews indicates that there has been numerous sales of the product. More importantly, the textual nature of user reviews provides keyword research content depth to product pages. If a user is going to be writing a product review, they are naturally going to mention the product name (primary keyword) and the features of the product (secondary keyword), contributing to juicy on-site relevancy signals which Google looks at when ranking websites.

It is well and good that some websites encourage their customers to leave native reviews through their eCommerce platform, but let’s face it, third-party validation from verified review websites plays a very important role when it comes to a website’s reputation, especially when you are a new brand or startup. 

That’s why it is so important that you get your business process right by collecting reviews through review platforms, and ensure a positive customer experience and affect positive change internally.

### Reputation and E-A-T

In September 2017, CNBC published an article interviewing Ben Gomes (VP of Search Engineering at Google) on how search works. In that article, he reveals that Google employs thousands of search quality raters to help evaluate the quality of search results when they are considering a tweak to their search algorithms. These search quality raters evaluate SERPs based on a document called the Quality Rater’s Guidelines which is a publicly accessible document.

To quote the article:

“Google contracts about 10,000 of these raters around the world, and while they cannot directly affect search results, their opinions help Google’s search team evaluate whether a given tweak should go through or not. Raters typically see old and new results side by side, and determine which are better.”

In the quality rater’s guidelines, there is a strong emphasis on E-A-T which stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. I want to bring your attention to section 4.0 and 5.0 of the document which highlights what they deem to be High Quality Pages and have a high level of E-A-T. Below are some snippets from the document:


high quality pages

Back to those on-site trust signals that were mentioned in earlier sections of this article... It is important to ensure that these trust signals are obvious and clearly outlined on your website.

reputation and google

They also make mention of the importance of reputation throughout the document, even providing instructions on how to determine the reputation of a website in question:

searching for business reputation

These are all hints that your overall business reputation plays a huge role in your E-A-T. In the CNBC article, it was said that their evaluations from the search quality raters guidelines have no direct impact on Google’s algorithms. Fast forward to February 2019, Google published a [whitepaper](https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/fighting-disinformation-across-our-products/) outlining their attempt in fighting disinformation in SERPs. To quote the whitepaper:

“*Our ranking system does not identify the intent or factual accuracy of any given piece of content. However, it is specifically designed to identify sites with high indicia of expertise, authority and trustworthiness.*”

This is a pretty clear indication that E-A-T is important, and that Google’s algorithm considers it when ranking websites.

### Focus on doing good business, even if difficult times

If you actually spend some time reading the Search Quality Rater’s Guidelines without an SEO lens, it is all about ensuring that your business has a good reputation. Having a good reputation is a byproduct of doing good business and doing good business is all about ensuring your customers are happy and satisfied. Word of mouth marketing is a really powerful tool which is free, and the effect of it compounds over time.

You can invest in SEO tools, hire the best SEO agency and spend millions in PR and digital advertising. but if your underlying reputation is bad - no amount of investment is going to fix that. Look internally and affect change, and the rest will follow.



Jason Mun is the Search Director for [Overdose](https://www.overdose.digital/) Digital. With over a decade of search experience, he leads the charge on all things SEO for both the Melbourne and wider global offices.

How to manage your SEO in difficult times

brand affinity for organic search

If your business would benefit from more traction in organic search, you should consider focusing on brand affinity marketing. Here’s why it affects SEO. 

Let’s take off our marketing hats for a moment and remember that at the end of the day, we’re consumers, we’re internet users, and first and foremost — we’re all human. That’s exactly why we tend to gravitate towards businesses that feel less like a provider of a good or service, and more like a brand we can connect with [emotionally and ethically](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/build-trusted-brand/the-rise-of-belief-driven-buying-3-ways-to-protect-your-online-reputation).

But it’s not only up to brands to communicate their values and trustworthiness to potential customers. In our logged-on world, we look for recommendations from friends, family, and even strangers on the internet, to determine what we purchase. It’s plain to see that building a reputable brand that consumers actively promote creates a feedback loop that tends to pay off on organic channels — and especially organic search. 

If your business would benefit from more traction in organic search, you should consider focusing on brand affinity marketing. Here’s why it affects SEO. 

## Brand affinity 101: how it works

[Brand affinity](https://www.thebalancesmb.com/boost-brand-affinity-2296927) is a concept (and sometimes a metric) used by marketers to help predict how consumers will behave when faced with a purchasing decision. In short, it describes a segment of consumers who believe a certain brand aligns with their values. When consumers feel this way about a brand, it tends to build a lasting relationship and keep them coming back for the long haul. 

But how is this different from brand awareness? Simply put, brand affinity stems from [customer advocacy](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/build-trusted-brand/your-guide-to-customer-advocacy-what-is-it-and-why-is-it-important), whereas awareness stems from brand exposure from activities like paid social campaigns — which too many businesses don’t realize, when done in excess, can actually [harm customer sentiments](https://business.trustpilot.com/guides-reports/build-trusted-brand/can-online-reviews-revive-consumer-trust-in-advertising) about their brand. 

According to brand affinity experts at [Wistia](https://wistia.com/about/brand-affinity-marketing), almost all brand building activities today hinge on increasing awareness, under the false pretense that awareness leads to brand affinity. The reality is that quality over quantity is key for boosting brand affinity. No matter how many times a consumer has interacted with your brand, they’re unlikely to feel much brand affinity unless those interactions contain some emotional depth.

So what does it look like when your audience has a strong sense of brand affinity for your company? 

Though it can take many forms, brand affinity can be quantified with some help from [social proof](https://business.trustpilot.com/guides-reports/build-trusted-brand/why-and-how-social-proof-influences-consumers) like social media mentions or [customer reviews](https://business.trustpilot.com/features/service-reviews). 

## The role of brand affinity in organic search

Ten years ago, Google’s search results for transactional queries were [pretty easy to game](https://searchengineland.com/new-york-times-exposes-j-c-penney-link-scheme-that-causes-plummeting-rankings-in-google-64529). That’s why for the better part of the last decade, Google has been on the lookout for certain ranking factors (like [brand signals](https://moz.com/blog/the-next-generation-of-ranking-signals)) to help them determine how high pages should rank in the SERPs. 

In many ways, search engines are a giant feedback loop — Google’s M.O. is to serve up the highest quality, most reputable results so happy searchers will come back to them to answer future queries. To help them find the best results out there, Google’s algorithm considers certain signals that help them differentiate the “brands” (read: who have online evidence of their brand affinity) from the “generics” (the sites that Google suspects offer a poor customer experience). 




Yes, Google looks at a ton of inputs to determine the quality of a search result, but it’s safe to say that the powers that be appreciate it when some of the guesswork around a brand’s quality is done on their behalf. 

So, capturing and displaying your brand affinity online, right where Google can see it, is a great way to climb up the ranks in organic search. 

## How to show off your brand affinity to search engines 

While the online landscape is constantly changing with new channels for brand engagement being introduced all the time, there are some pretty timeless methods you can use to make sure your company’s brand affinity is visible in the eyes of Google. Here are three of the best ways to show your off your brand affinity to search engines.

### 1. Target informational queries with top funnel content marketing

While many marketing activities are laser-focused on conversions, [top funnel content marketing](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2017/04/funnels-content-marketing/) is a great opportunity to introduce yourself and provide value to your target audience without asking anything in return. Sometimes that means broaching a content topic that your marketing personas are sure to care about, even if the topic is only tangentially related to your product or service. 

If you want to boost brand affinity through content marketing, consider targeting top funnel informational queries in addition to the exact commercial keywords you’re going after. Winning readers’ attention in these early moments of their customer journey can actually bias future commercial searches towards your brand.

This kind of bias, along with the feedback loops at play, work together to reinforce the power of brand affinity in organic search. [Search Engine Journal](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-guide/brand-building-strategy/#close) says it best: 

“You may have never heard of Brand X, but if enough other people have heard of Brand X, then it will have a higher average CTR — and a more prominent position on the SERP. That feedback loop always existed in Google Ads because of Quality Score. Big brands have had huge advantages thanks to brand affinity. People tended to click on ads from brands they knew.
Now the same thing is happening in organic search. There’s a kind of feedback loop where brands you see in search now more closely correlate to the overall popularity of that brand.”

So, aspiring big brands take note: even if readers don’t convert the first time they interact with your site, providing real value without asking for anything in return increases the likelihood that people will remember your business, return to you when they’re ready to convert, and you guessed it — it’ll ignite their brand affinity towards your company. 

### 2. Start collecting reviews to spotlight brand affinity and boost your off-page SEO

For obvious reasons, collecting and displaying customer feedback in the form of online reviews is one of the most straightforward ways to put a spotlight on all of the affinity felt towards your brand. What’s less obvious is that brand-building tactic can also move the needle in organic search because of its role in off-page SEO.

Off-page SEO sums up all the actions you take outside of your actual website that help you come across as authoritative, relevant, and trustworthy in the eyes of Google. Here’s a look at how it works:


This is equally important whether you’re an online or local business: According to [Ahrefs](https://ahrefs.com/blog/off-page-seo/#why-is-off-page-seo-important), off-page “review signals” are the third most important factor for ranking in Google’s “snack pack” results, and the fifth most important ranking factor in local organic search.  

Not only that, but collecting reviews signals to Google — and your future customers — that you’re a brand that can be trusted, and third-party review platforms can strengthen that trustworthy association even further.

Think about it this way: When people search for reviews of your brand, what do they find? If you collect reviews through a third-party platform with strong domain authority like [Trustpilot](https://business.trustpilot.com/why-trustpilot), they’re highly likely to find your profile page complete with [review snippets](https://business.trustpilot.com/features/review-seo) at the top of the SERPs.

### 3. Grow a social media community around your brand

We’ve established above that brand affinity can lead to higher CTR in the SERPs, so it makes sense to build an authentic and reputable brand anywhere your future customers might be. 

Chances are they’re on social media. 

Growing a community around your brand on social boosts brand affinity outside of organic search, but its effects can certainly carry over to organic search thanks to the power of off-page SEO. When a company takes steps to monitor and listen to their online communities, and even interact directly with customers, it creates a better relationship with not only that specific customer, but all of the onlookers online. 

For this reason, it’s important to put effort into your [social media presence](https://www.thebalancesmb.com/boost-brand-affinity-2296927) to create the kind of brand affinity that carries over to organic search. Here are some tactics to get started:

- Monitor and respond to what followers are saying about your products or services
- Reply thoughtfully to as many comments as you can
- Show off your customer service prowess in the comments 
- Use your social channels to offer valuable (and shareable) content without asking anything in return from your followers

Taking measures to establish a strong connection with your followers only increases the [trustworthiness of your brand](https://business.trustpilot.com/guides-reports/build-trusted-brand/6-ways-to-make-trust-your-essential-brand-differentiator) — and the odds that your followers will spread the word about your business. 

## Embracing the long game of brand affinity for organic search

Too often businesses funnel their time and marketing budgets into optimizing for the platform delivering their branded messages instead of the people consuming the brand. At the end of the day, you can optimize your website as much as you want for what Google wants to see, but what your customers want to see is still paramount for success in organic search and beyond. 

To master brand affinity is to master the long game — an approach that can feel foreign in our world of instant gratification and real time performance metrics. As you can see, brand affinity tends to be a byproduct of creating better customer experiences, which doesn’t usually happen overnight. 

Whether giving your customers what they want means delivering valuable content for free, rolling out real time customer service on social, or varying your product offering in light of customer feedback — if you zero in on what that means for your business, organic traffic-boosting brand affinity is sure to follow.

### Ready to jumpstart your brand affinity marketing?

The first step is building up a trustworthy brand reputation. Don't miss your free copy of "6 Ways to Make Trust Your Essential Brand Differentiator" below. 

How to use brand affinity to unlock organic search opportunities

Google Rich Snippets Update September 2019

Google Review Snippets Update September 2019

As of September 2019, online service, company, and local reviews are no longer eligible for review snippet stars in organic search. However, your pages with product reviews are still eligible for rich snippet stars, and so are Trusptilot profile pages.

## First off, what are Review Snippets?

Review Snippets are a line of additional information on a search result that can include stars and ratings (which we’ll discuss in this article). They’re usually leveraged by businesses to make certain results stand out in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). 

If you'd like to find out more, watch this [quick video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-kX0Aut-18) from Google. 


Example of Rich Snippet stars in organic search results

Example of Review Snippet stars

## So, what has changed exactly and why does this concern me?

In short, self-serving reviews are no longer eligible for review snippets. Reviews that can be perceived as “self-serving” aren't in the best interest of users. 

What Google calls “self-serving” reviews is when a review about entity A is placed on the website of entity A - either directly in their markup or via an embedded third-party widget. 

With this change, Google will not be displaying review-rich results anymore for the LocalBusiness and Organization (and their subtypes) schema types, in cases where the entity being reviewed controls the reviews themselves - regardless of whether the reviews are collected by a third-party platform like Trustpilot.

In the example below, the first three search results demonstrate Review Snippet stars for the term ‘Surewise reviews’.

After the update, the Surewise.com’s search results will no longer have Review Snippet stars, but you’ll notice that Surewise’s Trustpilot Profile Page has retained its stars: 


review snippet before after example

### What does this mean for your business? 

- This means you'll no longer see Review Snippets in organic search results from service, company, or local reviews coming from your own website.
- However, any product pages using product reviews are still eligible for Review Snippet stars.
- You will still see Review Snippets in search results for your business profile page on Trustpilot.

The change is in effect as of __September 16th, 2019__.

## Can I get my Review Snippet stars back?

Unfortunately, there is no way to gain back Richey with Google’s new [Review Snippet guidelines](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/review-snippet#technical-guidelines) and regardless of which review source you reference.

However, you can still get review snippet stars with Product Reviews for your product pages.

## Has my Trustpilot company profile page lost its Review Snippet stars too?

Not at all. As you can see in the examples above and below, these are not impacted by this change and are among the few types of pages that comply with the Google's new [Review Snippet guidelines](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/review-snippet#technical-guidelines).


Trustpilot profile pages still have review snippet stars

As a leading online review platform, free and open to all, Trustpilot continues to be a third-party source of credible, authentic, trusted review content.

## Does this affect Product Reviews too?

No, this change only affects organization and local review markup and does not include the product markup. Here is an example:


Trustpilot product reviews still get review snippets

### So, what are my best next steps?

1. Gain Review Snippet stars for all your product pages by collecting and displaying product reviews.
2. Ensure you’re collecting reviews on a third-party platform like Trustpilot that can help enhance your reputation in organic search results with a profile page.
3. On branded Google searches, give your business profile page as much visibility as possible. You can do that by [enriching your Trustpilot page](https://support.trustpilot.com/hc/en-us/articles/202616716-Customize-your-company-profile) with consumer-rich friendly content and contact details for support such as your email address or phone number. Finally, we recommend [linking to your profile page from your website by adding a TrustBox widget](https://support.trustpilot.com/hc/en-us/articles/203840826-Add-a-TrustBox-widget-to-a-webpage) for example. You can also link to it from your social media accounts and posts.
4. Ensure you [qualify for Google Seller Ratings](https://support.trustpilot.com/hc/en-us/articles/202607413-Google-Seller-Ratings-Get-seller-rating-stars-for-your-AdWords-campaigns) to help build your reputation in your Google text and Shopping Ads.

As a result of this change, we are updating all of our articles, materials, and web pages — in all languages — over the next few weeks. Please bear with us as we manage to get through it all. 

We hope this was helpful to you and reach out to us if you have any questions in regards to Trustpilot.

The Trustpilot Team 

Google Review Snippet update: What it means for businesses

Google Seller Ratings new feature 2018

Google Seller Ratings example

Google seller ratings are an automatic extension that is displayed globally to customers to help them find businesses that offer quality services. 

__*Up until now*__, the current score that was generated for a domain was comprised of data from global sources into a single score. The extension appeared automatically if a business had 150 unique reviews, and a 3.5/5 rating or above. But this has now changed.

### So, what can I expect?

Two things.

First of all, Google will begin displaying Seller Ratings on a per-country basis to better reflect your customers’ experience in a specific country. 

Second of all, Google has lowered the Seller Ratings threshold of reviews required to 100 per country,  instead of 150 global reviews. The reviews from users in a particular country will only contribute to the company’s rating in that country.

### When did Google update Seller Ratings?

This is now live in English speaking markets and more countries are coming soon according to Google.

### How do I know if I have Seller Ratings in each country now?

- Go to the following URL: https://www.google.com/shopping/ratings/account/metrics?q=example.com&v=2&c=xx
- Replace "example.com" with your domain (without "www.")
- Replace “__xx__” with a country code (us, dk, fr, en, de, gb, se etc.)

### How do I know if I’ll be able to keep my Seller Ratings?

Firstly, you will need to maintain a high standard of service, so that __your average review score is above 3.5/5__. 

Next, you’ll need to be collecting enough reviews. You will need to have __at least 100 reviews in the last 12 months in a given country__, for your business to be eligible for GSR in that country. This means that you need to send invitations to your customers to invite them to review your services. 

If your conversion rate for review invitations is around 10% or more, you need to be sending minimum 1,000 invitations per year, per country to collect more than 100 reviews.

If you’re sending more than 2,000 invitations per country every 12 months, you should be safe (assuming your response is above 5% and your score is above 3.5/5).

If you’re sending less than 2,000 invitations and/or have a response rate of less than 5%, you will need to take action.

### How will that affect companies depending on their number of reviews?

As a Google Review Partner, and as review platform with more than 50,000,000 reviews on almost 250,000 domains worldwide, we’ve looked into our data to help estimate the effect of these changes, assuming that customers are only using Trustpilot reviews.

We have looked at all domains who have collected verified reviews in the last 12 months using Trutspilot's invitations service and have estimated the effect of changes in GSR rules to these. 

We’ve excluded domains with below 100 verified reviews, as these don’t qualify.




the effect of google seller rating changes 2018 Trustpilot

As seen above, this is great news for companies with 100 to 149 invited reviews per year range, giving them the opportunity to gain GSRs when it was previously out of reach. Indeed, about 73% of them should qualify for GSR in at least 1 country where they didn’t before. Every domain that qualified under the old rules should be able to qualify in at least one market now.

When looking at companies with 150 to 249 reviews, we estimate that around 94% will keep their qualification in at least one country, and only around 5% will lose it completely. 

### Is this change a good or a bad thing?

Please note, GSRs can be obtained by collecting feedback from multiple sources, so we can only speak about reviews that have been left on Trustpilot. 

However, according to our data, we believe the following is an educated and directional guess on how these changes will affect most companies.

We estimate that 7 times more domains are likely to gain GSRs in at least 1 market than lose GSRs in all markets. However, that is looking at GSRs as a binary Yes/No question. The changes will make it much more complex to navigate for companies.

Here’s our research:


Trustpilot research and findings Google seller ratings 2018

Our data suggests that many companies may lose GSRs in multiple markets. 

Example3.com above has 10 countries with just 1-10 reviews and will therefore lose GSRs in these countries. However, countries with only one review/country suggest that reviews aren’t really important in these markets, therefore, losing GSRs shouldn’t be a problem to them.

### I’ve lost my Seller Ratings, how do I get the extension again?

As mentioned in the previous section, you need __100 unique reviews per country within a 12 month period, and a rating of 3.5/5 stars or better__. 

Reach out to your Trustpilot customer success manager to see if there’s anything you can do to increase your number of reviews.

### How can you help me collect more reviews?

If you’re not collecting enough reviews and not sending enough invites a year, you’ve come to the right place! 
Indeed, at Trustpilot, we like making life easier for you and your customers! That’s why we’ve developed invitation templates with dynamic content that let you personalise and customise your emails. 

Our platform includes a wide range of invitation methods that support every type of business and helps you get as many reviews as possible, thanks to our automated system. Indeed, every time someone purchases something from you, Trustpilot sends an email invite on your behalf, allowing you to build up your number of reviews, and therefore qualify for Seller Ratings.

Trustpilot’s optimised review invitation templates and Reminders have an average response rate of 11%. If you use both, you should only need to send 1,000 invitations yearly to potentially qualify for Seller Ratings as you should be collecting +100 reviews for that country.


trustpilot invite

Please bear in mind that collecting 100 reviews for a specific country doesn’t guarantee you will acquire Seller Ratings. This is up to Google.

If you think your customers might miss your first email, worry no more! We’ve got you covered with our invitation Reminder template. A Reminder is sent to customers who didn’t write a review (you can set the delay). These can increase your conversion rate by up to 35%.

If you’d like to hear more about how Trustpilot can help you collect more than 100 reviews, [check out our support centre](https://support.trustpilot.com/hc/en-us/), or [request a demo today](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/get-started/request-demo)!

If you have more questions about the new Google Seller Ratings feature, please get in touch with the Google Ads team.


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