How to Get Star Ratings on Google Shopping Listings From Shopify

Star ratings on Google Shopping listings come from a product ratings feed: a file of your product reviews that you submit to Google Merchant Center, where Google matches each review to a product in your catalogue. Review markup on your product pages does not put stars on Shopping listings, and Google requires at least 50 reviews across your products before it shows ratings there. This guide explains the difference between product ratings and seller ratings, how matching works, the setup at a high level, and what to check when the stars do not appear.

What is the difference between product ratings and seller ratings?

Product ratings describe an item. Seller ratings describe your store. They show in different places, come from different data, and are set up separately.

• Product ratings are the stars beside a specific product in Shopping results. They answer 'is this product any good?' and are built from reviews of that product.
• Seller ratings are a score for the business as a whole: delivery, service, returns. They answer 'is this shop reliable?' and are drawn from reviews of the shopping experience, which Google gathers through separate channels.

A product ratings feed does nothing for seller ratings, and the reverse is also true. This article is about product ratings. If your question is about stars under ordinary search results, that is a third system, based on markup on the page, and it is covered in why review stars are not showing in Google.

What do you need before you start?

Three things have to be in place.

1. A Merchant Center account with your products approved. Ratings attach to products Google already knows about. If your product feed has disapprovals, fix those first.
2. At least 50 reviews across your products. This is Google's minimum for showing product ratings, as noted in our guide to collecting verified product reviews on Shopify. It is a total across the catalogue, not a figure for each product.
3. Reliable product identifiers. Every reviewed product needs an identifier that is the same in your review data as in your product feed.

Below the minimum, your effort is better spent on collecting reviews than on feed configuration. How to spread reviews across a catalogue is discussed in how many reviews a product needs.

How does Google match reviews to products?

By product identifiers. Each review in the feed carries identifiers for the product it describes, and Google looks for the same identifiers in your product data. The main ones are:

• GTIN: the barcode number, where the product has one. This is the strongest match, because it identifies the product globally.
• SKU: your own stock code. It works when the SKU in the review feed is identical to the one in the product feed.
• Brand and MPN: the brand name with the manufacturer's part number, used where there is no GTIN.

Matching failures are often data hygiene problems in Shopify and nothing to do with the feed itself:

• the barcode field is empty or contains an internal code that is not a real GTIN;
• SKUs differ between variants in ways the review data does not record;
• the product feed uses one form of ID and the review feed another.

Before submitting anything, export your products and check that every item with reviews has a barcode or a consistent SKU.

How do you set it up in Merchant Center?

At a high level there are four stages. Google changes its screens and wording from time to time, so follow its current instructions for the detail.

1. Enable product ratings in your Merchant Center account. Product ratings are a programme you opt into, and Google asks you to accept its policies for it.
2. Generate the feed. The feed is a structured file listing each review with its rating, text, date, reviewer name and product identifiers, in the format Google specifies. Your reviews app should produce it and keep it current.
3. Submit the feed. You give Merchant Center the location of the file and a schedule on which to fetch it, so that new reviews are picked up without manual uploads.
4. Wait for processing. Google checks the feed and reports errors. Fix what it flags and let the next fetch run.

Marka Reviews includes a Google Shopping product ratings feed on its paid plans, Growth and Scale.

Which reviews should go in the feed?

Only genuine reviews of that product, collected from your own customers, and all of them, not a favourable selection. Google sets policies for the programme, and the feed is a statement to Google about where your reviews came from.

Two points to watch:

• Include the critical reviews. A feed with the low ratings removed misrepresents the product.
• Be cautious with imported reviews. Reviews copied from a supplier's listing were not collected from your customers. Read Google's policy before including any, and see importing AliExpress reviews to Shopify for the wider issue.

Why might the stars still not appear?

Because Google decides when to display ratings, and an accepted feed makes you eligible without obliging Google to show anything. If stars are missing some time after the feed has been accepted, check these in order:

1. The feed status. Look for errors or rejected reviews in Merchant Center.
2. The match. Confirm that the reviewed products have matching identifiers. A review that matches no product cannot be shown.
3. The total. Check you are above the 50-review minimum.
4. The product. Ratings are shown product by product, so an item with no matched reviews has nothing to display.
5. Time. New feeds and new reviews take a while to be processed and reflected.

No one outside Google can promise the stars will show, or say when. What you control is a clean feed, accurate identifiers and a steady flow of real reviews.

A short checklist

1. Clear product disapprovals in Merchant Center.
2. Confirm you have at least 50 reviews across your products.
3. Fill in GTINs, or make SKUs consistent, for every reviewed product.
4. Opt in to product ratings and accept Google's policies.
5. Submit a feed generated by your reviews app, on a fetch schedule.
6. Read the processing report and fix unmatched reviews.

Shopping stars depend on review volume and on tidy product data more than on the feed. Once both are in place, Marka Reviews can supply the product ratings feed on its paid plans, and whether the stars are displayed remains Google's decision.