Reviews Customer reviews FAQ
Set up review system
Need to change settings after installation? Read how to do that below.
Managing Reviews
Questions about the process around receiving customer reviews and how to handle them.
Google Seller Rating
Stars in Google Ads and Google Shopping
Wat is Google Seller Rating?
How do I activate Google Seller Rating?
What is the cost of Google Seller Rating?
What are the requirements to qualify to Google Seller Rating?
Requirements for Google Seller Rating
Not every online store qualifies for the Google Seller Rating. This is because the online store must meet some requirements to display the stars. We have listed them for you below:
- The online store has collected at least 100 unique reviews in the past 12 months. Unfortunately, this is no guarantee that the stars will actually be shown. Google has its own algorithm that removes duplicate reviews. To be sure your stars will be shown, you need to be a lot above 100. Also, if you have accumulated the 100 reviews within the past 4 weeks, the stars may not be shown (yet) due to Google's indexing process. This is because indexing takes an average of 4 weeks. Therefore, after reaching the required number of unique reviews, it may take another 4 weeks before the stars become visible.
- The average of the reviews is worth at least 3.5 out of 5 stars.
- You are not using URLs with subdomains.
- You have not intentionally "overshadowed" the stars within your Google Ads campaigns.
My stars from Google Seller Rating are not visible, how is that possible?
Google Seller Rating installed, but not visible?
Google Seller Rating installed, but not visible? Now you have activated and installed Google Seller Rating and find out that the stars are not visible. This could be due to several reasons:
- The online store has collected less than 100 unique reviews in the past 12 months. (Note that collecting at least 100 unique reviews does not guarantee the stars. Google has its own algorithm that they use to pick out duplicate reviews. To be sure your stars will be shown, you need to be a lot above 100.)
- The 100 unique reviews are from different countries. You must have collected at least 100 unique reviews coming from one country, as the Google Seller Rating stars go by country code.
- The online store has collected 100 reviews within the last 4 weeks. These are not shown (yet) due to Google indexing.
- The average of the reviews is lower than 3.5 out of 5 stars.
- You are using URLs with subdomains.
- You have intentionally (voluntarily or accidentally) "overshadowed" the stars within your Google Ads campaigns.
- Google Seller Rating stars are not visible through mobile search results.
- Google Seller Rating are not product reviews from Google Shopping. When activated, Google Seller Rating does show the percentage positivity of your reviews in Google Shopping.
Check whether your Google Seller Rating works
You can easily check if Google Seller Rating is working, don't do this by Googling your ads yourself. Because sometimes the stars are not displayed and sometimes they are. However, you can easily check if the Google Seller Rating is working through the following url. Copy this to your address bar, replace webwinkelkeur.nl by your own domain name:
https://www.google.com/shopping/ratings/account/lookup?q=webwinkelkeur.nl
Do you see a review score on the page you see, then the Google Seller Rating works. Google can now display stars with your Google Ads. Per search query, Google determines whether or not they do this.
Google Seller Rating stars not always visible?
You may see the Google Seller Rating stars appear one time and not the next. This may be due to these reasons:
- When you search multiple times (often consecutively) for the same search terms, it affects Google's search results. Both of the organic and paid results. This may cause Google to stop showing you the stars (for a while).
- Google itself determines the best times to show your Google Seller Rating stars. So you may not see them sometimes.
- Google remembers what you search for or have recently searched for (caching Google). Based on the cache, they determine whether the stars are relevant to you or not.
- Your bidding and Ad Rank also affect whether or not the Google Seller Rating is displayed. There is no fixed value for this, but an Ad Rank of 7 or higher is advised.
Practical example
We would like to show you that Google sometimes displays stars and sometimes not. This has nothing to do with a non-functioning link.
Search without stars
Search with stars
This example shows well that finding out if the Google Seller Rating works is difficult by searching your ads yourself. The only way to find out if your Google Seller Rating is working correctly is through the url as shown above. After that, whether they show stars or not will vary by search query and visitor.
Rich Snippet stars
Star ratings in Google's unpaid organic results
Rich snippet code testing
Many members choose to add rich snippet code to their online store. How can you test if this code is placed correctly?
Test the correct placement of the Rich Snippet code
To test the correct operation, you can use Google's Rich Results test.
1. In the "URL" field there, enter the URL of the page you want to test (for example, www.webwinkel.nl or www.webwinkel.nl/product).
2. Click on "TEST URL."
3. When you see a green text with green check mark (Page is eligible for rich results), then everything is set correctly.
Common errors
In many cases we see that this error message is caused by the use of an old "Data-vocabulary" code, which is officially no longer supported by Google as of April 6, 2020. When the error message is caused by such an old code you once got from us, we recommend to remove this code and use the rich snippet through the WebwinkelKeur sidebar option.
Proper placement rich snippet code no longer causes "Google Stars"
By activating the "rich snippets via the WebwinkelKeur sidebar" option, review information is structurally passed on to search engines like Google. Google only no longer uses this information to display stars, you can read all about that in the blog about Google's policy change. However, it is still useful to activate this option, since other search engines can still display stars and Google can use the information within its algorithm.
What is the difference between Google Seller Rating and rich snippets?
Google Seller Rating vs. Rich Snippets
Google Seller Rating is not the same as the rich snippets in Google. Whereas the rich snippets in Google shows the stars within the organic (unpaid) search results, Google Seller Rating shows the stars within the paid search results (ads & Google Shopping).
Example Google Seller Rating
Example rich snippets from Google
Although both stars look virtually the same, how they work is completely different. The rich snippets work via a code that you place on your own web store. WebwinkelKeur offers a ready-made option for this at no extra cost. The Google Seller Rating is obtained through a link with Google, the Google Seller Rating option can be activated through our dashboard. Thus, we offer both the rich snippets in Google and the Google Seller Rating. Also, watch this video to see the differences between the two stars.
How do I activate Rich Snippet stars?
Activating rich snippet stars
Activating rich snippet stars is easy. Before activation, we recommend you to read our blog about how Rich Snippet stars work. How do you get the rich snippets on your web store? You can easily activate the rich snippets via the Sidebar / Javascript integration. If you already have the sidebar active, you can easily activate the rich snippet integration with the following steps:
- Login to the dashboard with your personal login
- Click in the menu on Promotion and choose Sidebar
- Find the heading "RICH SNIPPET VIA JSON-LD" and check "Enable rich snippet".
- Click on Save
The rich snippet code is now active. On pages where our rich snippet code may conflict with rich snippet code of your product reviews, for example, our rich snippet code will not be loaded.
Activation of the Rich Snippet Stars via the WebwinkelKeur Sidebar
Detection of conflicting codes
You don't have to worry about our sidebar causing conflicts with, for example, product reviews on a product page. The sidebar automatically detects if there is already a conflicting code on the page. If that is the case, the sidebar will not load rich snippet code and the code already present on your web store will be leading.
Installation alternatives
An alternative is to install the rich snippets through one of our modules. For example, through our modules for Magento, Opencart, Prestashop, WordPress and Shoppagina, you can activate the rich snippet code and it will appear with an HTML code on your web store. If for some reason you don't want to use our sidebar or modules, you can also manually place the rich snippet code via HTML. Although we advise against this method, you can find the correct HTML code in the WebwinkelKeur dashboard. We do not recommend this method, because every time you get a review, the static HTML code becomes outdated and you have to manually update it periodically.