Shoppers in the US will soon see ratings in Google’s Product Listing Ads, as the search giant looks to lure more companies on board with the promise of better click-throughs.
While the temptation for you and me may be to skim over anything ‘Sponsored’ in our online searches, this is an easy way for Google to further blur the lines between organic and paid search, as it gives the listings an extra air of authority. And it also makes the ads more useful for shoppers, as it pulls on real review data from across the Web.
“We believe these ratings will help differentiate products across google.com and google.com/shopping and will help merchants drive more qualified traffic through Product Listing Ads,” explains Mike Capsambelis, Product Manager, Google Shopping, in a blog post today. “In initial tests, product ratings also helped increase click-through-rates of Product Listing Ads.”
This is how the Sponsored product searches looks to most people now:
And now, for those in the US of A:
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The product ratings will appear across both the main Google Search homepage, and on the Google.com/shopping portal, garnered from ratings and reviews from merchants, aggregators, review sites, and more. However, Google says that ratings may not always be shown, even if the product does have reviews, as it is just “one of several extensions” it may show within Product Listing Ads. It’s also worth adding here that to enable product ratings on your Ads, things can be kickstarted by completing the product ratings form.
Though this is for US-only merchants at the moment, it will be opening up to other markets in the coming months too.
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