Seller ratings are the gold stars and review count that Google can show beside a search or Shopping ad, scoring the business as a whole rather than any single product. They are an automated asset: you cannot type them in, and Google adds them only when it holds enough recent, genuine reviews of your shop.
How seller ratings work
Google gathers reviews of your business from several places. The main ones are Google Customer Reviews, a free programme in which buyers are invited to rate their experience after checkout, and independent review platforms that pass their data to Google. Google may also draw on its own research into the shopping experience a site offers. The scores are tied to the domain your ad points to, so a rating earned on one website does not carry over to another.
The ratings are counted country by country. A UK business advertising to UK searchers needs reviews written by UK customers; a pile of reviews from shoppers in Ireland or the US will not earn stars on ads shown in Manchester. Google also sets a minimum number of reviews and a minimum average score before stars appear. Those thresholds have changed over the years, so check Google’s current help page rather than trusting a figure quoted in an old blog post.
Seller ratings are easy to confuse with two neighbours. Product ratings score an individual item and appear on Shopping ads. The reviews on your Google Business Profile describe a physical location and appear in Maps and local results; they do not feed seller ratings. At the time of writing (October 2026), Merchant Center also refers to these business-level scores as store ratings.
Why it matters
Stars change how an ad looks on the page. A searcher comparing four online shops selling the same boiler part sees one listing with a rating and a review count, and that listing feels safer to buy from. Google treats seller ratings like other ad assets: their expected effect on click-through feeds into your Ad Rank, so they can help the ad compete without raising the bid.
There is also a legal angle for UK businesses. Under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, buying fake reviews, writing them yourself or hiding the fact that a review was incentivised has been a banned practice since April 2025, and the Competition and Markets Authority can act on it directly. Seller ratings built on doubtful reviews are a risk, not an asset.
Common mistakes
- Collecting reviews on a platform that does not share data with Google, then wondering why no stars appear.
- Gathering reviews from overseas customers and expecting them to count towards UK ads.
- Asking only happy customers to leave a review, a practice known as review gating, which most platforms forbid.
- Offering a discount for a five-star review. An incentive may only be offered for an honest review of any score, and it must be disclosed.
- Pointing ads at a different domain or subdomain from the one the reviews are attached to.
- Treating the stars as a target in themselves while delivery times and returns, the things customers complain about, stay unchanged.
How to act on it
Pick one review source that Google accepts and use it consistently. For many UK online shops the simplest route is Google Customer Reviews, which you switch on in Merchant Center and connect to your order confirmation page. Ask every buyer, not just the ones you expect to be pleased, and time the request for after delivery so the review reflects the whole experience.
Reply to critical reviews politely and fix the cause. Keep a simple log of your average score and monthly review count, because the score Google uses is based on recent reviews and can slip if collection stops. A structured review generation process does more for your ads than any bid change. When I take on PPC management for a shop, checking whether stars are eligible is part of the first week’s audit.