anyone done any research on seller rating extensions? It
looks really simple (pull in ratings from various review sites, get any reviews input directly into Google, average star rating, sorted) but if you start doing the maths on that it doesn't seem to add up. Also they are meant to appear on adwords
QuoteIf your online store is rated in Google Product Search, you have 4 or more stars, and you have at least 30 reviews, you'll automatically get seller ratings with your ads.
but sometimes those little stars don't appear when you have a lot more than 30 reviews, and then just switch on. I wonder if you need 30 reviews direct into Google?
I think I'll have to spend a day playing with numbers and excel, but if anyone else has already done it please let me know, if they're weighting some review sites over others, which I would personally looking at some of the places they list as sources, then I'd quite like to know which to send happy customers to.....
I've used eKomi (http://www.ekomi.co.uk/uk/) to get reviews from customers into G. Works really well. I've seen an uplift in conversions from Google Products (formally Froogle) which heavily features reviews.
I've also seen the reviews showing in Adwords.
yes definate uplift on clicks - although that may settle back once everyone has the stars.
here's the official info http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/06/introducing-seller-rating-extensions-on.html - its been in the UK about a month I think but it certainly didn't appear all at once for everyone with more than 30 reviews.
Easiest way to definately kick it in is to get reviews direct into Google, and to be honest if you sell cheap stuff I would mechanical turk it through Google Checkout and let the buyer keep the product (they are doing consumer research for you, right? thats a standard procedure on consumer research). That way you definately tick all the boxes and it was definately a legit purchase through checkout so the review should pass all 'intent checks'
My issue though is that the sums don't add up under reasonable scrutiny. Sites which have under three stars on every review site which google lists as pulling in for them then show 4* on the Google rankings, and other seemingly random crazy stuff. There must be some type of weighting or uplift based on something. I was hoping someone else might have done the hard work but an excel sheet and a bit of a play will get it sorted I expect. Showing the stars on PPC has shifted it up my priorities because its a much more direct impact on the CTR than its been having with product....
this is by no means certain and the numbers don't entirely add up whatever way I do it, but where one of the review sites which rankings are pulled in from uses a 10 poimt system ( www.resellerratings.com for example) it often seems that the Google ratings do add up if you take the score out of 10 as the mean for that store rather than the score out of 5.
Which is strange, because this frequently resuts in a score of more than 5, and you'd think it would be noticed in the logic. Obviously there may be other factors, there could easily be a weighting on the mean average of a sites scores against a global 'average', or a multiplier based on the 'reliability' of the review site.
Its also common to find Google ratings in excess of 4 where the average of all ratings it claims to be counting is 3.5 or below. There are a lot of ways to calculate average but there seems to be no pattern. Other than (and this is surely co-incidence) most where I have seen this have a reasonable adsense spend.....