Comments on: Stars on AdWords : Seller Ratings Hits the UK

By: Google Seller ratings and the advent of customer/competitor terror campaigns | On Internet Business

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 20:42:13 +0000

[...] to Patrick Altoft, seller ratings have a direct impact on quality score. A few negative reviews, perhaps from a [...]

By: martin

martin — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 13:34:57 +0000

@anmol, its not really a true representaion of all sellers as your ratings only show if you have a 4 or more star rating see http://www.google.com/ads/innovations/ratings.html

Also whats interesting is if a user clicks on the star rating part of you advert you dont get charged, however the user journey is awful as a business you dont get to edit the seller rating landing page (as far as im aware?) so no clear call to action or even “visit the website” link or anything is currently present.

Personally i think its currently not a good thing to have a star rating in the listings, yes it makes you more visible in the SERPS but if people click on the ratings chances are you’ve lost the chance on that particular user journey to convert them into an action. I would much prefer someone to reach my page and hopefully convert. As always a test is in order.

I’ve not seen any reports to see how many people click on your seller rating?

By: gadget

gadget — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 08:52:42 +0000

@Mikael. I’m not a lawyer but yes, I believe it is illegal as it is misleading, ie. not true. The grey area is if it is a genuine purchase, the argument being if it was a genuine review or biased. I’d avoid this.

I’ve recently started to use the hReview feature but have yet to see any results in the natural search. Does anyone have any advice or experience of using microformats?

By: anmol

anmol — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 13:56:31 +0000

This is a great way of finding out the reputation of the seller a bit live amazon and ebay. I always buy form high rated sellers.

By: Shamayne

Shamayne — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 20:20:02 +0000

I am glad to see that this campaign did not leave the UK out.

By: Carly

Carly — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 08:33:35 +0000

Interesting points! I will keep an eye out for these seller ratings. It is alarming that this process is open to manipulation by competitors especially for smaller businesses who would receive fewer reviews and therefore would be easier to manipulate their ratings. I wonder how this will affect which businesses use a pay per click campaign.

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 07:52:29 +0000

I assume that if you dont link your google base account to your adwords then the star ratings won’t appear?

Also if you don’t have any ratings, therefore no stars you’d assume your going to get a lower CTR as the stars will attract the searches eye.

By: AdWords Seller Ratings – UK Seeing Stars

AdWords Seller Ratings – UK Seeing Stars — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 07:33:39 +0000

[...] Google introduced its AdWords seller ratings feature in the U.S. in June. As of Sunday, it appears the U.K. is now getting this service as well on Google.co.uk, Blogstorm reports. [...]

By: Starstruck

Starstruck — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 19:12:16 +0000

Presumably if they weren’t customers, it would be.

Not impressed by this development at all – how long before we see jobs on digitalpoint for “50 1-2 star reviews of a website” as people sabotage competitors, then we’ll have a corresponding thread from someone else wanting to buy 5 star ones to undo the effects of false reviews.

I’d much prefer it if the business owner could opt out of the reviews, but that in itself might make people wary of your site.

By: Leon

Leon — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 15:39:46 +0000

I am sure incentivising customers to provide feedback is also wrong, but I have noticed loads of retailers promoting feedback via prize draws, I think a few customers think they have a better chance of winning if they say nice things.