Yellow Ratings Stars in the Google SERPs

[EGOL]

I am seeing more and more of the Yellow "ratings stars" in the google SERPs.

If you do a search for "binoculars" you can see a few sites (mostly in the AdWords) that display the yellow stars.

These stars are starting to appear in some of my SERPs that I think that getting them on my SERP listings is an absolute "must do".  I think that they really grab the attention of the searcher and if you have great ratings they might bring you a lot of traffic and sales - add that to the benefits obtained from having them on your website.

Are you getting them on any of your sites?  Where is the data coming from?  Are you pleased with the performance of your ratings provider?

Any info you can provide is appreciated!

Thanks!

[heatherrobinson]

Hi

We're not seeing any for our sites, but I know the stars in the sponsored listings are coming from Google Product Search, and there's a bit more about this here: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/06/introducing-seller-rating-extensions-on.html

The stars in the organic listings, I believe, come from marking up your HTML with microformats (more on that here)

Google Adwords only displays the rating if it's 4 or 5 stars, so I can't see it having a negative impact.

I'd be interested to see if anyone has monitored this on their own site.

[dignan99]

I believe the stars show up if a rating threshold has been reached, e.g. 5+ reviews etc.

The addition to the paid area seems to be new though.

[zoicaremus]

Hello EGOL, I can give you a detailed answer for the Adwords ads. Probably it's similar for SEO

In Adwords they are enabled through the product reviews ad extension.

To get them enabled:

1. You have to submit our product data to Google. I understand that this was meant for products. I have seen in my research that they might show for loans or services, but I'm not 100% sure.
2. You have to be a client of the reviewcentre.com (or other few selected review web sites) and be reviewed by the users on their website. To be listed on reviewcentre.com you have to contact them at contactus@reviewcentre.com and provide the following information:

* Company or product name
    * Image or logo (Jpeg preferably)
    * Any information about the product or company we would like to be included on the page

3. After this you have to notify reviewcentre.com that you want to submit your reviews to Google.
4. For Google Product Search ratings to appear we must have at least 30 unique seller reviews.
5. We have to have a 4 star rating or above to have the review extension enabled.

Good luck, it will stars will surely improve CTR and draw more attention!

[EGOL]

Thank you for these really detailed responses.  I really appreciate them.

I am looking right now at resellerratings.com and powerreviews.com.   RR seems to be more focused on customer service but PR seems to associate more on a specific product.   How these will integrate into my cart will probably be the deciding factor.  PowerReviews has a big plus in that in can trigger user generated content that is spiderable.

[SWKurt]

Make sure you don't confuse STORE reviews from PRODUCT reviews. Very easy to do. Powerreviews and Bazaarvoice for instance help companies aggregate PRODUCT reviews. The ratings extension for Adwords and Google Product is a STORE review of a merchant. We have found the quickest way to get the ratings extension to fire is to post the store survey from Bizrate. It has been around forever which is why Google selected them as a primary review partner aggregator. Check out this post from Google and Bizrate Insights. http://googlemerchantblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/working-with-bizrate-for-trusted-seller.html

[EGOL]

Thank you Kurt.  Great info.

[Waplington]

Hi Remus,

I know you guys have closed this question a while ago, but I really hope you can help me out with this.

Our company is called theprintspace (www.theprintspace.co.uk) and we provide pro printing services for photographers (photographers comes to us with their images on a disc/order online and we print them out on professional photographic and fine art papers). We are technically more of a service.

I really want to list us on the Product Search because I want the seller rating extensions - however it seems this is more tailored to products, and not services. Do you have any advice how I could do this, and if not through Product Search is there any other way to get the Seller Ratings Extensions??

Many thanks in advance!