Discover how to integrate Omnisend Reviews with Google Shopping to display product ratings on your ads and free listings.
How It Works
Google Product Ratings Requirements
Google enforces comprehensive guidelines for product reviews:
Minimum Number of Reviews. A minimum of 50 reviews from real customers is required.
Inclusion of All Reviews. All reviews, both positive and negative, must be included without filtering based on rating.
Prohibited Content. Reviews must not infringe copyrights, contain offensive material, or appear spam-like.
Privacy Protection. Reviews should not include personal details such as full names, email addresses, or phone numbers.
Regular Synchronization. Reviews must be synchronized with Google at least monthly, although a daily sync is recommended. If you enable sync in Omnisend, we will generate and update the feed with the reviews at least once a day.
Compliance with Content Guidelines. Reviews must adhere to Google’s content policies, avoiding spam, identifying information (like phone numbers and emails), obscenity, offensive language, employee or friend-written reviews, paid reviews, illegal content, copyrighted or plagiarized material, sexually explicit content, hate speech, cross-promotion, off-topic reviews, impersonation, translated reviews, and duplicates.
Quality and Relevance. Reviews should be substantial and relevant. Superficial reviews (e.g., only emojis or simple praise like “love it!”) may not be displayed.
Ownership of Reviews. Only reviews that you own and have collected legitimately should be shared. Reviews collected through Omnisend Reviews meet this criterion.
Customer Images. If customer images are included, they must be high-quality, captured by the customers, and minimally edited.
For further details on Google's content policies for reviews, refer to their official guidelines.
Using Unique Product Identifiers
Google uses several methods to match ratings and reviews with products, focusing on globally unique product identifiers such as GTINs. It will display star ratings only when the system verifies that the information is accurate and relevant to customers.
Primary Identifier - GTINs. The most reliable way to match reviews with products is through globally unique product identifiers like Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs).
Alternative Identifiers. When GTINs are not available, Google can also match reviews using:
SKU (Stock Keeping Unit)
Brand and Manufacturer Part Number (MPN)
Product URLs
When submitting reviews to Google, ensure they are linked to the appropriate product using a globally unique identifier like a GTIN. Without a GTIN, Google can use an SKU, a brand and MPN pair, or a product URL to match the review to the product. Note that alternative identifiers may not provide as accurate a match as GTINs.
How to Use Google Retail
Step 1. Create an account
If you have a Google account (e.g., Gmail), you can create one by navigating to Google Merchant Center.
Step 2. Upload your product feed and wait for approval
You can follow Google's instructions to manually create and upload a product feed or utilize third-party apps on Shopify.
Note that Google typically takes around 10 business days to approve your products.
Step 3. Sign up for the product ratings program
To sign up for Google Merchants Product Ratings, please fill out their interest form.
Navigate to the Product Ratings Interest Form.
For 'Do you work with an approved third-party reviews aggregator?', choose 'No.'
3. Complete other questions based on your business.
Step 4. Confirm that Omnisend is your aggregator
Once you submit the form, Google will contact you within a few days with the following message.
Your aggregator, 'Omnisend Reviews', isn’t part of the Product Ratings program yet, so they won’t be able to submit a direct feed for you. Instead, you’ll need to send a direct product ratings feed to Google Merchant Center.
Please let us know if you would like to send a direct Product Ratings feed by replying to this email.
Please reply to this email to confirm that you will submit a direct product ratings feed.
Once Google confirms, you can see the Product Reviews tab in your Google Merchant Center account under Marketing.
Step 5. Generate and upload the product review feed
Navigate to the Omnisend account and go to the Reviews tab → Settings, or alternatively, you can find the settings in Store settings → Reviews.
Locate Google Shopping → move the toggle to Sync Omnisend Reviews to Google Shopping. Then, copy Your Google Shopping Feed URL.
To upload the feed, go back to your Google Merchant Center.
Step 1. Click Marketing on the left menu → go to Product Reviews → select Product Reviews in the top right corner → click + on the Feeds page.
Step 2. Give your feed a name → select Scheduled fetch and click Continue.
Step 3. Add the URL you copied from Omnisend → choose Daily for Fetch frequency → leave the Username and Password fields blank → click Create feed.
Please note that the Omnisend support team cannot assist with troubleshooting issues related to Google Merchant Center or Google Shopping. If you encounter any problems, please contact Google’s support.
Step 6. Follow up with Google
Google will review the feed manually, which will take approximately 2-4 weeks. Throughout this time, a representative from Google Shopping may contact you to ask about your reviews. If everything is satisfactory, Google will send you an email confirming the acceptance of your product reviews feed.
'I am happy to inform you that the Google Product Ratings feed for the store ... has been successfully integrated into our system. Attached are the screenshots of some of your reviews currently live online on Google Shopping pages.'
The feed for your product reviews should now be live. If the status hasn't changed after a few days, please get in touch with Google for more information.
Troubleshooting
Additionally, within the Product Reviews (in Google Merchant Center) tab, you can view the status of your reviews, even those that may not currently fulfill the requirements for appearing on Google Shopping.
General Issues
The entire process can take 2 to 6 weeks to complete. Provided that all details match up between the product feed and the reviews feed, your reviews should be visible in Google Shopping.
This section will highlight any warnings or errors that may be impacting the display of your reviews, as well as the specific reviews affected.
If your reviews are still not showing up, contact Google Shopping support to identify the problem.
Review Status Categories
Following a successful feed upload, your reviews will fall into the following categories:
Ready to Serve. These reviews have been processed successfully and include all recommended identifiers.
Needs Review. While these reviews have been processed successfully, they might lack values or the suggested unique identifiers.
Disapproved Items. Reviews in this category require corrections or removal.
'Missing or Invalid product_id' Error
Ratings and reviews are associated with products based on various factors, with globally unique product identifiers (GTINs) being the most influential if you see the "Missing or invalid product_id" error.
This typically indicates a missing GTIN.
Register your GTIN at https://www.gs1.org/standards/id-keys/gtin and integrate it into your Shopify product inventory.
When the GTIN value is added, it will be automatically included in the reviews feed.
Unsupported Review Format
When a review includes a URL, Google will not accept it.
Some reviews may contain characters that aren't supported and appear as
�.Google does not display reviews that are of low quality and fail to meet its standards.
Reviews that include personal information, such as phone numbers, email addresses, or URLs, may not be approved for display.
If your reviews mainly discuss shipping or delivery or lack relevant content, they are not relevant for Google Shopping.