Posts tagged Rating
How Google’s Human Search Quality Raters Assign a URL Rating
Oct 19th
Google ran over 20,000 experiments in 2010 to come up with the 500 modifications they felt best improved search results for users. While there are over 200 factors, or signals, these constant updates affect their relevance and how they impact sear…
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Google Buys Zagat, Gives Itself Extraordinary Rating
Sep 8th
Google has bought Zagat, an innovator of user-generated restaurant surveys. Google promises that Zagat ratings and reviews, which are currently behind a paywall, will become a “cornerstone” of Google’s local offering. Terms of th…
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Wikipedia Rolling Out Article Rating System – What Do You Think?
Jul 18th
Love it or hate it, you can’t say Wikipedia is slow to innovate. The giant encyclopedia site announced this weekend that it will now roll-out site-wide an article rating system that allows page visitors to rate an entry on a scale of 1 to 5 on trustworthiness, objectivity, completeness and quality of writing. Article raters have the option of self-identifying as a subject matter expert for whatever article they rate.
Wikipedia says that after limited testing of the feature, user response has been overwhelmingly positive; readers have said they found the rating system useful, that they felt compelled to give feedback and have been shown increasingly likely to begin editing articles for the first time after using the rating tool. Data about article ratings is also made available for export and outside analysis under a Creative Commons license.
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Late last month, Wikipedia introduced a Love Button – a simple way for site users to give each other feedback on contributions to the site. The organization said that positive feedback was a key factor in new Editors coming back to continue improving the site. Making that feedback as easy as possible to give and receive is an important part of the site’s strategy to keep new editors engaged.
Rating articles looks like an even easier way for people to give feedback – and once you’ve started contributing that much, why not go a step further and improve the article you just rated?
That’s the funny thing about Wikipedia. More than six years ago, Wikipedia famously went head to head with the Encyclopedia Britannica in a study published in Nature magazine. The scientists who published the study found that in most, though not all, matters of fact and science – Wikipedia entries were superior to Britannica entries. That only begged the question: when they found areas the Wikipedia articles could be improved upon – did they hit the Edit button and do it?
That was six years ago; the site has grown and improved substantially since then. It’s grown more trusted and more used. Not everyone likes it, of course. See the comments on my post about the Love button, for example: some commenters called Wikipedia elitist, agenda-driven, filled with convenient untruths and they called me naive for calling the site an incredible asset to humanity.
We are, of course, all still figuring this internet thing out. Some of those critiques I would rate as low on objectivity but high on quality of writing, others as trustworthy but not terribly complete!
On balance I’ll call Wikipedia a big democratic net positive, with regular flashes of brilliance. I look forward to expressing that opinion in one through five starts, article by article, along with the millions of other opinionated people who regularly visit the site that strives for a neutral point of view.
Wikipedia says that after an initial test on 100,000 articles, the rating feature will now be rolled out in 370,000 page increments until it is live site-wide across 19 million articles, 3.6 of which are in English.
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Google Goes From C- To A- Rating At BBB In 10 Days
Oct 21st
About 10 days ago, we reported Google had a C- rating on the Better Business Bureau web site. In fact, for years, Google held a D rating on the BBB web site.
But a couple hours ago, Mike noticed Google’s BBB rating jumped to a B+. So I checked just now, 8:15am EST [...]
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View full post on Search Engine Land: News About Search Engines & Search Marketing
Google Improves From ‘Unsatisfactory’ To ‘C-’ Rating At BBB
Oct 10th
Is Google getting better at customer service? To the degree that you rely on Better Business Bureau ratings as an indicator of customer service, the answer might be “yes.” Over the past 27 months, Google’s BBB rating has gone from “unsatisfactory” — when the BBB used a pass/fail grading system — to a “C-” in [...]
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View full post on Search Engine Land: News About Search Engines & Search Marketing
Google Improves From ‘Unsatisfactory’ To ‘C+’ Rating At BBB
Oct 10th
Is Google getting better at customer service? To the degree that you rely on Better Business Bureau ratings as an indicator of customer service, the answer might be “yes.” Over the past 27 months, Google’s BBB rating has gone from “unsatisfactory” — when the BBB used a pass/fail grading system — to a “C-” in [...]
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View full post on Search Engine Land: News About Search Engines & Search Marketing
SEO Gets Rating System In Retailer Rankings – MediaPost Publications
Aug 12th
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SEO Gets Rating System In Retailer Rankings
MediaPost Publications Conductor helped Internet Retailer create and introduce a new metric, SEO Effectiveness, in which the publisher will evaluate the top 500 retailers. … Conductor and Internet Retailer Name Top Retailers for SEO Effectiveness |
View full post on SEO – Google News
“My God, It’s Full of Stars” – Seller Rating Extensions in Google AdWords
Aug 10th
If the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey were released in 2010 versus 1968, the classic line above may have been followed by a click-through to read reviews. Let’s find out why. Over the past year, Google AdWords has introduced a number of ad extensions that enable advertisers to provide additional information about their businesses and products.
For example, product extensions, location extensions, ad sitelinks, and phone extensions are all now available to advertisers. Each ad extension provides valuable information along with the paid search advertisement in question, such as phone numbers, links deeper into a website, addresses, and product visuals and pricing. In my experience with helping clients with paid search, I’ve definitely seen ad extensions make an impact. It’s easy to understand why. When you are dealing with such a limited space for your paid search ads, adding visuals and other valuable information can really make those ads stand out (and help you build credibility).
The Latest Ad Extension – Seller Rating Extensions
In late June, AdWords implemented seller rating extensions, which can show up along with paid search ads when people are searching for product information. Seller rating extensions include the merchant star rating for advertisers that are highly rated on Google Product Search. If you’re not familiar with Google Product Search, it’s an area of Google where shoppers can search products to compare prices, find reviews, and link to merchant websites to ultimately buy the products they are interested in. By setting up a Google Merchant Account, you can supply Google with a feed containing your product information. Once you set up the feed, shoppers can find your products via Google Product Search (and via your paid search ads by implementing product extensions).
If you run an e-commerce site and you haven’t set up a Google Merchant Account, you should – but only after reading the rest of my post. 
That said, although I think it’s important to set up a Google Merchant Account, it’s not required for seller rating extensions to work. I’ll provide more information about seller rating extension requirements later in this post.
How Seller Rating Extensions Can Impact Paid Search Performance
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I’ve provided two screenshots below of seller rating extensions showing up in the top three paid search listings (directly above the organic listings). How well do you think listings without seller rating extensions will perform when they are sitting next to two advertisers with seller rating extensions? Like I said earlier, minor enhancements to an ad can make a big difference in such a limited space.
Needless to say, having selling rating extensions show up with your ads can be an important element for building credibility and increasing click-through. Unless you’re a big brand, there’s a good chance that people searching for products don’t know your company and what other consumers think about your business. When these people are provided with a series of advertisements, which one will they click through? It very well could be the one showing a highly rated merchant, especially since they can click through to read the reviews on Google Product Search.
Unfortunately for advertisers without seller rating extensions, their ads could pale in comparison. And to make matters worse, advertisers without seller rating extensions might actually be excellent merchants with customers that love buying from them. There’s just a lack of reviews for the merchant… More on that soon. By the way, here is the page that shoppers can view once they click through to read the reviews. Shoppers have the ability to filter reviews by rating, topic, or by source.
How to Get Seller Rating Extensions
Now that you’ve seen seller rating extensions in action, I bet you’re wondering how to get them showing up along with your paid search ads. Good question, and the answer could mean some work for you. But that could be good for your business and I’ll explain why soon. First, I’ll list the criteria you’ll need to meet in order for seller rating extensions to show up with your ads.
Here are the requirements for having seller rating extensions show up (directly from the AdWords Help Center):
- Your campaign must be opted in to Google search.
- Your campaign must be targeted to the US only.
- Your business must have at least 30 unique reviews and a rating of four stars or above on Google Product Search.
The first two are easy…and the third one isn’t so easy (and is partly out of your control). Having customer reviews can help your business on several levels, and seller rating extensions is just one more reason to ensure your customers are reviewing your products. By the way, if you’re wondering how you are charged for seller rating extensions, Google only charges for clicks on the standard ad (when someone clicks the title of your paid search ad). If someone clicks through the ad extension to read reviews, you are not charged.
Where Reviews Come From and What You Can Do To Impact Your Rating Extensions
Google Product Search aggregates reviews from a number of sources, so there’s not just one place you can drive customers to in order to review your products. The AdWords Help Center lists several sources of reviews, including Reseller Ratings, Bizrate, ReviewCentre.com, Viewpoints, and Google Checkout reviews. You can perform some searches on Google Product Search and check the reviews to see other sources Google taps into for reviews. For example, I saw pricegrabber.com, Yahoo, epinions, MrRebates.com, etc. Once you understand the various sources, it’s time to get more reviews.
Getting More Reviews (Ethically)
I highly recommend mapping out a communication plan for ensuring that your customers know they can review your products. There are times that people simply don’t know they can review your products, and where to actually publish their reviews. Your customers might love your products and service, but just need a last nudge to write a review.
There are several ways you can communicate with your customers about the review process. You can include a message in the confirmation email after they purchase a product, you can send a follow up email explaining that they can review your products, you can use your Facebook page and Twitter account to remind followers and fans that they can review your products, etc. If you have a call center, then you can also have your representatives let customers know that they can review their latest purchase.
I think you’ll be surprised to see how many customers are willing to write reviews for you once they know that they can, along with where to publish those reviews. Again, you need 30 reviews, and not 500. If you create a solid communication plan, this shouldn’t be a problem. Also, once you create your communication plan and build enough reviews, let it keep running. Have it become a standard part of the process for your business. You could end up with hundreds or thousands of reviews over time, and that can only help your efforts.
Show Your Stars, Increase Click-Through, and Boost Sales With Seller Rating Extensions
The more I work with ad extensions in Google AdWords, the more I see how minor additions to an advertisement can impact click-through and sales. Seller Rating Extensions are the latest to hit Google.com and should be part of the paid search equation for companies running e-commerce websites. Don’t let stars and ratings from competitors overshadow your ads. You can have those stars too. You just need to meet the requirements.
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
“My God, It’s Full of Stars” – Seller Rating Extensions in Google AdWords
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