Display Star Ratings in Google Organic Search Results

Many product searches begin on Google. Being able to display your star ratings directly in Google search results (SERPs) is incredibly important.

Although ranking high in the results is important for being able to make an impression, it’s the star ratings that often determine what first impression your business makes. These stars can really inspire clicks from your target audience and help you stand out from your competitors.

Today, we’ll look at what your business can do to improve the odds of star ratings appearing next to your website in Google’s search results. It’s important to clarify that some star ratings appear in ads, which obviously require you to spend money. However, we’ll focus on the star ratings that appear in organic results (aka for “free”).

What are Google star ratings?

Before we learn how to display these stars, let’s take a quick look at how Google gets these ratings. We’ll also differentiate what you can display and what you can’t.

Definition of a Google star rating

Google star ratings are the stars that appear throughout the Google platform. They are displayed in a 1-5 star format, with “5 stars” being the best rating you can get.

These ratings can represent reviews for:

• Book
• Course list
• Event
• Local business
• Movie
• Product
• Recipe
• Software App

In the context of this article, we will focus on products and businesses. These ratings are based on the average rating of customer reviews collected.

Star ratings are a form of “rich results” (or rich snippets). Rich results are visual and/or interactive cues that Google displays alongside the results of a search. Some other examples of rich results include product prices, FAQs, or other local business information.

Here is an example of Google stars that appear in a search result:

Source: pure-oils.co.uk

As we mentioned, star ratings can appear in organic results as well as in paid results (aka Google Ads).

If Google determines that the user is searching for a local business, it may even show a Google Maps result.

Recommended reading:
How to Collect More Online Customer Reviews and Boost Your Business

The importance of star ratings and reviews in Google

As a consumer, you’ve probably used these star ratings to guide your own customer journeys.

A recent Trusted Shops survey revealed:

• 79% of European shoppers read reviews every time or most of the time before making a purchase.
• 66% of shoppers prioritise positive online reviews over price.

Since many product searches begin on Google, it makes sense that star ratings are very influential in determining where a user clicks in the search results. Google’s own research has shown that displaying stars in Google Ads impacts the click-through rate on average by 2% (but can go as high as 17% or more). Star ratings clearly have an impact on user decisions, even in the early stages of a purchase decision.

Not only do these star ratings build trust with your online shop instantly, but from a “Google real estate” perspective, you’re adding more “physical space” to your search result. Additionally, those stars are more likely to attract the user’s attention because the stars are attention-grabbers on a rather plain-looking Google search result, especially if the other results don’t display a rating.

Recommended reading:
Trust Marketing: Building Confidence With Your Target Audience

How does Google know to display a star rating?

The star ratings that Google displays are based on information it collects either through its own portal (Google Reviews) or by crawling the website itself or its (3rd party) review partners (like Trusted Shops). If ratings are displayed in Google, it means the website has the correct “structured data” implemented on the page/site. The structured data is essentially HTML code inside your page, which tells Google it has collected reviews and an average rating.

Structured data refers to “tags” in your HTML that categorise specific information on your website (e.g. reviews, phone numbers, opening hours) for web crawlers like Google. This allows search engines to recognise the content on your page more easily and signals what gets displayed to users in the search results (in the form of “rich results”).

Displaying star ratings in Google organic search results

It’s important to note that star ratings are divided into different sub-categories by Google:

• Store ratings (aka seller ratings, shop rating): these ratings are based on service reviews (aka shop reviews) and reflect the service of the online shop. Service reviews tend to focus on delivery, customer service, and other details reflecting the business.
  
  
• Product ratings: this rating is based on product reviews. These reviews are focused on the product purchased rather than the business they were purchased from. Product reviews tend to focus on product performance and quality.
  
  
• Local ratings: this rating is based on customer reviews for local businesses. In a way, they are similar to the service reviews in that they focus on the business. However, local reviews are limited to physical shops.

Google sources this information from different places and displays them in different locations throughout their platform such as the standard search results, Google Shopping, Google Maps, etc.

From a technical perspective (i.e. structured data), the different ratings require slightly different code. One thing they have in common is that the code is entered into the section of your respective website pages.

We won’t go into major details about the specific code needed, but it’s worth mentioning that this code follows schema.org standards. You can read more about getting started with structured data in this Google guide. Google also provides a rich results testing tool for you test your code before implementing them into your website pages. The tool also let’s you test the rich results of the page after you go live with the new structured data.

Tip: Constantly entering rating information manually can be quite tedious and time-consuming, especially if you collect a lot of reviews. That is why you should consider a Google-approved reviews provider. They can automatically keep your ratings up to date, so Google consistently displays the most current ratings.

Displaying store ratings in Google organically

Let’s start with displaying your store ratings in the results of a classic Google search.

Store ratings in organic Google search results

Store ratings are a bit unique in Google’s eyes. Back in 2019, Google decided it would not display store ratings next to a business's website in the organic search results. Google believed such stars were too self-serving and thus store ratings were reserved for 3rd party review sites.

In October 2024, that changed for the UK and other English-speaking markets (including the US, Canada, Australia, and India). For certain searches, a shop's domain in the results can display a star rating (referred to by Google as a store rating). A rating from 1-5 can be seen along with the number of reviews the rating was based on.

Clicking on the number of reviews leads to a Google Store page for that particular business where individual reviews can be seen. Google collects these reviews from its own platform and/or its review partners (like Trusted Shops).

In this example, the shop appears in the search results and Google provides a rating directly next to the domain:

Source: Moonlight Design

Here is an example of store ratings in the organic results that have been provided by 3rd party review providers. Here, the stars are displayed in the 5-star visual format. In the third example from Etsy, we see a 4.3 rating with a single star next to it, similar to the "self-serving" one in the example above.

Source: The Croft House

The star ratings shown here are simply provided by the individual review platforms (like Trusted Shops). It’s important for your online reputation to have consistent and relatively harmonised ratings across the major reviews providers.

Did you know the Trusted Shops Reputation Manager makes it easy for shop owners to collect reviews for Trusted Shops, Trustpilot, Google Reviews and more? Centralise your review collection and create review invites that forward users to the platforms that need a rating boost.

It’s also worth noting that if Google determines a user is researching a specific brand, it will display brand information in Google OneBox, the card that often appears on the right side of brand searches.

Here is an example of a Google OneBox result:

For Google OneBox, Google will create an average rating based on multiple sources. For example, Google will take the reviews collected from approved providers (like Trusted Shops and Trustpilot) as well as their own reviews platform and create a star rating based on all of them. That is also why it is so important to have a Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business).

Because third party platforms are the only sites that display seller ratings, there is no minimum number of reviews to reach before the stars appear.

Store ratings in Google Shopping results

Note: As of July 2024, Google removed store ratings from organic Google Shopping results despite no announcement. Whether this decision is temporary or not, it is still important to collect those service reviews.

Google Shopping displays both paid ads (at the top) and organic results (directly below the “sponsored” ads).

Normally, product ratings are seen in the cards (more on that below). Once a Google Shopping result is clicked, a window pane opens with more product information as well as a list of other retailers. Again, these organic Google Shopping posts no longer display store ratings if multiple sellers are selling the same product; just the prices. This may change again in the future, so it's a good idea to continue collecting your service reviews.

Google sources the product rating similar to the OneBox rating (by compiling the reviews from multiple sellers and review providers).

On the left is how store ratings appeared before the October 2024 change.
On the right, is how they currently look.

Displaying product ratings in Google organically

Now, let’s have a look at how to display your product ratings throughout Google.

Product ratings in organic Google search results

Unlike the store ratings, your product ratings can be displayed directly next to the standard results in Google that link to your online shop.

In the example to the right for Wilton Wholefoods products, you will see product ratings appear in the standard search results (the first result). Below that are product ratings in organic Google Shopping results.

Therefore, Google requires structured data to be present on each product page that you want to display star ratings. As mentioned earlier, this code belongs in the section of the respective product pages. You can read more about Product snippets in this Google developer’s guide.

The product ratings that appear next to your URL in the search results are provided by you and your reviews provider. Once again, this is another reason to work with a Google-approved reviews platform as the reviews can be integrated on your website easily and some platforms automatically communicate with Google regularly.

As these product ratings are linked directly to your product pages, there are some requirements from Google in order for them to be displayed. You should keep the following in mind:

• The retailer should have a minimum of 50 product reviews across their entire product catalogue.
• Retailers need to either manually send their product ratings to Google to ensure they are up to date (using the Google Merchant Centre) or use a third-party review provider to do this automatically.

Product ratings in organic Google Shopping results

Whether your product appears in the Google Shopping tab or the standard results, Google displays these product ratings directly for users to see (check the previous image).

If you are the only retailer selling the product, Google will collect the reviews from your product page. If many retailers are selling the same product, Google will compile the reviews from multiple retailers’ product pages to create an aggregate rating.

Displaying local business ratings in Google Maps

Local reviews are generally displayed in Google Maps, which also appear in standard searches. Displaying your shop rating there (and in Waze) can be quite impactful in terms of foot traffic.

The solution for displaying local reviews is quite straightforward. For every location you operate, you need to have a separate Google Business Profile (GBP). This is where Google sources ratings and reviews for local businesses found in Google Maps.

Source: Aten Lighting

Best practices include filling in your Google Business Profile completely. Make sure the store information you’ve entered in GBP matches the information displayed on your website.

Otherwise, you should encourage happy customers to leave reviews after completing their purchases. You could, for example, add a QR code for submitting reviews on the back of your business card or at the end of your invoice.

Conclusion

Getting star ratings to appear directly in Google’s search results can be incredibly impactful. Not only does it build trust with users during their first encounter with your brand, but it also impacts the click-through rates of those pages when they appear on Google.