In an effort to compete with other online shopping destinations, namely Amazon, Google announced it was adding customer reviews to searches on Thursday.
Searches for terms that could be construed as products, like "blender" or "lawnmower," will now include reviews on a five-star scale that are aggregated from merchants, third-party sites and editorial sites.
IMAGE: GOOGLE
The company believes these ratings will help differentiate products across Google.com and Google.com/shopping and "help merchants drive more qualified traffic through Product Listing Ads," Mike Capsambelis, product manager for Google Shopping, wrote in a blog post this week. "In initial tests, product ratings also helped increase click-through rates of Product Listing Ads."
Google is offering merchants a "grace period" through October to allow product ratings to appear across all Product Listing Ads in which Google has reviews. After October, Google will only show ratings from merchants who opt to share them with Google. Translation:
If aIf a merchant doesn't provide ratings, they may be trying to hide some bad news.
The search giant's embrace of customer reviews is late in coming. It has long been established that reviews are a prime impetus for sales. A survey last year from Dimensional Research, for instance, found 90% of respondents who remember reading reviews said positive online reviews influenced their purchase decisions. Some 86% said their buying decisions were influenced by negative reviews.
As Google's ad business faces continuing challenges from the transition to mobile, though, the company is eager to find new sources of revenues. A report in Re/code earlier this month claims Google has earmarked as much as $500 million to expand its Shopping Express program.
Launched in 2013, Shopping Express lets consumers buy products through Google, which delivers the items from local stores owned by participating retailers.
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