How to Get Google’s Top Quality Store Badge for Your E-commerce Website
If you’re an e-commerce business owner or simply an online shopper, you may have noticed that some e-commerce websites have a special badge which states that the store is a “Top Quality Store on Google.” In our article, we explain what this badge entails and how to earn a top quality store badge from Google based on Google’s documentation and our firsthand experience helping clients achieve this designation.
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What Is a Google Top Quality Store?
When your online store is connected to Google Merchant Center, you will be given a Store Quality rating (also known as shopping experience scorecard) based on numerous factors that Google can detect about your store’s website quality, customer service, and policies.
If you earn the Google Top Quality Store designation, you will earn a badge that can be displayed on one or all pages of your website. The badge will appear on page load and float typically on the bottom right or bottom left of the website.
When you click the badge, a popup will appear that shows your store ratings and key information regarding several key store quality criteria. The ratings and what details show in this section depend on your unique store’s strengths.
Additionally, anyone can click the “more about this store” wording within the popup. This link will take visitors to a Google-hosted store quality page about your specific business. For example, check out Critter Guard’s store page which was automatically created when they earned their Top Quality Store rating. You’ll notice that the store page will show details about the store, trending products, store insights, and social profiles. All this data is populated by Google Merchant Center.
How Does a Google Top Quality Store Badge Help Your Business
When you earn a top quality store badge, Google is effectively “vouching” for your store’s quality, which is a big deal. Google states that earning this designation “…improves user confidence in buying from you.”
The Google top quality store badge can be shown both directly on your website, as well as directly within Google’s search results featuring product listings. This badge is especially prominent within Google Shopping listings.
Additionally, when you earn the “exceptional” rating for your store, Google states that “your products could be ranked higher in the Shopping tab search results.” As you can imagine, Google rarely states items that can increase your rank within Google’s search products. As such, you should definitely strive to achieve this rating since it can have a direct impact on your store and products’ visibility.
How To Earn Google’s Top Quality Store Badge
Earning the Google Top Quality Store Badge requires an “exceptional” rating of your customers’ shopping experience. The following are steps to earn Google’s Top Quality Store Badge. Keep in mind that the exceptional rating is not something you can or should fake. Many small business stores may not be able to achieve this designation. However, you can follow the steps below to increase your chances of success:
- If you haven’t already done so, create an account on Google Merchant Center, connect your store, and sync your products.
- If you use Shopify for your e-commerce system, you can follow our guide for rapidly setting up Google Merchant Center as well as getting free Google Shopping listings.
- Ensure that your products sync. Note that you do not have to pay for ads to work on your top quality store designation. Connecting your store and enabling the free listings integration is sufficient.
- Fill out all fields in both the “Business Info” and “Shipping and Returns” sections of Google Merchant Center.
- Note that you will need to have your shipping and returns policies physically published on your website so that Google can validate this information.
- Monitor your store quality scorecard via the “Store Quality” section. This will update over time as Google is able to verify the credibility of information you’ve submitted. Note that these scores are not instantly updated.
- Once you reach the “Exceptional” level for your overall quality score, you will earn an embeddable badge.
- You can click on the “Show the badge on your website” and follow the instructions for embedding your badge.
Evaluative Criteria for Google’s Exceptional Status
As mentioned, earning the badge requires your store to abide by high quality standards and Google’s evaluation takes time. You do not have to have perfect scores in each category, but, overall, your average needs to be high enough across all categories to achieve an exceptional rating. The following are the core categories that Google evaluates for store quality:
Shipping Experience
Google takes a look at your shipping experience over the past 30 days, compared to all stores in the same country as your store that it can monitor. Overall, Google is rating both your delivery time and shipping costs. Faster shipping time and lower shipping costs will give you a leg up in this category.
Purchase Experience
Google evaluates your purchase experience in two key areas. First, it looks at any promotions that you are running and validates that customers are able to check out with those promotions. Secondly, Google looks at payment methods you have available in addition to the standard credit/debit cards. For example, Google wants to see that you have additional payment options (eWallets) like Google Wallet, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, and PayPal. You don’t have to have all of those enabled, but the more you have enabled, the better you’ll rank in this category.
Store Rating
This category is named in a confusing manner in my opinion. This is not the overall store rating, but instead “store rating” is whether or not you have opted into Google’s Customer Reviews program where customers rate your store online. This is a separate program for Google to collect reviews from customers who are rating your store as a whole (not individual products).
If you enroll in Google’s store rating program, you can then earn and display a separate Google Customer Reviews badge.
Note that you do not have to participate in the Google Customer Reviews program to still earn an Top Quality Store badge.
Return Experience
Google examines your return policy and compares it to other stores. Overall, it’s rating your return window (how long you accept returns after purchase) and the return/restock cost that customers would have to pay. The better return leniency you offer, the higher score you will earn.
Browsing/Website Experience
This section focuses completely on the quality of your website and the browsing experience that visitors will have. Again, comparing your store to other stores in the US, Google will look at the following factors:
- High resolution images – Google determines what percentage of your images qualify as high resolution. Google wants users to be able to see high quality images of the products as an indicator of transparency.
- Images per offer – Google examines at how many images you have associated with each product offer. The more images, the better. We recommend having at least eight images for each product offer.
- Website Speed Desktop – Google evaluates at how fast your website loads on desktop/laptop computers in comparison to other stores.
- Website Speed Mobile – Google evaluates how fast your website loads on smartphones and other mobile devices in comparison to other stores.
To get a leg up on your website’s browsing/website experience, you can use a tool like Semrush to evaluate your website’s speed performance and other SEO factors.
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