Get stars on Google Shopping with product reviews

The stars next to your products in Google Shopping are based on the reviews your customers have already given you. With Shoporama’s built-in review feed, you can send your approved product reviews to Google so that star ratings can appear on your Shopping ads and in the free product listings. This adds extra value to the work you’re already putting into your store.

When a potential customer scrolls through Shopping ads and product listings, their eye is naturally drawn to the products displaying stars. It’s a quick signal of trust—showing that others have bought the item and are happy with it—before the customer has even clicked. A higher click-through rate can help make your ad spend more effective, because more of the people who see the ad will choose your store.

What are stars in Google Shopping?

Google calls them Product Ratings. These are the yellow stars and the total number of reviews that appear alongside your products in Google Shopping and in Shopping ads. The stars come from a separate feed that you submit to Google Merchant Center, where Google matches your reviews to the correct products.

It’s important to keep three things separate because they are different channels:

• Reviews on your own product pages: the stars your visitors see inside your online store. You manage this in Product Reviews.
• Stars in Google’s organic search results: These come from structured data on your pages. Learn more in Implement Structured Data.
• Stars in Google Shopping and Shopping ads: You get these through this review feed. That’s what this article is about.

You can certainly have one without the other, and the three elements complement each other nicely.

How to enable the review feed

You should already be collecting product reviews in your store. If you haven’t started yet, begin with Product Reviews. Then:

1. Go to Settings → Online Store and open the Feeds tab.
2. Find the Google Product Reviews section and check the box next to Enable Google Product Reviews feed.
3. Save. Your feed address will now appear on the page and look like this: dit-domæne.dk/google-product-reviews.xml

If you don’t want the address to be publicly available, you can add an optional feed key on the same tab. This gives the feed a hidden address where the key is included in the link itself, and that’s the full address you’ll use in the next step.

Register the feed in Google Merchant Center

The feed is not automatically sent to Google. You must register the address yourself once:

1. Sign in to Google Merchant Center.
2. Find “Product reviews.” If you haven’t joined the program yet, you’ll first need to apply to participate with Google.
3. Create a new data source and enter your feed address from Shoporama.
4. Save. Google will then retrieve the feed at regular intervals, typically once a day.

If you have multiple online stores, each store has its own feed address, which you must register separately in that store’s Merchant Center. If you’re already running the standard product feed, we recommend reading “Set Up Google Shopping Feed.”

Google’s requirements for displaying stars

• At least 50 reviews: Google will only display star ratings once you have at least 50 reviews across all your products.
• Product identifiers: Google prefers to match reviews to products using GTIN (barcode), but can also use MPN along with the brand or SKU. The more of these you provide for your products, the more reliable the match will be.
• All reviews included: Google wants both good and bad reviews. So you can’t just submit the positive ones.
• About the product only: A product review must be about the item itself, not about shipping, customer service, or price. Reviews that are solely about shipping or service do not comply with Google’s policy.

Which reviews are included in the feed?

Shoporama automatically ensures that the feed follows Google’s official format and contains only reviews that you’re allowed and should submit:

• Only approved reviews with written text are included. Ratings without comments and reviews you haven’t approved yet are excluded.
• If a review is linked to an order, it is automatically marked as a verified purchase. This tells Google that the reviewer has actually purchased the item.
• We display the reviewer’s name. If it’s missing, we’ll use only the first name from the order for privacy reasons; otherwise, the review will appear as “Anonymous.”
• If the customer has attached images to the review, or if you’ve added images yourself, they’ll be included in the feed so Google can display them alongside the review. If you’ve turned off “Show images in the store” for the review, the images won’t be sent to Google either. Google decides for itself whether and when to display the images. Read more about images in Product Reviews.

For active stores, the feed is automatically refreshed at regular intervals so that it’s always up to date with your latest approved reviews. You don’t need to do anything on an ongoing basis.

The stars aren’t showing up—what should I do?

It’s completely normal for it to take some time before the stars appear. Check the following:

• Do you have at least 50 approved reviews across your products?
• Is the feed registered under "Product Reviews" in Merchant Center, and is Google fetching it without errors?
• Do your products have a GTIN, MPN with brand, or SKU so Google can match the reviews?
• Google typically takes a few days to process and approve a new review feed before the stars start appearing.

Frequently Asked Questions

If you have any questions about the setup, feel free to email support@shoporama.dk at any time.