Google Expands Trusted Store Badge To Free Shopping Listings

The coveted Google Trusted Store Badge has been around for almost a decade. In fact, Google stated that over 67% of users relied on Google ratings, price comparison and reviews to help make a purchase last holiday season.

A good customer experience is crucial in every industry, especially in ecommerce. That’s why Google announced its expansion of the Trusted Store badge to free shopping listings.

Earning The Trusted Store Badge

In this welcome change to online companies, the Trusted Store badge will be available to brands based on their Shopping Experience Scorecard.

If your brand consistently provides excellent shipping and returns services, you may have a Trusted Stores badge appear on your product listings.

The basis of earning the Trusted Store badge relies on performance of the following:

• Shipping speeds
• Shipping
• Return costs
• Return windows

These performance metrics are compared against other merchants within a relative category.

Here’s an example of what the Trusted Stores badge looks like:

The Shopping Experience Scorecard Explained

This program is available to you if you participate in Buy on Google or free product listings in the United States.

The Shopping Experience Scorecard keeps track of the experience you provide to your customers in numerous areas (listed above in the Trusted Store Badge section).

On each metric, you’ll get a rating of either:

• Excellent
• Comparable
• Opportunity

If certain criteria of these metrics are achieved, Google will give your product listing prominence in placements on the Shopping tab, and/or a badge on your listings. However, you need to submit information for all areas above to obtain the badging on your product listings.

While Google analyzes the information you provide each day, there is a fixed lookback period to determine your metric status. The metrics above are calculated on an impression weighted average from that lookback period.

You are able to view performance and your Shopping Experience Scorecard by logging into your Google Merchant Center account.

Benefits Of The Badge

Receiving the Trusted Store badge is no easy feat. It’s all based on the customer experience provided to your users. If your brand excels in the shipping, returns, and reviews area, you’ll be able to reap the benefits. Some of these benefits include, but are not limited to:

• Increased product listing engagement
• Improved trust in users
• More prominent listings in Shopping tab
• Brand awareness

In Google’s early testing of the badge, they state that “merchants displaying a Trusted Store badge are more likely to receive clicks.” Additionally, Google mentions that lesser-known brands who have the Trusted Stores badge are getting more clicks and traffic.

New Reporting Tools Announced

In addition to the Trusted Store badge, Google launched upgraded reporting tools to measure the impact of free listings.

The new reporting tool shows merchants insights of their product listings on:

• Total traffic
• Impressions
• Conversion rate

In the past, reporting for free product listings has not been available for merchants. For example, if you wanted to test free product listings against paid listings, you’d have no idea if the free listings positively impacted your business. Now, you’re able to view all conversion data from free listings to help you make better business decisions in the future.

An example of the free product listings report provided by Google is here:

Image credit: Blog.google.com, March 2022

The last tool Google announced is its price insights tool. The goal of this tool is to help brands better understand their competitiveness in the market.

The pricing insights tool also provides suggested prices for each product being sold, using machine learning. The biggest benefit may be within the projected impact of price changes to your revenue.

Image credit: Blog.google.com, March 2022

Summary

The addition of these tools are aimed at both the customer and company benefit. By providing a seamless customer experience, you’ll be rewarded with a Trusted Store badge. With the new insights and reporting tools, you’ll be able to take action quicker on making product changes and improvements.

Source: Google

Featured Image: B illustrations/Shutterstock