This program is available in several countries with varying features. As more countries/features become available, this table will be updated.
| Country | Quality Signals (specific signals available may vary by country) |
Overall Quality Score | Top Quality Store Badge |
|---|---|---|---|
| US | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| CA, AU, NZ | Yes | No | Yes |
| IN, JP | Yes | No | No - coming in 2024 |
| Rest of World | No | No | No |
The Store Quality program can help you deliver a great shopping experience for your customers.
By meeting certain criteria, you may receive:
- The "Top Quality Store" badge, which displays on your listings, improves customer confidence in buying products from your business.
- Prominence in placements on the "Shopping" tab.
- Early access to Google's new features.
On this page
How it works
This program will monitor the experience you provide in several areas, including shipping, returns, browsing, purchasing experience, and store rating (for more information, check the sections below). Within each of the measured categories, you’ll be given a score from 0 through 10. This score is determined based on your performance for each metric, within each category. For example, your Shipping category score will contain metric scores for your delivery time and shipping cost. For each metric in each category, you’ll be given a rating of “Low”, “Fair” , “Good”, “Great”, or “Exceptional”. All of this information together will determine your overall quality score, which is also scored on a scale of “Low” to “Exceptional”. To earn the “Top Quality Store” badge, you must rank “Exceptional” in your overall quality score. You don’t need to rank “Exceptional” in each of the categories to rank “Exceptional” in your overall quality score.
After you have set up your Merchant Center account and have approved products, you will automatically be enrolled in this program. Your progress will be monitored automatically, and benefits will be applied to your offers when you meet a certain performance threshold.
Google may make your offers more prominent on the "Shopping" tab or in promotional modules if you provide information for some customer experience areas below. However, you must have an overall rating of ‘Exceptional’ in order to be eligible for the badge. The program metric values don’t display directly to customers on an individual offer level. Instead, the program metrics are impression-weighted averages and are only displayed in your Merchant Center account.
Google will evaluate the information that you provide each day. Even though all metrics are calculated based on an impression-weighted average, there's a fixed lookback period. So, if your rating has been in “Opportunity or “Comparable” for a while, it may take a few weeks for your improvements to be reflected in Google's evaluation. All merchants on the platform are eligible to receive benefits from the program, and your performance is evaluated against all other merchants.
Keep in mind: If you don’t have any ratings or if you’re missing specific ratings, this could either be because you’re not currently providing the required information or because your offers haven’t received sufficient impressions in the lookback period.
Also, if you’re providing offer-level shipping data, make sure to include both shipping cost and transit time for each offer. Your offer-level data will override your account-level data, so the Store Quality feature will use these values when determining your performance level.
Check out the "Store Quality" page to view the areas where you’re providing information and to learn how you can update missing information.
Example
Barbara’s Buckles has a blank rating for shipping speed. After a quick check, they realize that they’re providing shipping costs without providing shipping speed. So, they create a shipping service for their products that includes both shipping costs and shipping speed. After the lookback window passes, their rating updates with a new value to reflect their shipping speed, which may boost their visibility and performance on the "Shopping" tab.
Instructions
How to view your performance
By default, your “Store Quality” page will show how you compare to other merchants that sell within your category. If you sell across multiple categories, it will default to show how you compare against all stores.
To view your performance for each metric and your overall score in Merchant Center Next:
In your Merchant Center account, click Store Quality under the “Your business” section in the left navigation menu.
To view how you compare to direct competitors, click the Compare to button then select Direct competitors.
- Note: Your direct competitors are those stores who show products next to your products.
To earn a badge, you must perform well relative to other merchants in all the required metrics. All metrics are calculated daily and have a lookback period to ensure continuous performance.
How to improve your performance
Shipping Experience
The metrics in this section measure the shipping and delivery experience you provide to customers.
- Delivery time: The number of days it should take customers to receive their orders (this can be set up either via API or directly in Merchant Center).
- Delivery cost: The cost for customers to receive orders excluding item costs (this can be set up either via API or directly in Merchant Center).
Return Experience
The metrics in this section measure the return experience you provide to customers.
- Return window: The number of days customers can return an item (this can be set up either via API or directly in Merchant Center).
- Return cost: The cost for customers to return an item (this can be set up either via API or directly in Merchant Center).
Browsing Experience
The metrics in this section measure the customer’s experience when visiting your website. Learn more About valuable content coverage.
- High resolution images: Information obtained from your website regarding the percentage of images on your site that are more than 1048 pixels.
- Images per item: Information obtained from your website on the average number of images per item.
- Website speed desktop: The time it takes to fully display your website's content on desktop.
- Website speed mobile: The time it takes to fully display the content on the mobile version of your website.
Purchase Experience
The metrics in this section measure the customer’s experience while purchasing a product from your website.
- Promotion disapproval rate: The percentage of your promotions that are disapproved (only applicable if you run promotions and submit them to Google). Learn more about Promotion basics.
- e-Wallet types accepted: Information obtained from your website regarding the number of e-wallet payment methods that you accept. The e-wallet types currently tracked by the Store Quality program are PayPal, Google Wallet, Apple Pay, and Amazon Pay. Learn how to Add or update your e-wallet payment method.
Store Rating
A rating calibrated by Google based on multiple sources, including Google Customer Reviews, reviews from various independent rating websites, and performance metrics from Google-led shopping research.
To opt out of the Store Quality program, contact support via the 'Contact us' button below. Bear in mind that there are no program penalties for not meeting a certain performance standard. This program is only meant to reward retailers who provide an excellent customer experience.