This help doc explains how Google displays the reviews you collect with Junip on your Free Product Listings and Shopping Ads in Google Shopping.
How Product Reviews Work in Google Shopping
To display reviews on your Free Product Listings and Shopping Ads in Google Shopping, you must be a part of Google’s Product Rating Program. The program allows you to display aggregated reviews across your Free Product Listings and Shopping Ads. To participate in the program you need a minimum of 50 reviews across all products.
You can choose to apply on your own and manually create a feed of your reviews before uploading it into Google Merchant Center (GMC), but the easiest way to do it is with an approved third-party review provider (like Junip). When you use a third-party review provider like Junip, we're already approved so we can send your reviews to Google on your behalf.
Getting Product and Review Data Into Google
To display reviews on Product Listings, Google needs to have all of your product and review data. Google obtains this data through Product Feeds and Review Feeds.
Product Feed
A Product Feed is a file that contains a list of products and their attributes. It's created when products are added to your GMC and can be used across other Merchant Center programs to communicate information about your products. Specifically, a Product Feed contains a Product Catalog and product attributes.
Product Catalog: a Product Catalog contains all of your product identifiers (ex. Title, SKU, GTIN, Brand, MPN)
Product attributes: information about a product (ex. price, inventory, availability)
Review Feed
A Review Feed is a file used to get review data from Junip into your Google Merchant Center. Your review feed has two types of information: a Product Catalog and review data.
Product Catalog: a Product Catalog contains all of your product identifiers (ex. SKU, GTIN, Brand, MPN)
Review data: information about reviews (ex. review title, star rating, review text, etc.)
How does Google display reviews on Product Listings?
When Google receives your review data, they need to know which Product Listing each review belongs to. To do this, Google uses a process called Product Matching. This is when Google matches products between feeds using the product identifiers from the Product Catalogs within Feeds.
Product Matching Between the Review Feed and Product Feed
For the most accurate results, Google uses GTINs when Product Matching. This is the strongest factor that helps Google match a review to a product. If a product does not have a GTIN, Google will attempt to match reviews to Product Listings using a Brand + MPN pairing. However, these identifiers generally do not offer as good a match as GTINs.
Example of Product Matching with a GTIN between Review Feed <> Product Feed:
The outcome is that Google can use the product identifiers from the Product Catalog in the Review Feed and Product Feed to match reviews to products. Once the match is made, Google then knows what Product Listing to display the review on.
How the Product Catalog is used in Product Matching
The Product Catalog is the main point of reference when matching reviews to products. It's essential that the identifiers in your Review Feed Product Catalog & Product Feed Product Catalog are valid and consistent with one another. If the identifiers don't match between Product Catalogs, Google will not be able to match reviews to products, therefore causing reviews not to display on Product Listings.
What to do before displaying reviews on your Product Listings
Ensure your Product Catalog uses Strong Identifiers
To check whether your product catalog in Junip has strong identifiers, go to your product catalog settings and click on "Details" in the Current Catalog Section. This will show the total number of products in your catalog and how many have GTIN or MPN data. If not all products have a GTIN or MPN, you will need to edit your product catalog.
Ensure your Product Catalogs match
In order for Product Matching to be successful between the Review Feed and Product Feed, your catalogs in both feeds have to match.
Review the product identifiers in your GMC
Go to your Google Merchant Center account > Products > and download the CSV file that contains all of your product data. Review this file to make sure each product has either a GTIN or Brand + MPN pairing. Make sure each identifier is valid, (Google will know if you make up a random value for an identifier!)
Review the product identifiers in your Junip admin
Go to your Junip admin > Products > Catalog health > under Edit your catalog click “Generate CSV Export”. Compare the display_name, GTIN, Brand, and MPN for each product to make sure it’s the same as what you have in your GMC.
Ensure your shop URL in Junip is the same as your store URL in GMC
If you got set up on Junip before your storefront was live on Shopify, it’s possible the shop URL we have on file is yourdomain.myshopify.com. To check whether the shop URL in Junip is consistent with the correct domain that’s attached to your GMC account, go to your Junip admin > Syndication > click Manage next to Google Shopping and look at the Shop URL setting.
❗️If your Shop URL has the .myshopify.com suffix, reach out to support@juniphq.com and we will help you update it.
Once you've followed the steps above, and ensured the Product Catalogs in your Product Feed and Review Feed match, you're ready to turn on Google Shopping in Junip!
FAQ
Why aren't all of my reviews showing in Google Shopping?
Why aren't all of my reviews showing in Google Shopping?
In order for a review to be eligible to be displayed on Product Listings in Google, it must adhere to Google's content policies. Any reviews that violate these guidelines will be filtered out by Google.
Other reviews that are not eligible to be displayed on Product Listings in Google are reviews from unverified sources. All reviews submitted through Junip are automatically verified. However, reviews that have been imported into Junip and did not receive a verified buyer badge will not be included in the review feed sent to Google. A review only receives a verified buyer badge when Junip can match the review to an order that exists in Shopify.
What if I don't have a GTIN?
What if I don't have a GTIN?
Not all products will have a GTIN. Brands must purchase GTINs for their products from GS1 in order to obtain one. For products that don't have GTINs, a Brand + MPN pairing can be used. Shopify doesn't support MPNs, so they must be added directly in Junip. Read here to learn how to add MPNs to your Product Catalog in Junip.
If your products in Junip do not have either a GTIN or Brand + MPN pairing, it's very difficult for Google to match reviews to products and display reviews on your Product Listings. For optimal review matching, all of your products should have strong identifiers.