We are aware that Shopzilla has recently signed a strategic partnership with Google that means Google will start including Bizrate ratings and reviews within certain of their search and advert results.
This ties in with our understanding of the ever increasing importance of product reviews in supporting the rankings for relevance in Google’s Shopping and natural results. Google already pulls in reviews from a number of shopping comparison sites and its own Checkout ecommerce offering, and it is easy to appreciate why it wants to extend the range of reviews it can pick up and use to provide as much information to the potential shopper as possible.
We always stress to clients that positive reviews from ecommerce transactions are highly beneficial to conveying trust and convincing new potential customers to engage. Google’s growing emphasis on reviews within their product listings means that estores must continue to refine and improve the quality of their product listings – not just to Google’s Merchant Centre, but to all websites where the client products are listed – a theme we have touched on several times in recent weeks.