Google Game Changer: Introducing Consumer Ad Ratings Annotations

Google knows that consumers increasingly rely on the opinions and experiences of others to determine whether or not they purchase a product or service. And the search engine has figured out a way to show ratings, reviews, and social endorsements about a business on search display ads to make ads more useful for the customer while increasing the ad performance for the business.

They’re called Consumer Ad Ratings Annotations.

This new format highlights one or more strongly rated aspects about the business, whether its customer service, claims handling, discounts, or rewards.

According to Google, the new format can increase click-through rate (CTR) by 10% on average. And that the best part about these annotations is that they’re industry-specific and show up to three of the company’s best ratings, which can help drive website traffic leveraging the power of consumer opinion. Users can click to gain a more detail view of your survey scores and ratings. General categories include:

• Overall satisfaction
• Customer service
• Website quality
• Rewards Programs
• Discounts
• Claims Handling

How is Google collecting this consumer information?

Google AdWords says it’s taking it from Google Consumer Surveys, which is a tool that Google introduced a couple of years ago. Here’s a short video about the surveys:

Google AdWords takes hundreds (even thousands) of survey insights from their consumer surveys to generate ratings for each business. “Each rating is based on at least hundreds of competed surveys, with the average above 1000.” Google plans to regularly update the data to make it as accurate and truthful as possible.