Once you've uploaded your reviews feed, it's important to verify the status of your reviews in Google Merchant Center > Marketing > Product reviews. This section will highlight any warnings or errors that could be hindering the display of your reviews, along with the specific reviews that are affected.
This article's primary objective is to help you resolve these errors and warnings, making sure that more of your reviews are showcased effectively on Google Shopping.
Review status categories
Following a successful feed upload, your reviews will fall into the following categories:
Ready to Serve: These reviews have been processed successfully and include all recommended identifiers.
Needs Review: While these reviews have been processed successfully, they might lack values or the suggested unique identifiers.
Disapproved Items: Reviews in this category require corrections or removal.
Resolving merchant center warnings
1. Addressing "Missing or Invalid product_id"
1. Addressing "Missing or Invalid product_id"
Ratings and reviews are linked to products through various factors, with globally unique product identifiers (GTINs) being the most influential.
If you encounter the "Missing or invalid product_id" warning:
This typically indicates a missing GTIN.
Register your GTIN at https://www.gs1.org/standards/id-keys/gtin and integrate it into your Shopify product inventory.
When you add the GTIN value, it will be automatically incorporated into the reviews feed. To confirm your setup:
Verify your GTIN setting in Marketing and Social > Google and SEO > Google Shopping > Advanced settings.
In the absence of GTINs, Google seeks alternative identifiers like SKU, Brand + MPN pairs, and Product URLs for review matching. However, these alternatives often lack the precision of GTINs, potentially resulting in incomplete review-to-product matches.
If GTINs are unfeasible, consider adding SKU to your product and enabling the MPN identifier in Marketing and Social > Google and SEO > Google Shopping > Advanced settings. This uses your added SKU as MPN in the reviews feed, bolstering identifiers for robust Google review and product alignment.
For other platforms
For other platforms
In your Judge.me go to Settings > Advanced > Google Product Review Feed > Review Feed Advanced Settings.
2. Addressing unsupported comment format
2. Addressing unsupported comment format
When a review includes a URL, Google will not accept it. For instance:
To determine which reviews are impacted, click on View examples. To resolve this issue, you can:
Ask the customer to update the review and remove the URL. You can do so by going to Manage Reviews > Reviews Dashboard, then clicking on the (...) option on the top right of the reviews and choosing Ask customer to update review.
You might also edit the reviews to remove the URL. However, you can only make small edits up to 30 characters and a notification email will be sent to reviewers, allowing them to approve or reject your proposed edit.
Note:
In the latest version of the feed, Judge.me added checks to exclude URL links from review content. Please update to the latest version if you see the notification below in your app settings.
3. Addressing unsupported comment characters
3. Addressing unsupported comment characters
Some reviews contain characters that aren't supported and appear as ��
You can identify which reviews are affected by clicking View examples. Then you can:
Ask the customer to update the review and remove the characters.
Edit the reviews to remove the characters. However, you can only make small edits up to 30 characters and a notification email will be sent to reviewers, allowing them to approve or reject your proposed edit.
4. Eliminating unnecessary tags
4. Eliminating unnecessary tags
Reviews may contain avoidable tags, such as excessive and repetitive punctuation. Common examples are redundant punctuation marks.
You can identify these instances by selecting View examples. Then you can:
Ask the customer to update the review and remove the characters.
Edit the reviews to remove the characters. However, you can only make small edits up to 30 characters and a notification email will be sent to reviewers, allowing them to approve or reject your proposed edit.
By addressing unnecessary tags, you enhance the quality and readability of your reviews, contributing to a smoother user experience.
Resolving merchant center errors
1. Addressing low-quality reviews: irrelevant content
1. Addressing low-quality reviews: irrelevant content
Some reviews might fail to meet Google's quality standards. Such reviews will be excluded from display as low-quality reviews. Irrelevant content is one of the most common reasons reviews are considered low-quality.
Option 1: Exclude reviews that focus on shipping, delivery, or irrelevant content
If your reviews predominantly focus on shipping, delivery, or irrelevant content, they are considered off-topic for Google Shopping. To manage this, exclude shop-level reviews with this focus by activating the following setting in Marketing and Social > Google and SEO > Google Shopping > Review content.
For other platforms
For other platforms
In your Judge.me admin go to Settings > Advanced > Google Product Review Feed > Review Feed Advanced Settings.
Option 2: Ask customers to update their reviews
In cases where customers submit reviews with irrelevant content, you can encourage customers to update their reviews via the Reviews dashboard.
For other platforms
For other platforms
2. Addressing low-quality reviews: managing personal information and sensitive content
2. Addressing low-quality reviews: managing personal information and sensitive content
Reviews containing Personal Identifiable Information (PII), such as phone numbers, email addresses, or URLs, are subject to disapproval within the reviews feed. To address this concern:
Go to the PII setting in Marketing and Social > Google and SEO > Google Shopping > Review content.
With PII active:
Reviews containing personal information will be added to the feed. However, sensitive information will be appropriately censored with "*".
With PII turned off:
All reviews featuring personal information will be entirely removed from the reviews feed.
Note:
In the latest version of the feed, Judge.me added checks to prevent full names, email addresses, phone numbers, or other personal information from being included in the feed. Please update to the latest version if you see the notification below in your app settings.
For other platforms
For other platforms
Use the PII setting found in Settings > Advanced > Google Product Review Feed > Review Feed Advanced Settings.
3. Addressing low-quality reviews: Preventing duplicate content across feeds
3. Addressing low-quality reviews: Preventing duplicate content across feeds
Each review should only appear once within one feed and should not be duplicated across feeds from different stores. Duplications may lead to Google blacklisting specific reviews or even entire feeds.
We strongly recommend to not include Product Group reviews in the feed. Navigate to Marketing and Social > Google and SEO > Google Shopping > Review content and select Don't include product groups reviews.
4. Addressing missing content
4. Addressing missing content
In situations where reviews from your customers lack content, they will not receive approval from Google. To handle this, you can encourage customers to update their reviews via the Reviews dashboard.
5. Addressing "Item Too Big" error
5. Addressing "Item Too Big" error
If you encounter the "Item too big" error, it's likely due to the following reasons:
Excessive Attributes in Reviews: Your reviews contain over 1000 attributes.
Content Size in Attributes: The content within an attribute within an item exceeds 10 KB.
For Judge.me reviews feed, this issue commonly arises when there are too many <product_ids> attributes, especially when:
Products Have Numerous Variants: All SKUs, GTINs, MPNs of a product (including its variants) are placed under one <product_ids> attribute. In such cases, consider removing weaker identifiers from the product feed.
Store Has Many Product Groups: If your store has numerous product groups, it's advisable to disable the Product group feature for the review feed. You can do this in Marketing and Social > Google and SEO > Google Shopping > Review content. When disabled, reviews will only display for the primary products in the feed, while still showing based on groups in the live store.
Remember that the Judge.me reviews feed updates daily. After making the necessary adjustments, there's no need to re-upload the reviews feed. The warnings and errors will gradually resolve within a few days, although it might take additional time for ratings to fully appear.
For other platforms
For other platforms
In your Judge.me, go to Settings > Advanced > Google Product Review Feed > Review Feed Advanced Settings.
If you need help with Google Shopping reviews feed, contact our team at [email protected]. We're available to help 24/7!