We want Google to be a safe and trustworthy place for both our customers and retailers. Customers should feel confident about the offers that they are browsing and the businesses that they are purchasing from. Sometimes it can take some time before a sufficient level of trust is established and before we consider it safe to display your offers to customers. This assessment is an ongoing process and since we know that customers are likely to do research about your products and business, we may review multiple signals from across the web. The more that we know about your business, the better we are able to represent you.
On this page
- What customers value in building trust with your business
- How you can help us to learn more about your business
What customers value in building trust with your business
- Business identity:
- Provide the official business name that you use across the web and avoid any mismatches in your registered business name and domain name. Ensure that the domain name in Merchant Center is accurate and matches the claimed domain.
- Include an 'About us' page on your website to show your authenticity and tell customers your unique story.
- Let customers know that they can follow you on social media profiles and link to those pages from your website.
- Transparency:
- Be clear and provide detailed information about your policies including delivery, returns and privacy policies.
- Be transparent about your business model and how you operate.
- Online reputation:
- Help potential customers understand how to use your products or how other customers have used them. Show reviews and testimonials about your products and business.
- If you've received any badges or seals of approval from official third-party sources, make sure that you mention these.
- Clearly communicate how customers can interact with you by making sure that they know how to get in touch with you and how your customer support is set up.
- If you publish a blog post or if your business was mentioned in an article, make sure that your customers know about this.
- Professional design and functionality:
- Install an SSL certificate so that customers know that their sensitive data is retrieved and stored securely without being intercepted by hackers. Ensure a secure checkout process.
- Your website should be fully functional, accessible for all customers and easy to navigate, and shouldn't contain any unnecessary redirects or redirects to broken links. Fix any broken links on the website.
- Avoid placeholders for text and images as this gives the feeling that the website is unfinished.
- Ensure that product details on the website, such as price and availability, match the information in the Merchant Center data source.
How you can help us to learn more about your business
- Provide information in the business information settings in Merchant Center.
- Link the relevant third-party platforms to Merchant Center.
- Create and verify a Google Business Profile.
- Follow our SEO guidelines to improve the visibility of your website on Google and to provide a good customer experience.
- Improve your eligibility for seller ratings by opting into Google Customer Reviews or other third-party review services.
- Match your product data in your product feed with your website to ensure that customers see the same information, such as prices, across both.