This programme is available in all countries with varying features. As more countries/features become available, this table will be updated.
| Country | Quality signals (specific signals available may vary by country) |
Overall quality score | Top Quality Store badge |
|---|---|---|---|
| AU, CA, GB, IN, JP, NZ, US | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Rest of world | Yes | Yes | No |
On this page
Benefits
The Top Quality Store programme can help you to deliver a great shopping experience for your customers. By meeting certain criteria, you may receive:
- The 'Top Quality Store' badge, which is displayed on your listings, improves customer confidence in buying products from your business
- Early access to Google's new features
How it works
After you've set up your Merchant Centre account and have approved products, you'll automatically be enrolled in this programme. Your progress will be monitored automatically, and benefits will be applied to your offers when you meet a certain performance threshold.
The Shop Quality Score is calculated at domain level. In CSS programme countries, if you manage multiple Merchant Centre accounts, the score will only appear in the Merchant Centre account used to participate in free listings that had active organic offers in the past 30 days. The score will not be visible across all your Merchant Centre accounts.
This programme will monitor the experience that you provide in several areas, including:
For example, your Delivery category score will contain metric scores for your delivery time and delivery cost. For each metric in each category, you'll be given a rating of 'Low', 'Fair' , 'Good', 'Great' or 'Exceptional' that will also determine your overall quality score. To earn the 'Top Quality Store' badge, you must rank as 'Exceptional' in your overall quality score. Learn more about Top Quality Stores.
Note: You don't need to rank as 'Exceptional' in each category to rank as 'Exceptional' in your overall quality score.
How metrics are calculated
The programme metric values aren't displayed directly to customers on an individual offer level. Instead, the programme metrics are impression-weighted averages and are only displayed in your Merchant Centre account.
Google will evaluate the information that you provide each day. Even though all metrics are calculated based on an impression-weighted average, there's a fixed look-back period. So, if your rating has been in 'Opportunity' or 'Comparable' for a while, it may take a few weeks for your improvements to be reflected in Google's evaluation. All merchants on the platform are eligible to receive benefits from the programme, and your performance is evaluated against all other merchants.
Bear in mind: If you don't have any ratings or if you're missing specific ratings, this could either be because you're not currently providing the required information, or because your offers haven't received sufficient impressions in the look-back period.
Also, if you're providing offer-level delivery data, make sure that you include both delivery cost and transit time for each offer. Your offer-level data will override your account-level data, so the 'Store Quality' feature will use these values when determining your performance level.
Take a look at the 'Store Quality' page to view the areas where you're providing information and to learn how you can update missing information.
Example
Barbara's Buckles has a blank rating for delivery speed. After a quick check, they realise that they're providing delivery costs without providing delivery speed. So, they create a delivery service for their products that includes both delivery costs and delivery speed. After the look-back window passes, their rating updates with a new value to reflect their delivery speed, which may boost their visibility and performance on the 'Shopping' tab.
Instructions
How to view your performance
By default, your 'Store Quality' page will show how you compare to other merchants that sell within your category. If you sell across multiple categories, it will default to show how you compare against all shops.
In CSS programme countries, if you manage multiple Merchant Centre accounts, the score will only be visible in the Merchant Centre used for free listings.
To view your performance for each metric and your overall score in Merchant Centre Next:
In your Merchant Centre account, click Store Quality under the 'Products and shop' section in the left navigation menu.
To view how you compare to direct competitors, click the Compare to button then select Direct competitors.
- Note: Your direct competitors are those shops that show products next to your products.
To earn a badge, you must perform well relative to other merchants in all the required metrics. All metrics are calculated daily and have a look-back period to ensure continuous performance.
How to improve your performance
Delivery experienceThe metrics in this section measure the dispatch and delivery experience that you provide to customers.
- Delivery time: The number of days it should take customers to receive their orders (this can be set up either via API or directly in Merchant Centre).
- Delivery cost: The cost for customers to receive orders excluding item costs (this can be set up either via API or directly in Merchant Centre).
The metrics in this section measure the return experience that you provide to customers.
- Return window: The number of days that customers can return an item (this can be set up either via API or directly in Merchant Centre).
- Return cost: The cost for customers to return an item (this can be set up either via API or directly in Merchant Centre).
The metrics in this section measure the customer's experience when visiting your website. Learn more About valuable content coverage.
- High-resolution images: Information obtained from your website regarding the percentage of images on your site that are more than 1048 pixels.
- Images per item: Information obtained from your website on the average number of images per item.
- Website speed desktop: The time that it takes to fully display your website's content on desktop.
- Website speed mobile: The time that it takes to fully display the content on the mobile version of your website.
The metrics in this section measure the customer's experience while purchasing a product from your website.
- Promotion disapproval rate: The percentage of your promotions that are disapproved (only applicable if you run promotions and submit them to Google). Learn more about Promotion basics.
- E-wallet types accepted: Information obtained from your website regarding the number of e-wallet payment methods that you accept. The e-wallet types currently tracked by the Top Quality Store programme are PayPal, Google Wallet, Apple Pay and Amazon Pay. Learn how to add or update your e-wallet payment method.
Store Rating
A rating calibrated by Google based on multiple sources including Google Customer Reviews, reviews from various independent rating websites and performance metrics from Google-led shopping research.
To opt out of the Top Quality Store programme, contact support via the 'Contact us' button below. Bear in mind that there are no programme penalties for not meeting a certain performance standard. This programme is only meant to reward retailers who provide an excellent customer experience.