Have any of you heard of the Google Ads mystery shopping rating? Well, it may be used by Google for the overall store rating, which is calculated from customer reviews and a "Mystery Shopping Rating," according to a Google Ads rep.
This came up in a Google Ads Help Forum thread where the site owner was asking why his rating did not improve as more higher customer reviews were added to its Google Shopping page. A Google rep replied that this rating is not just generated based on those reviews alone but also may take into account this "mystery shopping rating," when available.
The email says, "They have confirmed that [the site] has a "Mystery Shopping Rating" score of 3.5, which explains why the store currently has an overall rating of 3.6 despite most recent customer reviews being 4 & 5 stars."
Here is the full response from the Google rep (and I confirmed this came from a real Googler):
Thank you for your patience and I apologize for the delayed response.As mentioned, we have forwarded your issue to the wider team and they found that overall store rating is calculated from customer reviews as well as a "Mystery Shopping Rating" component (when available). While the Mystery Rating score is not explicitly shown to the user, the "about this page" dialog does mention that there may be other rating components.
They have confirmed that [our site] has a "Mystery Shopping Rating" score of 3.5, which explains why the store currently has an overall rating of 3.6 despite most recent customer reviews being 4 & 5 stars.
Also, our team is still working on the Mystery Shopping ratings process however we don't have the exact time frame for this. I hope you can understand my limitations.
For more information please go through this article.
I hope the provided information is helpful. If you have further questions regarding the same, feel free to reply to the same email and we will be happy to assist you.
I did ask Google a week ago for a comment or more clarification on this "mystery shopping rating" but Google said they are still investigating this and has not sent me any real statement.
Do any of you know what this is?
Thanks for the hat tip on this to Chee Lo.
Forum discussion at Google Ads Help Forum.
