Whether users are searching for clothes, car insurance, or a holiday, they have never had so much choice. And as users increasingly rely on the opinions and experiences of others to help them choose, a brand's reputation matters more than ever before. That's why we've developed ways to show ratings, reviews and social endorsements for your business as part of your search ads on Google. This kind of information makes your ads more useful to potential customers and can improve ad performance.

Introducing Consumer Ratings Annotations
Over the next few days, we'll be rolling out consumer ratings annotations, a new format for search ads that provides detailed consumer opinion data. Consumer ratings annotations highlight one or more strongly rated aspects of your business as part of your ad. For example, if you're an insurance company, this annotation may be focused on claims handling. If you're an airline, it may highlight your rewards program.

Example search ad showing consumer ratings annotations

Testing with our beta advertisers has shown that consumer ratings annotations can increase click-through rates (CTR) by 10% on average. Many advertisers have already seen the positive impact of this format. Brian Borkowski, Director of Digital Marketing at Farmers Insurance Group, says, "Consumer ratings annotations help us stand out from competitors and attract new customers. When we looked at our ads that displayed these ratings, we saw an increase in CTR, which speaks to the awareness, trust and impact from this format."

Consumer Ratings Annotations: Powered by Google Consumer Surveys
Data for this annotation comes from hundreds of thousands of surveys we've run using the Google Consumer Surveys platform. Google Consumer Surveys provides a controlled platform for sampling consumer opinion, helping to avoid some of the potential biases and risks with other types of open-to-everyone review platforms. Each rating is based on at least hundreds of completed surveys, with the average above 1000. We plan to regularly refresh the survey data to keep the ratings current.

Learn more
For the last few years, we’ve been working on bringing trust and transparency to your search ads with formats like seller ratings and review extensions. Consumer ratings annotations will soon start showing with several hundred advertisers' search ads in the US, UK and Canada. We hope to expand availability to more advertisers in the future, so drop us a line if you’re interested in showing consumer ratings annotations with your ads.

To learn more about consumer ratings annotations, check out the AdWords Help Center.

Authored by Shreyas Doshi, Group Product Manager, AdWords