Next to an online store’s ad in Google you can sometimes see stars with a score. That is the store rating, and it works as trust at first glance: next to the store name you immediately see what buyers say about it. The unpleasant news: this rating does not stay on your ad forever. It can disappear even if you changed nothing in the ads or in the store.
Below: the conditions under which Google shows it, why old reviews “drop out”, how a store rating differs from reviews on Maps, and how to check your own store. We checked the conditions against Google’s help pages on 5–6 October 2026, and links to the original sources are in the text.
What it is
A store rating is made of buyers’ scores for the store itself: how they were served, how delivery went, whether what they ordered arrived. It is not a review of a single product. Google calculates it from reviews from several sources: its own free Google Customer Reviews programme (it surveys buyers after an order and is managed in Google Merchant Center) and third-party review services that are Google’s partners.
When Google shows the rating
According to Google’s help pages (Merchant Center and Google Ads):
- Enough reviews. A store generally needs to collect at least 100 eligible, unique reviews. The help is careful here: the number can vary from business to business, but most merchants get a rating after about a hundred. So “100” is a typical guide, not an iron rule.
- An average score of at least 3.5 out of 5. This is the threshold for paid ads (text ads and Shopping). In free listings Google can show a lower rating.
- Reviews from the last 24 months count. This is a rolling window: old reviews gradually drop out of the calculation.
- The rating is calculated separately for each country. Reviews from buyers in one country count only toward the rating in that country. If you sell in Ukraine and Poland, you need to collect reviews in each.
The help pages do not say when Google clarified these thresholds, so we do not claim that “the rules changed” on a particular date. What matters is that the conditions apply now.
What it can cost you
The trap is in the 24-month point. A store collected reviews actively for a year or two, reached a hundred and relaxed. Two years later the oldest reviews drop out of the window, the count falls below the threshold, and the rating quietly disappears. Nobody switched anything off, and the help does not promise a separate notification, so one day the stars may simply not show. That is our conclusion from the conditions in the help, not statistics from accounts.
So reviews need to be collected continuously, not once.
These are not Google Maps reviews
The most common mix-up. Owners say: “We have 200 reviews on Maps and a 4.8”. But the help does not list Maps reviews (the business profile) among the sources of a store rating. A store rating is made of post-purchase reviews. Maps reviews are useful for a local business, but as far as the help shows, they do not affect the rating next to an online store’s ads.
What about Ukraine
The Merchant Center and Google Ads help pages contain no list of countries where the rating is shown. On 6 October 2026 we checked Google’s “About this store” page for Ukraine (google.com/storepages?q=site&c=UA): it shows scores and review counts for Ukrainian stores. So Google does calculate a store rating for Ukraine. But whether Google shows the stars in your particular ad depends on the conditions above, and we cannot guarantee it. The help does not say whether this works the same for every ad type, so we do not claim more than that.
Four more things worth knowing
The rating is tied to a domain. According to Google Ads help, the domain visible in the ad must match the domain the rating belongs to. So moving a store to a new address, another domain or a new platform is a moment when the rating is easy to lose, even with hundreds of reviews. Before a move, ask your review service what happens to the reviews when the address changes.
Reviews must be genuine. According to the help, Google filters out reviews it considers untrustworthy (spam, abuse) and counts reviews left after the order is fulfilled. Buying them or writing them yourself is pointless and risky. Fellow practitioners also warn that a sudden burst of identical glowing reviews looks like manipulation. It is safer to ask real buyers for a review after they receive the order, and to keep doing it continuously.
Which review service to choose. As sources of the rating, Google’s help names its own Google Customer Reviews programme and third-party review services. Practitioners rate them differently. Some say moderation of negative reviews in Google Customer Reviews is limited, while third-party services give more flexible control over ratings. Others point out that third-party services that are Google partners must pass on all reviews, negative ones included, and that overly “flexible” control may be read by Google as manipulation. The help does not promise that criticism can be removed: Google does not modify existing ratings and filters out only untrustworthy reviews. So do not pick a service in order to hide the negatives.
Stars under a product are a different programme. In product ads, stars can also appear under an individual product. Those are product ratings, a separate programme with its own conditions, not the store rating. Having one does not mean having the other, so check each separately.
Common mistakes
- Reviews were collected once, before the ads launched, and nobody came back to it.
- Maps or social media reviews are counted instead of post-purchase reviews of the store.
- Countries are not tracked: there are many reviews, but from buyers in a different country than the one the ads run in.
- The problem is discovered only after the stars have gone.
Where to look
Open https://www.google.com/storepages?q=your-site&c=UA in your browser, putting in your site’s address. You will see the score and the number of reviews Google sees for your store in Ukraine (the c= parameter sets the country: UA for Ukraine, PL for Poland). If the page is empty or there are few reviews, you are still far from the threshold.
What you can do yourself
- Use the link above to check how many reviews and what score your store has.
- Count how many reviews would remain if you dropped everything older than two years.
- Set up regular collection: the Google Customer Reviews programme in Merchant Center, or a review service that connects to your website. Connection differs by store platform, so this is a question for whoever runs your site.
- Collect reviews every month, not once a year.
A question for whoever runs your ads: how many store reviews do we have from the last two years, what is the average score, and how do we collect new ones every month?
Summary
The stars next to a store’s ad rest on three things: roughly at least 100 reviews of the store, a score of 3.5 out of 5 or higher, and freshness, since only the last 24 months count. Collect reviews continuously and remember that Maps reviews do not count here. Check your rating today, while the stars are still in place.
You can read how we run ads for online stores in the sections on Shopping, Merchant Center and advertising for online stores. For checking your contractor, see our article on three checks for Google Ads.
Want a free audit of your Google Ads account? Send us a request — we will look at your account and tell you whether you risk losing your store rating.