by With some eCommerce stores getting upwards of 20% of their organic search traffic and revenue from free Google Shopping listing, Google Shopping is definitely an area of SEO worthy of attention.
But unfortunately there’s not a lot of good information on how to rank higher. So to better understand the ranking factors behind Google Shopping’s search results, we analyzed the SERPs for 5,000 keywords.
Key Findings
Here are the most interesting findings and takeaways from the study.
- Winner – Amazon.com is the clear winner in Google Shopping, ranking in position #1 52% of the time, followed by Walmart (ranking #1 6% of the time), and Home Depot (ranking #1 3% of the time).
- Authority – Overall link authority (as measured by Ahrefs Domain Rating) had the strongest correlation with Google Shopping rankings across all factors studied.
- Referring Domains – Product pages ranking in the top 2 positions had 2.72x more referring domains than positions #3 – #10.
- Title Tags – There was only a very slight correlation between keyword usage in the title tag and higher rankings.
- Meta Descriptions – Product pages that mentioned the exact keyword phrase in meta descriptions noticeably outperformed those that didn’t.
- H1 Header Tags – Exact-match keyword usage in the H1 header tags had minor correlation with rankings.
- URL Length – There was a very slight correlation between URL length and rankings. Shorter URLs had a slight ranking advantage over longer URLs.
- Product Title Length – Product title length also had a very small correlation with rankings, where shorter product titles ranked slightly better than longer product titles.
- Search Traffic – Product pages that rank well in traditional Google Search also rank extremely well in Google Shopping. Pages in the top 2 shopping positions had 4.4x more organic search traffic (as measured by Ahrefs) than positions #3-#10.
- Customer Reviews – Products with customer reviews significantly outperformed those that didn’t have any.
- Star Rating – There was some minor correlation between a store’s star rating and rankings. The average star rating across all stores was 4.37.
- Product Pricing – Lower cost products rank significantly better than more expensive products.
- Google Shopping Scores – Stores with stronger Google Shopping scores outperform stores with lower scores.
- Structured Data – Product structured data had essentially zero correlation with rankings.
- Fun fact – Amazon doesn’t have any structured data on any of their product pages.
Correlation
Each ranking factor in the study is measured using Spearman’s correlation coefficient, which ranges from -1.00 to 1.00:
- A score closer to 1.00 indicates a strong positive relationship with higher rankings
- A score closer to -1.00 suggests the feature may actually hurt rankings
- A score near 0 means little to no relationship with rankings
However, it’s important to note that correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation.
While the data might show that certain features appear more frequently in top-ranking pages, this doesn’t automatically mean implementing these features will improve your rankings. Other factors may be at play.
So with that out of the way, here’s a summary of all the ranking factor correlations for Google Shopping:
We’ll dive into each of these ranking factors in more depth in the sections below.
Link Metrics
Domain Rating
Of all the ranking factors studies, Domain Rating had the highest correlation with Google Shopping rankings.
For example, sites ranking in position 1 had an average Domain Rating of 81, while sites ranking in position 20 had an average Domain Rating of 71.
So does this mean that increasing your Domain Rating will result in better rankings in Google Shopping? Possibly.
This may be an issue of correlation vs causation. Websites with higher Domain Ratings often belong to more well-known and trusted brands.
Google seems to favor reputable brands in search results, so it wouldn’t be surprising if the high correlation of Domain Rating is actually indicative of Google’s preference towards established brands.
Key Takeaway: Increasing your Domain Rating appears to have a significant impact on Google Shopping rankings. However, this may be because trusted brands often have higher Domain Ratings. It’s worth focusing on both building your brand and acquiring backlinks.
Referring Domains
It was very interesting to see that having just a few backlinks can make a huge difference. Product pages ranking in the top 2 positions had 4.5x more backlinks than the sites ranking in the other positions.
This makes sense considering 98% of product pages in the study didn’t have a single backlink.
Takeaway: Building 1-2 quality backlinks to a product page can have a noticeable impact on Google Shopping rankings.
URL Rating
Similar to referring domains, there was notable correlation between URL Rating and Google Shopping rankings, which makes sense. As a product page gains more backlinks, we’d expect their URL Rating to increase as well.
97% of product pages in the study had a URL Rating of 0. But product pages with a higher URL rating ranked noticeably better.
Key Takeaway: Focus on increasing the URL Rating of product pages with link building to rank higher in Google Shopping.
On-Page Ranking Factors
While not overly significant, there was some minor correlation between on-page factors and Google Shopping rankings.
Title Tags
Title tags are a very important ranking factor for Google search, but what about Google Shopping?
The data suggests that title tags are only a minor ranking factor within Google Shopping. Product pages that included the exact target keyword in the title tag appeared to rank noticeably better than those that didn’t.
For each ranking position, we can see the percentage of product pages that used the exact keyword phrase in the title tag.
Partially matching the target keyword in the title tag also had some positive correlation, although a little bit more subtle than exact-match keyword usage.
We consider the keyword usage a “partial match” if all words of the keyword phrase are included in the title tag, but may be out of order or not consecutive.
Let’s take for example the keyword “hello kitty” to see which title tags would be considered exact match versus partial match.
- ‘Hello Kitty Plushie’ = Exact match. The entire keyword phrase is together.
- ‘Hello Plushie Kitty‘ = Partial-match. All words from the keyword phrase are found, but out of order.
- ‘Kitty Plushie’ = No match since the term “hello” from the keyword phrase is not found in the title.
And lastly, as expected, there was negative ranking correlation for title tags that had no keyword match.
Key Takeaway: There are some ranking benefits to including the target keyword phrase in the product page title tags, although not as pronounced as with traditional Google Search.
Meta Descriptions
Interestingly enough, of all the on-page ranking factors studied, meta descriptions had the highest correlation with rankings (even more so than title tags).
It was very clear that pages which included the target keyword in the meta description ranked noticeably better than those that didn’t.
A similar trend can also be seen for partial-match keyword usage in the meta description.
And as expected, the opposite was also true. Product pages that did not include the keyword phrase in the meta description didn’t rank as well.
So will adding the target keyword in your meta descriptions increase your rankings in Google Shopping?
Possibly.
But there may be something else at play…
It appears that the vast majority of product pages were just using the first few hundred characters of the page’s product description to generate a meta description.
So if the meta description included the target keyword, it was very likely that the first few sentences of the page’s product description also included the keyword.
In short, it may be more so the case that including the keyword in the page content is more important than just including it in the meta description.
Key Takeaway: There’s a strong correlation between rankings and keyword usage in meta descriptions, so it’s generally a good idea to cover your bases by mentioning your keyword in the meta description. However it may be helpful to include your keyword in the first few sentences of your product description as well.
H1 Tags
H1 tags had the less correlation when compared to title tags and meta descriptions. So while there does seem to be some correlation between rankings and H1 keyword usage, it was very minor.
We can see that product pages that included the exact keyword phrase in the H1 tag did seem to perform better than those that didn’t.
The same was also true for partial match usage in H1 tags, although the correlation was much more minor when compared with exact match usage.
Interestingly enough, the vast majority of product pages (~60%) did not include the keyword phrase anywhere in the H1 tag. With so many product pages missing the target keyword from the H1 tag, it appears that not having the keyword in the H1 tag at all doesn’t make a noticeable difference in rankings
However, there was some very minor correlation indicating that not using the keyword in the H1 tag at all can have a negative impact on rankings.
Given the low correlation between keyword usage in H1 tags and rankings, it appears that Google Shopping prioritizes other ranking factors.
Key Takeaway: The vast majority of product pages don’t include the target keyword in the H1 tag. So just including your target keyword in the H1 tag can help you standout from the competition and rank better in Google Shopping.
Product Title Length
There wasn’t much correlation between the length of the product title and Google Shopping rankings.
However, it does seem that products ranking in position 1 had slightly shorter header tags, indicating that product titles may be a slight ranking factor in top positions.
Key Takeaway: The correlation between rankings and product title length is very small, but there may be some minor benefits in top positions to having shorter product titles.
URL Length
Similar to above, URL length had almost no correlation with rankings. However, product pages ranking in position 1 did have noticeably shorter URL lengths than products ranking in other positions.
Key Takeaway: Given the lower correlation between URL length and rankings, it’s probably not worth shortening URLs for better Google Shopping rankings. However, it could be worth using for shorter URLs for product pages created in the future.
Search Traffic
As part of this study, we also wanted to see if there’s any correlation between performance in traditional Google Search and Google Shopping.
Interestingly enough, there was noticeable correlation between organic search traffic and Google Shopping rankings, especially for the top 5 ranking positions.
Product pages ranking in the top 5 Google Shopping positions often had strong rankings and search traffic from traditional Google search as well. This was especially true for product pages ranking in the top 2 Google Shopping positions.
So far we’ve seen that many of the ranking factors that influence traditional Google search also influence Google Shopping results (backlinks, meta data, etc). So it’s not a complete surprise that product pages ranking well in Google search would also rank well in Google Shopping.
Key Takeaway: Focusing on traditional SEO best practices can positively impact Google Shopping rankings as well.
Structured Data
There was some very interesting correlation with Structured Data and Google Shopping rankings.
On one hand, the use of review structured data had some of the strongest correlation of any of the factors studied (only 2nd behind Domain Rating).
On the other hand, the product structured data actually had negative correlation with rankings.
Let’s dive into these findings in more detail.
Product Structured Data
We wanted to see the percentage of product pages in each ranking position that contained product structured data.
To our surprise, the product pages ranking in the #1 position actually used product structured data markup less often (80%) than other product pages (90%).
How could this be?
Well upon further investigation, it appears that Amazon.com occupies the vast majority of position #1 and position #2 listings.
And interestingly enough, Amazon.com doesn’t use any structured data on any of its product pages.
Let that sink in. The #1 online retailer doesn’t use any structured data on any of their product pages.
But if we exclude Amazon.com from the data, you can see there’s pretty much no correlation between product structured data and Google Shopping rankings.
Key Takeaway: There doesn’t appear to be any ranking benefits to using using product structured data on your product pages.
Reviews Structured Data
Product pages that leveraged review structured data ranked significantly better than those that didn’t. In fact, using review structured data was the #2 most significant ranking factor across the entire study.
In order for a product page to be eligible for review structured data, it needs to actually have product reviews from customers. So what the data may be telling us is that having product reviews is likely a very impactful ranking factor in Google Shopping.
Key Takeaway: Getting customer reviews on your products appears to be a significant ranking factor. Product review tools like Stamped.io, Judge.me, and Yotpo can help streamline the review collection process, while also handling the review structured data.
# of Unique Structured Data Types
There are many different structured data types that can be added to a webpage. Here are the top 20 most common structured data types across all 5,000 SERPs.
| Structured Data Type | Count | % |
| Product | 66,497 | 68% |
| Offer | 65,112 | 67% |
| BreadcrumbList | 47,232 | 49% |
| ListItem | 47,104 | 48% |
| Brand | 42,727 | 44% |
| Organization | 30,641 | 32% |
| AggregateRating | 19,559 | 20% |
| OfferShippingDetails | 14,237 | 15% |
| MonetaryAmount | 13,929 | 14% |
| MerchantReturnPolicy | 11,777 | 12% |
| WebSite | 11,024 | 11% |
| ImageObject | 9,858 | 10% |
| Review | 9,062 | 9% |
| Rating | 8,986 | 9% |
| Thing | 7,845 | 8% |
| Person | 7,177 | 7% |
| SearchAction | 7,064 | 7% |
| WebPage | 6,303 | 6% |
| PostalAddress | 4,169 | 4% |
So as part of the study, we also wanted to see if there is any correlation between Google Shopping rankings and the number of different structured data types used.
For example, will a product page rank better if it has multiple structured data types (Product, Offer, BreadcrumbList, Organization, AggregateRating, etc) instead of just product structured data?
Well the data shows that product pages with more structured data types tend to rank sightly better, with most product pages having around 7 different types of structured data.
But just like what saw with Product Structured Data above, Amazon is skewing the data for the top 1-2 positions since they don’t use any structured data on any of their product pages.
Key Takeaway: Focus on getting the most important structured data types on your product pages (Product, Review, AggregateRating, AggregateOffer, Brand, Organization, Breadcrumb). However, there doesn’t seem to be any noticeable benefit to adding additional structured data types.
Product Pricing
We also wanted to see how product pricing impacted rankings in Google Shopping.
For each keyword, we calculated the average price across the top ranking 28 products and assessed whether each product was above the average or below the average.
The graph below shows the distribution of products with below average pricing and above average pricing at each ranking position.
- Green = % of product with below average pricing
- Grey = % of product with above average pricing
As you can see, there is a higher concentration of products with below average pricing in the top 5-10 positions. Whereas products with above average pricing don’t seem to rank as well.
Of all the ranking factors studies, having a below average price was the #6 most significant ranking factor.
Key Takeaway: Google seems to significantly favor lower cost products in Google Shopping. Reducing the price of products could be an impactful way to increase your Google Shopping rankings.
Google Shopping Scores
You might not know this, but you can easily see how Google rates your eCommerce store. Just replace “bestbuy.com” with your actual domain name in the following URL string:
https://customerreviews.google.com/v/immersivemerchant?q=bestbuy.com&c=US&v=19
Per Google Shopping’s documentation, there’s 5 scores for each store (Shipping, Returns, Pricing, Payment Options, Website Quality), and each score will have one of the following ratings.
- Exceptional: A business is amongst the very best in that area.
- Great: A business is well above average.
- Good: A business falls somewhere in the middle.
- Fair: A business is below the average.
- Low: A business is well below the average.
So as part of this study, we wanted to see how much these Google Shopping scores correlate with rankings.
Here’s what we found.
Let’s dive into each of these factors in more detail.
Shipping Scores
Of all the different categories, Shipping Scores had the highest correlation with Google Shopping rankings. Here’s how these Shipping scores were distributed across all the stores in the study.
- Exceptional: 29%
- Great: 37%
- Good: 21%
- Fair: 11%
- Low: 1%
Stores that had “Exceptional” Shipping Scores significantly outperformed those that didn’t, with a particularly high concentration in the top few positions.
Consequently, stores with just “Fair” Shipping Scores had the highest negative correlation with Google Shopping rankings. This was most evident for stores ranking in the top 10-15 positions, which rarely scored “Fair” for Shipping.
Key Takeaway: Having strong Shipping Scores (“Exceptional” or “Great”) is critical for ranking in the top 5-10 Google Shopping positions. It’s much more difficult to achieve top 10 rankings with “Fair” Shipping Scores.
Returns
Next to Shipping, Returns had the second highest correlation with Google Shopping rankings. Here’s how these Returns scores were distributed across the stores.
- Exceptional: 3%
- Great: 45%
- Good: 31%
- Fair: 18%
- Low: 3%
Interestingly enough, “Exceptional” Return scores actually didn’t have any noticeable correlation with rankings
This is likely because very few stores (just 3%) earned the “Exceptional” Returns score.
However, there was noticeable correlation between Google Shopping rankings and stores with “Great” or “Good” Returns scores.
Conversely, stores that had “Fair” Return scores didn’t rank nearly as well and were less seen in the top 10 ranking positions.
Key Takeaway: Aim for a Returns score of at least “Good” or “Great”. Don’t worry about achieving an “Exceptional” score since Google rarely issues the “Exceptional” rating.
Competitive Pricing
In the Product Pricing section above, we saw that the actual price of your products appears to be a fairly significant ranking factor.
However, the Competitive Pricing score issued from Google Shopping appears to be much less significant.
In fact, of all the different Google Shopping scoring categories, Competitive Pricing had the lowest correlation. So while there is some very minor correlation between rankings and Competitive Pricing, it’s quite insignificant and doesn’t warrant much attention.
Here’s a breakdown of Competitive Pricing scores across all stores ranking in the study.
- Exceptional: 7%
- Great: 20%
- Good: 70%
- Fair: 3%
- Low: 0%
Interestingly enough, there was actually some slight negative correlation between rankings and stores with “Exceptional” Competitive Pricing scores. This is likely because Google Shopping rarely issues the “Exceptional” score to stores (7%), and likely places more emphasis on other ranking factors.
However there was some minor positive correlation for stores with “Great” Competitive Pricing scores.
And stores with “Good” Competitive Pricing scores also saw a very slight positive correlation with rankings.
However, there is some slight negative correlation between rankings and “Fair” Competitive Pricing scores. Stores with “Fair” scores are less frequently seen in the top 10 positions.
Key Takeaway: Google Shopping’s Competitive Pricing scores have minimal correlation with rankings, and don’t warrant much attention. It’s much more important to compare your actual product prices to the competition instead of focusing on the Competitive Pricing score.
Payment Options
There was some minor correlation between rankings and Payment Options scores, but not as significant as other Google Shopping score categories. This is likely because the vast majority of product pages (84%) were from stores with favorable Payment Options scores (Exceptional, Great, and Good):
- Exceptional: 30%
- Great: 12%
- Good: 42%
- Fair: 11%
- Low: 4%
As you can see, only about 15% of stores had unfavorable scores (“Fair” or “Low”) for Payment Options, which had negative correlation with shopping rankings.
However, there was very minimal correlation between stores with strong Payment Options scores and rankings.
Key Takeaway: Make sure you have a Payment Options score of at least “Good”. However, there doesn’t appear to be any additional benefits of going from “Good” to “Great” or “Exceptional”. This can be achieved by allowing customers to pay by PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, and “buy now, pay later” options like Affirm and Klarna.
Website Quality
Google explains that Website Quality is based on “key website performance metrics. A higher rating may indicate things like easy navigation or an easy checkout experience”.
Here’s a breakdown of Website Quality scores across all stores ranking in the study.
- Exceptional: 31%
- Great: 7%
- Good: 60%
- Fair: 2%
- Low: 0%
There was some minor correlation between Website Quality scores and Google Shopping Rankings. Websites with an “Exceptional” Website Quality score were more frequently seen in the top 3 ranking positions.
Whereas websites having a “Fair” Website Quality score didn’t have any noticeable correlation with rankings.
Key Takeaway: There’s a slight preference for stores with an “Exceptional” Quality Score. However, it’s important to aim for a Website Quality score of at least “Good” or “Great”.
Star Rating
Google Shopping will also display the star rating of any store, which is based on the store’s Google reviews as well as reviews on other prominent review platforms (ResellerRatings, Shopper Approved, Sitejabber, Stamped.io, TrustPilot, Yotpo, etc).
Of all the factors we studied, Star Rating had the 4th strongest correlation with Google Shopping rankings.
However, even though there is steady correlation between star rating and rankings, the overall impact of star ratings appears to be very small.
Keep in mind that the y-axis in the graph above starts at 4 stars, so the differences in star rating is extremely minimal. Stores ranking #1 have an average star rating of 4.45 while stores ranking in position 28 have an average star rating of 4.39, a difference of just 0.06.
That said, stores with a Star Rating below 3.5 stars ranked noticeably worse than stores with 4 stars.
Key Takeaway: Aim for a star rating of at least 4.5 stars to maximize your Google Shopping rankings. 3rd-party review platform like Stamped.io, TrustPilot, or Yotpo are a great way to get started. Just make sure whatever review platform you decide is one of Google’s supported partners.
Sale Badge
Google issues a “Top Quality Store” badge to stores that “constantly deliver an exceptional shopping experience”.
Google’s documentation indicates that in order to receive a “Top Quality Store” badge, a store needs to have the following:
- Fast shipping
- Transparent return policies
- High-quality websites
- Positive user reviews
The graph below shows the portion of stores with a “Top Quality Store” at each ranking position.
- Green = % of listings where the store had the “Top Quality Store” badge
- Grey = % of listings where the store did not have the “Top Quality Store” badge
As you can see, stores with a “Top Quality Store” badge tend to rank noticeably better than stores without it, especially when it comes to the #1 position in Google Shopping.
Key Takeaway: Earning a “Top Quality Store” seems to have a positive impact on rankings in Google Shopping, especially for top positions.
Conclusion
Google Shopping can be a strong source of search traffic for any eCommerce store.
Use the takeaways from this study to increase your rankings in Google Shopping and earn more search traffic.
But what about you…
What’s your biggest takeaway from this Google Shopping ranking study?
