Judge.me is now an approved Google review partner. Once your Product Ratings feed is set up, your reviews sync to Google Shopping automatically — no manual uploads required.

This article focuses on the API feed. The XML feed is still supported for stores that haven't migrated yet — see API feed vs XML feed for the differences and Update your feed to the API version to migrate.

With the API Product Ratings feed, we send your reviews directly to Google Merchant Center via Google's API — no manual file uploads required.

To submit a Product Ratings feed to Google Shopping, you'll need:

We provide 3 versions of the Product Ratings feed for Google Shopping. Each version differs in how reviews are sent to Google and how much setup is required.

The quickest way to tell which feed you're on is to open Settings > Google and SEO > Google Shopping in your Judge.me admin and check what's shown at the top of the page:

You can also confirm your feed version based on your install date instead:

Once you submit the API Product Ratings feed from your Judge.me admin, we handle everything from there — you don't need to create a separate review feed, connect your own API credentials, or provide a Merchant Center ID:

See Included reviews and Excluded reviews for which reviews qualify to be sent.

All product reviews with written content from one of the following sources (this includes published, pending, archived, and hidden reviews and both verified and unverified reviews) are included in the API Product Ratings feed:

To see the reviews that are included in the API Product Ratings feed:

To ensure compliance for the Google Product Ratings program requirements, all product reviews from the following sources, even if they are verified, are not included in the API Product Ratings feed:

For each review we send, we include key product information so Google can link it to the correct product in your Products feed:

The more identifiers you provide, the more accurate the matching. See Add unique product identifiers to set these up.

After you submit the feed, Google takes around 10 days to process it.

Once processed, any review that's correctly matched to a product and meets Google's Product Ratings policies starts showing on Google Shopping — in both paid ads and free listings.

Updating from the XML feed to the API version is not mandatory at this time, but will be required in the future — we recommend updating as soon as possible.

Updating is straightforward, but there are a few things to be aware of before you do:

If you installed Judge.me before April 7, 2025 and currently have the XML feed enabled, to update your Product Ratings feed to the API version:

Once you've updated your Product Ratings feed to the API version, we will submit it to Google Shopping automatically for you.

After you've updated to the API Product Ratings feed:

To display your Judge.me product reviews on Google Shopping, you'll first need to complete your Google Merchant Center setup. This is not handled by Judge.me and must be done separately.

To get started with Merchant Center:

Once your product feed is approved in Google Merchant Center, to confirm that in Judge.me:

Before submitting the Product Ratings feed, check the Add unique product identifiers and Configure your Product Ratings feed sections below — there are a number of settings you can adjust, including store link format, product identifiers, reviewer name format, and which reviews can be excluded. You can also come back and change these after submitting.

To submit the API Product Ratings feed to Google Shopping:

Reviews submitted via the API feed go to a centralized Google Merchant Center managed, so you can't check individual review statuses from your own Merchant Center.

Instead, the most reliable way to confirm the integration is working is to pick a recent review, find its product, and check whether the rating shows on that product's Google Shopping listing.

Google states that ratings and reviews are matched to products based on a number of factors, the most important being globally unique product identifiers that appear in both:

If the unique product identifiers are missing in either your Products feed or Product Ratings feed, the review might not be matched to the correct product, resulting in it being marked as Missing or invalid product_id (or STRONG_IDS_NOT_PRESENT) in Google Merchant Center.

We automatically include the following product identifiers for each product in the API Product Ratings feed to support this matching process:

You can enhance the matching by also adding the following product identifiers in the Product Ratings feed:

The <gtins> attribute in the Product Ratings feed includes a list of Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs), such as UPC or EAN codes. GTINs help Google match the reviews in your Product Ratings feed with the correct products in your Products feed.

To use GTIN, you'll first need to register your GTINs with GS1.

Once registered, to ensure proper product matching, the same GTIN values must exist in both feeds.

To add GTINs to the Products feed, you can add a barcode value to your products in Shopify:

Then, you can include them in the Product Ratings feed, using the GTIN values already saved on your products:

The <mpn> attribute includes a list of Manufacturer Part Numbers (MPNs) associated with the product. MPNs help Google match reviews in the Product Ratings feed with the correct products in your Products feed.

To ensure proper product matching, the same MPN values must exist in both feeds.

To add MPNs to the Products feed, you can add SKUs to your products in Shopify:

Then, you can include them in the Product Ratings feed, using the SKUs values already saved on your products:

The <brands> attribute contains the product's brand name. Brand information helps Google match reviews in the Product Ratings feed with the correct products in your Products feed.

To ensure proper product matching, the same brand values should exist in both feeds.

You can add brand names to your Products feed by adding Vendor to your products in Shopify:

When brand values are available on your products, we automatically include them in the Product Ratings feed. No additional setup is required.

You can configure these settings before or after submitting your feed — any changes will apply to the next sync.

To control whether the product and review URLs in the feed use HTTP or HTTPS:

The <reviewer> / <name> attribute provides the reviewer's name in the Product Ratings feed.

To change how the name appears in the feed:

The <reviewer_images> attribute contains the URLs of the images attached to the review.

To control whether to include this attribute in your Product Ratings feed:

The <products> attribute contains all products associated with a review.

Including reviews from product groups can significantly increase the size of your Product Ratings feed, especially if your product groups contain many products. Two limits apply per review:

Each product in a group contributes 8 attributes to the review: product_url, title, and the product_ids set (shopify_product_id, barcodes, SKUs, MPNs, Vendor). The attribute limit is checked first, so it can be reached before the product limit — for example, if your products have many identifiers. When either limit is hit, the remaining products in the group won't be associated with that review.

If you have very large product groups or products with many identifiers, consider disabling Include reviews part of product groups so each review is associated only with the original product.

To control whether reviews from product groups are associated with only the original product or all products in the group within the Product Ratings feed:

When Google reviews your Product Ratings feed, they may check the review URLs and product URLs included in the feed.

If a review is linked to a product that has been removed from your store, these links may no longer work. Including reviews for out-of-store products can lead to questions or issues during Google's review of your feed.

To avoid this, you can exclude reviews for out-of-store products from the Product Ratings feed:

To control whether reviews that contain personal information are included in the Product Ratings feed:

The <is_spam> attribute indicates whether a review is considered spam in the Product Ratings feed.

If <is_spam>true</is_spam>, the review will appear in the Product Ratings feed as Spam (marked by the publisher) or PUBLISHER_MARKED_AS_SPAM and will not be shown on Google Shopping.

You can't manually mark a review as spam in the Product Ratings feed. The <is_spam> value is set automatically depends on the version of the Product Ratings feed you're using:

To exclude reviews that contain specific words ("shipped", "arrived", "support", "shipping", "company", "email", "shipment", "store", "package", "service", "business", "deliver", "order") from the Product Ratings feed:

Note that these keywords are matched as substrings, not whole words — so "deliver" will also match "delivered", "delivery", and "redelivery", and "order" will also match "ordered", "reorder", and "preordered". This can cause false positives, like a review saying "the product arrived quickly and in perfect condition" being excluded even though it's a genuine product review.

The <collection_method> attribute indicates how the review was collected. The value is either one of the following:

This attribute cannot be edited or removed, helping ensure transparency and compliance with Google's requirements.

The <is_incentivized_review> attribute indicates whether the customer received a reward such as a discount, gift card, points, or any other benefit when submitting their review.

When a review is incentivized, we automatically tag it with the is_incentivized_review attribute in the Product Ratings feed. This is regardless of whether the incentive is disclosed or mentioned beforehand (for example, in the review request).

This attribute cannot be edited or removed, helping ensure transparency and compliance with Google's requirements.

The <is_verified_purchase> attribute indicates whether the review is linked to a verified order from your store.

This attribute cannot be edited or removed, helping ensure transparency and compliance with Google's requirements.

For reviews included in the Product Ratings feed, Google processes each review and assigns it one of the following statuses:

How you can check review statuses depends on which feed version you're using.

Reviews with the Needs review or Disapproved status are tagged with one or more issue types that explain why they were flagged. The issues below describe what each type means and, where applicable, what you can do about them.

This is the most common reason why reviews don't appear on Google Shopping.

A review is flagged with Missing or invalid product_id (or STRONG_IDS_NOT_PRESENT) and falls under the Needs review status in Google Merchant Center when it can't be matched to a product because the unique product identifiers are missing or don't match between the Products feed and the Product Ratings feed.

See Add unique product identifiers for how to fix this.

A review is flagged with Spam (marked by the publisher) (or PUBLISHER_MARKED_AS_SPAM) and falls under the Disapproved status in Google Merchant Center when it was marked as spam in the Product Ratings feed before being sent to Google.

See Spam (marked by the publisher) for how this is determined and how to control it.

A review is flagged with Unsupported comment format (or COMMENT_WITH_URL) and falls under the Needs review status in Google Merchant Center when Google detects something in the review content that looks like a URL.

This sometimes triggers on text that isn't actually a link. The most common cause is a missing space after a period — like "product.it" or "great.Will buy again" — where Google can read it as a web address.

Unfortunately, as this flag is determined by Google's content checks, it can't be adjusted in Judge.me. However, you can:

A review is flagged with Inauthentic content (or REVIEW_AUTHENTICITY) and given the Disapproved status in Google Merchant Center when Google's systems have flagged the review as potentially not genuine.

Unfortunately, this is determined by Google according to their Product Ratings policies, so it isn't something we can adjust on the Judge.me side.

A review is flagged with Unsafe imagery (or REVIEW_FAMILY_SAFE_IMAGES) and given the Disapproved status in Google Merchant Center when Google's automated checks have classified one or more images attached to the review as not safe for all audiences.

Unfortunately, this flag is determined by Google, so it isn't something we can adjust on the Judge.me side. However, you can:

A review is flagged with Personally identifiable information (or POLICY_VIOLATION) and falls under the Disapproved status in Google Merchant Center when its content violates one of Google's Product Ratings policies — most commonly because it contains personal or confidential information about someone.

To reduce the chance of this flag being applied, we automatically detect and replace personal information (such as email addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, and names) in reviews with **** before they're sent to Google, or you can also exclude them from the Product Ratings feed — see Reviews containing personal information.

This only filters at the feed level. Once a review is included in the feed, Google runs its own checks, and any flag they apply at that stage is determined by Google and isn't something we can adjust on the Judge.me side. However, you can:

A review is flagged with Low quality content (or LOW_QUALITY) and falls under the Disapproved status in Google Merchant Center when its content contains too many misspelled words, grammatically incorrect statements, or repeated phrases to provide sufficient value. For example, "AAAAAA+++++" is non-substantive and offers no useful information about the product.

This flag is determined by Google, so it isn't something we can adjust on the Judge.me side. However, you can:

A review is flagged with Missing content (or CONTENT_EMPTY) and falls under the Disapproved status in Google Merchant Center when it has no readable text content in the review body. This typically happens when a review has only a title with no body text — the title is sent as part of the review but isn't counted as the review content itself.

This flag is determined by Google, so it isn't something we can adjust on the Judge.me side. However, you can:

A review is flagged with Unnecessary tags (or HTML_CRUFT) and falls under the Needs review status in Google Merchant Center when its content contains characters that look like HTML tags — for example, <, >, or fragments resembling markup.

Google automatically removes these tags from the review text before displaying it on Google Shopping, so the review can still display, but the cleaned version may differ slightly from what the reviewer originally wrote.

This flag is determined by Google, so it isn't something we can adjust on the Judge.me side. However, you can:

A review is flagged with Hate speech (or REVIEW_HATE) and falls under the Disapproved status in Google Merchant Center when Google's automated checks have classified the content as text that may promote or condone violence against individuals or groups based on race, ethnicity or other core characteristics, or as using profanity targeted at such individuals or groups.

This flag is determined by Google, so it isn't something we can adjust on the Judge.me side. However, you can:

A review is flagged with Unsupported comment characters (or COMMENT_WITH_REPLACEMENT_CHAR) and falls under the Needs review status in Google Merchant Center when its content contains the Unicode replacement character (�, U+FFFD). This character usually appears when text wasn't encoded or copied correctly, and the original character couldn't be preserved. It often happens with certain emojis or special symbols that didn't transfer cleanly into the review — for example, "Really great stuff 👌�👌�" where what should have been an emoji has been replaced with a �.

This flag is determined by Google, so it isn't something we can adjust on the Judge.me side. However, you can:

A review is flagged with Inappropriate content (or REVIEW_INAPPROPRIATE_CONTENT) and falls under the Disapproved status in Google Merchant Center when Google has classified it as containing words or phrases considered very rude or disrespectful, or words considered profane or sexually explicit. Google may apply this flag through automated checks or, in some cases, manual checks.

To reduce the chance of this flag being applied, we apply a profanity filter that replaces matched words in the review's title and content with **** before they're sent to Google — see Spam (marked by the publisher).

This only filters at the feed level. Once a review is included in the feed, Google runs their own checks, and any flag they apply at that stage is determined by Google and isn't something we can adjust on the Judge.me side. However, you can:

A review is flagged with Harmful links (or REVIEW_DANGEROUS_LINKS) and falls under the Disapproved status in Google Merchant Center when Google detects a link in the review content that has been classified as potentially unsafe — for example, a link Google associates with malware, phishing, or other harmful content.

Like Unsupported comment format (or COMMENT_WITH_URL), this can also trigger on text that isn't actually a link. The most common cause is a missing space after a period.

Unfortunately, as this flag is determined by Google's content checks, it can't be adjusted in Judge.me. However, you can:

If you no longer want to sync reviews to Google Shopping, you can disable the API Product Ratings feed at any time.

To disable the API Product Ratings feed:

Once the API feed is disabled: