Merchant Center documents Store ratings' review and star bar

Google has added a new requirements section to its Merchant Center support documentation for Store ratings, the star rating asset that can appear on paid text and Shopping ads. According to Search Engine Roundtable, the change went live around a week before its September 22, 2026 report.

What does the updated documentation require?#

The page now states that a merchant “generally needs to collect at least 100 eligible, unique reviews” before Google can calculate a rating at all. Once a rating exists, the store “must maintain an average composite score of at least 3.5 out of 5 stars” to keep the star asset on paid text ads and Shopping ads. Google says a score that drops below that threshold results in automatic removal of the star rating asset.

How far back do reviews count?#

Google evaluates reviews gathered within a rolling 24-month window, so older feedback ages out of the calculation over time rather than counting indefinitely. That makes Store ratings a moving target: a merchant that clears the 100-review minimum and the 3.5-star floor today can still lose the asset later if the composite score drifts down as older, higher-scoring reviews roll out of the window.

Is the score the same in every country?#

No. The documentation confirms Store ratings are geo-segmented and calculated separately for each country a merchant sells into, rather than aggregated into one worldwide score. A merchant that clears the eligibility bar in one market is not automatically eligible in another.

Search Engine Roundtable notes that most of the rest of the support page appears to have been reorganized rather than substantively rewritten, based on a comparison against an earlier version of the page. The 100-review minimum, the 3.5-star floor, the 24-month window and the per-country segmentation are the parts that read as new or newly explicit documentation of how eligibility already worked.