Last month, we covered how we saw an "Incentivized" label on some product reviews within Google Search. Now, Google is emailing merchants and advertisers notifying them that they must properly tag incentivized reviews for Google.
Menachem Ani shared a snippet of the email on X that he received to a Google Merchant Center account. The email says:
Incentivized reviews require proper identification:For greater transparency, every review boosted by incentives (gift cards, rewards points, discounts) needs to be tagged with the is_incentivized_review attribute in your data source.
Here is a screenshot of that email:
As a reminder, here is a screenshot of how it looks on the frontend:
Google's policies say:
Incentivized reviews: We may display reviews that have been obtained through incentives, such as gift cards or discounts. However, these incentives cannot be dependent on the sentiment of the review. If you provide an incentive for a review, you are required to use the [incentivized_review] attribute in your feed to properly disclose it.
Emmanuel Flossie did a deep dive on this on his blog - if you are looking to implement this, you should check out his post.
So, heads-up, with the FTC also looking more closely at reviews, it's highly recommended that the manner in which you gather, AND DISPLAY, reviews should be re-evaluated for your brand's safety!
— Kirk Williams (@PPCKirk) November 18, 2025
Forum discussion at X.
