Review stars on paid search ads: +93% clickthrough for Dashlane
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsAfter Dashlane started showing seller review star ratings on its paid Google search ads, clickthrough on those ads rose 93%.
Dashlane ran this change itself, and it was published as a MarketingSherpa case study.
It was a before/after comparison, not a split test.
- Ad clickthrough rate: +93% after star ratings appeared. Dashlane said the gain paid back the effort many times over.
- Review collection: over 300 customer reviews, with 97% rated four or five stars.
- No split test: the lift compares periods before and after the stars appeared, so other changes over time may have played a part.
Control
Dashlane's paid Google search ads for its password manager ran with no review ratings attached.
Variant
Dashlane emailed active customers to ask for reviews. Once it had the 40 reviews needed for Google to show them, the same ads carried seller star ratings.
Why it likely won
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- Password managers ask people to trust a new kind of tool. Stars give outside proof before anyone clicks.
- Stars take up almost no space but stand out against competing ads with plain text.
- Search for 'password manager' was still a young term, so a trust signal may have helped Dashlane stand out from less known rivals.
Caveats: This is a before/after comparison, not a split test, and no sample size, duration or confidence level was shared. The data dates from around 2015, and Google's ad review formats have changed since.
Who ran it
Dashlane ran this test and published the results (MarketingSherpa case study). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on Dashlane →
How to run this test on your site
- Hypothesis
- If we show review star ratings on our paid search ads, then more searchers will click because outside ratings build trust before they reach our site.
- Primary metric
- Paid search ad clickthrough rate
- Guardrails
- Conversion rate on the ad landing page
- Cost per acquisition
- Average review rating
- Who should test it
- SaaS products in categories where buyers worry about trust, such as security or finance tools, and that can gather enough genuine reviews. It probably won't help much if your ratings are average or the category already shows stars on every ad.
Questions
Do review stars on search ads increase clicks?
They can. In Dashlane's case, clickthrough rose 93% after stars appeared, though that was a before/after comparison rather than a controlled test.
How many reviews do you need for stars to show on Google ads?
Dashlane needed 40 reviews at the time. Google's rules have changed since, so check the current requirements for seller ratings.
How did Dashlane collect reviews?
It emailed a random sample of active users roughly once a month to ask for a review.
It followed up on low ratings to fix the customer's problem.