Importing & syndicating reviews

These are the power tools behind reviews. They all live under Reviews → Tools in the store sidebar — a single hub with five cards: Imports, Syndication, Groups, Rewards, and Product stats. This page covers everything except Rewards (which has its own walkthrough on the Product reviews hub). Use these when you are migrating in from another platform, pushing star ratings into Google Shopping, or analyzing how individual products are reviewing.

Import existing reviews

Switching to Sellerlane from another review app? Bring your history with you so your products keep their social proof. Go to Reviews → Tools → Imports.

What the importer accepts

The importer reads a CSV file (at most 20 MB, header row required). Pick a Source so the right column mapping is applied automatically:

Source	Value	Notes
Generic CSV	csv	Use the canonical column names below
Judge.me	judgeme	Recognizes export headers like picture_urls, reply_date
Loox	loox	Recognizes review, photo_url
Yotpo	yotpo	Recognizes review_score, review_content, comment_content
Other	other	Best-effort header matching only

When you pick Judge.me, Loox, or Yotpo, their native column names are mapped onto the canonical columns for you and any unrecognized columns are ignored — you do not need to re-shape the export first.

CSV columns

The canonical header set (the Download sample CSV link on the Imports page gives you a ready-made template):

Column	Required	Notes
external_review_id	Recommended	The source system’s unique id. Used to skip rows already imported, so re-running the same file is safe. If the column is absent, a stable id is derived from the row’s contents.
product_handle, sku, product_id	One required	Rows match to a product in that order of preference.
rating	Yes	Integer 1–5.
title, body, reviewer_name, reviewer_email	No	Optional. Invalid emails are rejected per-row.
created_at	No	ISO-8601 or YYYY-MM-DD. Defaults to now.
verified	No	true/false (and yes, 1, buyer are accepted). This is a trusted migration assertion, not a Sellerlane order lookup; set it only when the source platform verified the purchase.
photo_urls	No	Up to 5 https URLs separated by a pipe (|).
reply_body, reply_created_at	No	An optional public store reply attached to the review.

Run an import

1. Go to Reviews → Tools → Imports.
2. Choose the Source, then either Upload CSV (only files uploaded here can be imported) or paste an Uploaded file URL from a previous upload.
3. Click Create import. The job is queued and runs in the background.
4. Watch the job table — Status, Progress (processed/total), Imported, and Failed update live while it runs. If any rows fail, an Error report link gives you the row numbers and reasons.
5. Need to stop? Click Cancel on a running job. Rows already imported stay; the remaining rows are skipped.

Caution

Imported reviews are published immediately — they bypass the Auto publish reviews setting for new buyer submissions. Publication remains rating-neutral; there is no minimum-rating gate. Migrating a large export goes live right away, so spot-check the source data first and moderate from Reviews → Reviews afterward. Treat verified=true as trusted migration input, not proof from a Sellerlane order lookup, and use it only when the source platform verified the purchase. This immediate publication applies to the review text, not imported photos. Each remote photo stays Pending until the scanner attests the bytes and copies them into owned, immutable storage. A mutable third-party URL can never become public merely because it appeared in an import CSV.

Syndicate to Google Shopping

Publish your reviews to Google so star ratings can appear in Google Shopping and the Shopping tab. Sellerlane generates a Google Product Reviews XML feed (schema 2.4) that Google fetches on a schedule. Go to Reviews → Tools → Syndication.

Caution

Google requires at least 50 published reviews before it will accept your feed. The Syndication page shows a live checklist with your current published count.

Enable the Google feed

1. On the Syndication page, find the Google Product Ratings card and turn the Enabled switch on.
2. Fill in the config below the divider:
   • Merchant Center ID — your Google Merchant Center account id.
   • Publisher name — defaults to your store name.
   • Target country — two-letter code (for example IN).
   • Content language — for example en.
   • Product identifier — how Google matches reviews to your catalog: GTIN (recommended), UPC, MPN + brand, SKU, or Custom.
3. Click Save Google settings.
4. Request access by submitting Google’s Product Ratings Interest Form (linked in the checklist) — Google ratings are an invite program.
5. The feed generates automatically. To force one immediately, click Generate feed now. Your public feed URL then appears with a Copy button.
6. In Merchant Center, add the feed URL as a scheduled fetch. Your product-page domain must match the domain registered in Merchant Center.

The feed regenerates automatically every week and whenever reviews change, so once it’s wired up you don’t have to touch it. The Google card shows Last generated, Reviews in feed, and Products covered, plus any last error.

Caution

The feed includes every published review, positive and negative, and flags incentivized reviews. Hiding negative reviews violates Google’s completeness policy and can get your ratings removed. Google also prohibits rewards that depend on a positive rating. Sellerlane therefore accepts only rating-neutral review reward rules and marks rewarded reviews as incentivized in the feed.

Meta and TikTok

Both appear on the Syndication page as informational cards marked Requires partner program — they are not connect buttons. Meta (Facebook and Instagram) displays product reviews only through its approved partners, and TikTok Shop has no public review API. Neither accepts a direct feed from Sellerlane, so there is nothing to enable here.

Custom destinations

Beyond Google, you can syndicate to your own endpoint — a private feed or an API. A custom destination can use a feed or api transport, send JSON or XML, and authenticate with an API key, bearer token, basic auth, or HMAC signature (the credential is stored encrypted and never shown again). Custom destinations appear in their own card with an enable switch and, for feed transport, a Generate full feed button.

The Recent runs and Generated feeds tables at the bottom of the page log every sync attempt across all destinations, with a Retry action for any run that failed, was canceled, or was skipped.

Review groups

When the same item ships as several products or SKUs — say a tee in three colorways that are separate products — you usually want their reviews and star rating pooled into one. That’s a review group. Go to Reviews → Tools → Groups.

Manual group

Pick products by hand. Good when the set is small and stable.

1. On the Groups page, enter a Group name, leave the mode as Manual, and click Create.
2. Open the group, then use Add product to attach each product (search by title in the picker).
3. Remove a product anytime — its reviews are unaffected, just un-pooled.

Tag-based group

Let membership follow your product tags. Good when the set grows over time.

1. Create a group with mode Tag based.
2. Open the group and use Add tag. Any product carrying that tag is included automatically — add a new product with the tag and it joins the group.

The group detail page shows the pooled Average rating, Published reviews, and Products count. Deleting a group removes its product and tag assignments only — the reviews themselves are never deleted. Groups also feed the storefront: you can choose to include grouped reviews in your structured data under Reviews → Settings (Include grouped reviews in SEO) so the combined rating surfaces in search.

Product stats

To see how a single product is reviewing, go to Reviews → Tools → Product stats, search for the product, and click Load stats. You get:

• Average rating with a star display.
• Total reviews (published + pending + hidden), Published, and With media (photos + videos) counts.
• A View product reviews button that jumps to the filtered review list.
• Keyword trends — the words and phrases reviewers mention most for this product, with mention count, review count, average rating, and positive vs. negative split. Use it to spot what customers love or complain about at a glance.

Tip

Keyword trends are computed from review text, so they get more useful as volume grows. If a keyword like “battery” trends negative, that’s your cue to fix the listing copy, the product, or both.

Troubleshooting

• “CSV is missing the required rating column” — the importer couldn’t find a rating column (or a recognized alias like stars/score). Add a header row with rating, or pick the correct Source.
• “CSV needs at least one product column” — include product_handle, sku, or product_id so rows can match to a product.
• Rows land in Failed — open the Error report; common causes are an out-of-range rating, an invalid reviewer_email, or a non-https photo_urls entry. Fix those rows and re-import — already-imported rows are skipped.
• Google feed won’t enable / stays empty — confirm you have at least 50 published reviews and that the Enabled switch is on; the feed URL only appears after the first generation. Use Generate feed now to force it.
• Google rejected the feed — check the last error on the Google card and the Recent runs table, verify your Merchant Center domain matches your product-page domain, and confirm every incentivized review carries the feed’s disclosure marker.

Next steps

Product reviews

The reviews hub — settings, moderation, and rewards: Product reviews.

Collecting reviews

Request emails, on-page forms, and media: Collecting reviews.

SEO

Get star ratings into search results: SEO.

Store credit

Where review rewards land: Store credit.