Feature
Collect reviews directly from your website
Not every happy customer has a Google account, and Trustpilot's own funnel is a lot of clicks away from your product page. Reviews Widget's built-in review form lets visitors leave a rating and comment right where they already are — with full moderation in your dashboard before anything goes live.
Last reviewed by the Reviews Widget product team.
How the review form works
Turn on "Allow visitors to submit reviews" and the widget's Write-a-Review button opens an in-widget form asking for a name, star rating and comment. Submissions are rate-limited, held as pending, and appear on your site only after you approve them in the dashboard.
Toggle "Allow visitors to submit reviews" on any widget. The Write-a-Review button switches from a platform dropdown to an in-widget form: name, star rating, comment. Submissions land in your dashboard's Manual Reviews queue in seconds.
The unified Write-a-Review dropdown
Wherever the Write-a-Review button appears — in the header, above the grid, or inside the star badge popup — it opens the same styled dropdown listing every connected platform (Google, Trustpilot, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Facebook, Booking.com, Airbnb, Amazon, ProductReview.com.au, G2, Etsy) with a deep link to that platform's review flow. Enable manual reviews and an extra "Leave a review here" option appears in the same dropdown, opening the in-widget form. Visitors get one obvious entry point; you keep control over the channels they see.
Moderation workflow
| Stage | What happens | Visible on your site? |
|---|---|---|
| Submitted | Visitor completes the in-widget form; the endpoint is rate-limited per IP | No |
| Pending | Submission enters the Manual Reviews queue with a live count in the sidebar | No |
| Approved | You publish it; it renders as a normal review card and joins the aggregate | Yes |
| Edited | You fix typos or trim length; the change is logged | Yes |
| Rejected | Held with an optional reason, never published | No |
| Deleted | Removed from the widget and the aggregate immediately | No |
Moderating reviews without breaking the law
Moderation exists to stop spam, abuse and off-topic submissions — not to hide criticism. Consumer regulators in Australia (ACCC) and the United States (FTC) treat fake reviews, undisclosed incentives, and the selective suppression of genuine negative reviews as misleading conduct.
A defensible policy is simple, and we'd suggest publishing it next to your widget:
- Reject only spam, abuse, personal information, and submissions from people who were never customers.
- Never reject a review because the rating is low — respond to it instead.
- Never write reviews about your own business, and never pay for or incentivise a positive rating.
- If you do offer an incentive for honest feedback, disclose it and make it independent of sentiment.
- Keep the audit trail — every approval, edit and rejection is logged in your dashboard.
This is general information, not legal advice; check the ACCC and FTC guidance linked below for your jurisdiction.
How approved reviews affect your schema
Approved website reviews are rendered inside the same Review and AggregateRating JSON-LD as platform reviews, so what visitors see and what crawlers read stay identical — a Google structured data requirement. Be aware that Google treats reviews about your own business, hosted on your own site, as self-serving and generally ineligible for star snippets on business pages. Read the full eligibility rules.
A safety net for platform gaps
Yelp filters aggressive amounts of legitimate reviews. Facebook recommendations are hidden behind a login. Google requires a Gmail account. A manual review form gives you a fallback for visitors who genuinely want to leave feedback but can't be bothered navigating a third-party platform.
Sources & further reading
- ACCC — Online reviews: a guide for businesses and review platforms — Australian rules on fake, incentivised and filtered reviews
- US FTC — Rule on consumer reviews and testimonials — US prohibitions on fake and suppressed reviews
- Google Search Central — Structured data general guidelines — markup must match visible content
- Google Search Central — Review snippet — self-serving review restrictions