Pillar guide · 6 min read
How to put Google reviews on your website
Your Google reviews already convince the people who find you on Google. This guide covers how to add Google reviews to your website so everyone else sees them too — the visitors who arrive from a referral, an ad or a link and never open your profile. You can display Google reviews on your website with one script tag, no plugin and no API key.
Last reviewed by the Reviews Widget product team.
Add Google reviews to your website: what you'll need
To show Google reviews on your website you need three things: a Google Business Profile with at least one review, somewhere on your site that accepts a custom-HTML block, and a reviews widget to connect the two. Nothing else — no developer, no Google Cloud project and no plugin to install or keep updated.
The same setup works for any business. If you'd rather start from the overview, the Google reviews widget page explains what the embedded block looks like once it's live.
Three ways to display Google reviews on your website
There are three routes: copy-paste screenshots, build against the Google Places API yourself, or embed a hosted widget. Screenshots go stale and are invisible to crawlers, the API needs a billed Google Cloud project and ongoing maintenance, and a widget is a single script tag.
| Method | Setup | Stays current | Ongoing cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Screenshots or typed-out quotes | Minutes | No — frozen the day you take them | Your time, every update |
| Google Places API, built in-house | Days, plus Google Cloud billing | Yes, if you maintain it | API usage plus dev time |
| Hosted reviews widget | Around five minutes | Yes, refreshed on a schedule | Free plan, or a subscription |
One thing the DIY API route rarely mentions: the Places API returns a limited set of reviews per place and its terms constrain how you store and display them. A hosted widget handles the fetching, caching and display rules for you.
How to embed Google business reviews, step by step
Skip the reading — build your widget now
Free plan, no credit card. Your reviews are embedded before you finish this guide.
Six steps: create an account, attach your Google Business Profile by searching your business name, design the widget, copy the script tag, paste it into a custom-HTML block, then publish and verify on the live URL rather than in the editor preview.
- 1
Create a free Reviews Widget account
Sign up with your email — no credit card. Every review grid you create lives in the dashboard, so you can restyle, add sources or change layouts later without touching your website again.
- 2
Attach your Google Business Profile
Search by business name and suburb, or paste your Google Business Profile URL. Service-area businesses with no street address are supported. The first fetch pulls your latest reviews and calculates a count-weighted aggregate rating.
- 3
Design the widget
Choose grid, masonry, list, carousel, a scrolling marquee, review popups or a floating star badge. Set colours, corner radius and typography to match your site, then check the live preview at desktop, tablet and mobile widths. Optional: aggregate rating header, source tabs, and a write-a-review button.
- 4
Copy your embed snippet
Open the Embed tab and copy the one-line script tag. It is under 200 bytes, loads asynchronously, and renders inside a shadow root so your theme CSS and the widget CSS cannot collide.
- 5
Paste the snippet into your page
Drop the tag into whatever your platform calls a custom-code block: Custom HTML on WordPress, Custom Liquid on Shopify, Embed HTML on Wix, Code Block on Squarespace, Embed on Webflow, or straight into the markup of a static site.
- 6
Publish and check it renders
View the published URL, not the editor preview — most builders sandbox scripts inside the editor. Confirm reviews appear, then run the page through Google's Rich Results Test to see the Review and AggregateRating JSON-LD parse cleanly.
Where the snippet goes on each platform
Every builder has a block that accepts raw HTML — it just goes by a different name. Find yours below, then open the platform guide for the exact clicks.
| Platform | Where the snippet goes | Full guide |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress | Custom HTML block (Gutenberg) or Text tab (Classic) | WordPress guide |
| Elementor | HTML widget — included in free Elementor | Elementor guide |
| Shopify | Custom Liquid section on an Online Store 2.0 theme | Shopify guide |
| Wix | Embed HTML element (Editor, Studio, Editor X) | Wix guide |
| Squarespace | Code Block on a 7.1 page section | Squarespace guide |
| Webflow | Embed element in Designer | Webflow guide |
| Static HTML, Astro, Next.js, Hugo | Directly in the markup or a component | HTML guide |
Where on the page to put reviews
Proof works next to a decision, not in the footer. Put a full grid on the homepage and on the page that carries your main offer, then use a floating star badge everywhere else so reassurance follows the visitor without repeating a heavy block.
- Homepage, below the hero. Answers "is this a real business?" before anything else is asked.
- Beside the contact form or buy button. The highest-value position on any site.
- Service or product pages. Filter to the source most relevant to that audience using source tabs, or keep the page light with a floating star badge.
- Thank-you pages. Pair the grid with a write-a-review button and new customers become your next reviews.
Schema, stars and what Google actually shows
The widget emits valid Review and AggregateRating JSON-LD, but be clear about what that buys you: Google treats reviews about your own business on your own site as self-serving and generally ineligible for review rich results. Star ratings in Search come from your Google Business Profile.
The markup still earns its place. It describes your reviews in a machine-readable way for the other systems that read structured data, and it validates cleanly in the Rich Results Test so nothing on the page is reported as broken. For the full breakdown, see star rich snippets and review schema explained.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Nothing renders in the editor | Builders sandbox scripts inside the editor preview | Publish and check the live URL |
| Snippet disappears after saving | A rich-text editor stripped the tag | Use the HTML/code block, not the visual editor |
| Blank space where reviews should be | Widget still fetching, or wrong grid ID | Recopy the snippet from the Embed tab |
| Scrollbar inside the embed | Container height too small | Increase the embed element's height |
| Old reviews showing after an update | Page or CDN cache | Purge the site cache and hard-refresh |
| Widget looks unstyled or clipped | Parent container has overflow or a fixed height | Let the parent size to content |
Sources & further reading
- Google Search Central — review snippet guidelines — Self-serving review rules and eligibility for review rich results
- Google Business Profile — get more reviews — Official guidance on collecting reviews and sharing your review link
- Google Rich Results Test — Validate the JSON-LD on your published page
- web.dev — Cumulative Layout Shift — Why embedded blocks should reserve height