How to add Google reviews to your website

The reviews on your Google Business Profile are read by people who are already searching for you. Putting them on your own website shows them to everyone else: the visitor who came from an ad, a link or a recommendation. There are two ways to do it.

The two ways

• A reviews widget. A small tool reads your public Google reviews and shows them on your page, with your rating. New reviews can be brought in without touching the page again.
• By hand. You type a few reviews into your page as ordinary text. It costs nothing and needs no tool, but nothing updates, and visitors cannot tell that the words came from Google.

For one or two quotes on an "about" page, by hand is fine. For anything that should stay current, use a widget.

With a widget, step by step

1. Find your business. In the Google reviews builder, type your business's name. Its public reviews appear in a preview. You do not sign in to Google, and nothing is connected to your Google account.
2. Choose how it looks. Pick a layout and set the colours to match your site. A carousel suits a band between sections; a badge with your rating suits a header or a spot beside a button.
3. Create the account. The builder is ReTestimonial's, and it asks for a free account at this point. The account imports your reviews and gives you one snippet of code.
4. Paste the snippet. It goes where the reviews should appear. The exact place depends on your site. There are pages for Google reviews on WordPress, Shopify, Wix and Squarespace. On Webflow, Framer, Carrd or plain HTML, follow the steps for a testimonial widget: the snippet is the same kind.

Which reviews to show

Once the reviews are imported, you choose which ones the widget shows and in what order.

• Lead with the ones that say something. "Fixed the leak in an hour and showed me what caused it" does more than "Great service".
• Do not show only five-star reviews with no text. A row of stars without words reads as filler.
• Keep the stars honest. Show your real overall rating. A 4.6 with detailed reviews is more convincing than a wall of perfect scores.

Leave the reviewers' words as they wrote them.

Where to put them

• Near what you are asking for. Beside the booking button, under the price, on the contact page.
• On the pages people land on. If most visitors arrive on a service page, the reviews belong there, not only on the home page.
• Once, well, not everywhere. One clear block of reviews on a page is enough. A badge can repeat in the footer.

If your reviews are somewhere else

The same approach works for other review sites. This site has builders for Facebook, Yelp, Tripadvisor, Booking.com, Airbnb and more. If your praise came by email or in person, build a testimonial widget and type it in.