How to Show Google Reviews on Your Website, Honestly

To show your Google reviews on your website honestly, quote a handful of real ones word for word, with the reviewer's name as Google shows it, and link to your Google profile so anyone can read the rest. Show your real rating and review count next to them and keep both current. Don't edit, combine or invent anything. And don't add star rating code to your own reviews hoping for gold stars in Google search: Google says reviews a business controls about itself aren't eligible.

That's the method. Below is how to pick the reviews, what to do about names and wording, whether a review widget is worth it, and what the FTC's rule on fake reviews means for a small business site.

Pick reviews that say something

A review that says "Great service, highly recommend" is nice to get and does little on your website. The useful ones name the job, the town or the problem: the furnace fixed on a Sunday, the tree that came down without touching the fence, the color that came out right on the second visit. A stranger reading those can picture you doing their job.

When you choose:

Pick by usefulness, not only by stars. A specific four-star review can do more than a vague five-star one.
Match reviews to pages. A review about a water heater belongs on the water heater page. A review about a deck belongs next to the deck photos.
Prefer recent ones, and show the month and year so people can see they're current.
Show the overall picture next to them: your rating and the number of reviews as Google shows them today, with a link to the profile.

That last point is about honesty as much as design. The FTC's questions and answers on its review rule warn that "the use of non-representative consumer reviews in marketing could be deceptive." A few hand-picked quotes are fine. Calling them "what all our customers say" isn't, unless it's true.

Quote them word for word

Copy each review exactly as it appears on Google, typos and all. Don't fix the grammar, don't swap a word, and don't stitch two reviews into one. If a review is long, you can quote one or two full sentences from it, as long as the part you use means what the whole review meant.

The FTC's endorsement guides Q&A puts the principle in one line: "Endorsements must reflect the honest opinions or experiences of the endorser." It also answers a reviewer whose review a marketer changed in a misleading way: the reviewer isn't liable for those changes, and can report them to the FTC, a local consumer protection agency or the Better Business Bureau.

Names and permission

Use the name the way it appears on Google. If the reviewer used a first name and an initial, so do you. Don't add a last name you happen to know from the invoice.

On your website, quote the review as published and link back to it. Ask first when you want to go further: a photo of the customer, their full name, or the review on a flyer, a truck or a paid ad. A quick text ("Mind if we put your review on our flyer?") keeps a happy customer happy.

Keep in mind that the FTC treats reviews you feature in your marketing as testimonials. Its Q&A on the review rule says: "When featured in that context, consumer reviews become testimonials." The honesty rules for advertising apply to the reviews on your homepage too.

Link to your Google profile

Every review section on your site should link to the place where the reviews live. Two links, really:

One to read them: "Read all our reviews on Google," opening your Business Profile.
One to write one: your direct review link, for customers who visit your site after a job.

People trust a review more when they can check it themselves. A link to Google shows you're not hiding the rest.

You get your review link from your Business Profile. Our free review link QR code maker turns it into a QR code and printable cards for the counter or the invoice. For the asking itself, our guide on earning more Google reviews within the rules covers what to say and what Google forbids.

Widgets that pull reviews in automatically

Review widgets copy your Google reviews onto your site and update by themselves. They save time. Before you install one, check three things:

The filter settings. Some widgets let you hide reviews below a certain rating. That's the hand-picking problem again, done by software. In its endorsement guides Q&A, the FTC gives sorting all the five-star reviews first as an example of organizing reviews in a way that can mislead, because readers may never reach the lower ones.
Speed. A widget loads extra code from another company's server, and that can slow a page down on a phone. Test your page with and without it.
What it adds to your page code. Some widgets add star rating markup for you. That runs straight into Google's rule below.

A short section of quoted reviews, written into the page as plain text, is lighter and works fine. Update it every few months when a good new review comes in.

Skip the star markup on your own reviews

Structured data is code in your page that tells Google facts about it. There's a type for reviews and ratings, and it's tempting to wrap your Google rating in it and hope for stars under your listing in search results.

Google's review snippet guidelines rule that out for a business's own site. They say that if the entity being reviewed controls the reviews about itself, its pages that use LocalBusiness or any other type of Organization structured data "are ineligible for star review feature," whether the reviews sit in the code directly or come "through an embedded third-party widget." The same guidelines say "Don't aggregate reviews or ratings from other websites," so copying your Google rating into your own markup is out too.

Use structured data for what it does well here: your business name, address or service area, phone and hours. Our free LocalBusiness code generator builds that and leaves the star rating out on purpose. The reviews themselves go on the page as text people can read.

What the FTC rule says about fake reviews

The FTC's rule on consumer reviews and testimonials went into effect on October 21, 2024. For a small business site, the parts that matter most:

No fake reviews. The FTC says a business "could be liable if it wrote or created fake or false reviews," and also if it bought reviews it knew or should have known were false.
Insider reviews need a clear disclosure. If an employee or a relative reviews your business, the FTC says the relationship has to be disclosed in a way that's "clear and conspicuous."
Your own review section has rules too. If customers can post reviews directly on your site, the rule's section on review suppression covers that part of your site, so you can't leave reviews out only because they're negative. The FTC says organizing reviews isn't suppressing them, but warns that organizing them "in a way that makes it difficult for consumers to know about or find negative reviews" could be deceptive or unfair under the FTC Act.
The penalties are real. The FTC says the rule lets courts impose civil penalties for knowing violations.

None of this gets in the way of an honest business. If every review on your site is real, unedited and easy to check on Google, you're doing what the rule asks.

A short checklist

Real reviews only, copied word for word
Reviewer names as Google shows them, with the month and year
Your current Google rating and review count, linked to your profile
A link where customers can leave a review of their own
No widget filter that hides lower ratings
No review or rating markup on reviews about your own business
Permission asked before a review goes on print, a truck or an ad

We build the first version of your website free, in 2 days, with your real Google reviews quoted on it and a link back to your profile. Start with a free first version of your site, click around it, and decide after.