Can I hide a bad review?

You can stop it appearing on your website, yes. You cannot remove it from Google — only Google can, and only if it breaks their policies. Note that hiding every critical review while showing an average rating is the practice regulators are least fond of.

How often do new reviews appear?

On your plan's refresh schedule. New reviews arrive with their rating and text; if a reviewer later edits theirs, the edited version replaces it at the next sync.

I have several locations. Can I show them separately?

Yes. Each verified location can be its own source, so a location page shows only its own reviews, while a homepage can pool the lot.

Do I need a Google Business Profile, or is a Maps listing enough?

You need the verified profile. An unclaimed Maps listing is not something any API will read on your behalf — claiming and verifying it is the prerequisite, and it is free.

Google Reviews

A Google Reviews widget where it closes the sale.

People trust reviews they can see more than claims you make about yourself. The reviews already exist on your Business Profile — the only question is whether a visitor has to go looking for them, or whether a Google Reviews widget puts them on the page where the decision happens.

Start free In development

Reading a Business Profile needs Google's verification of our app. That process is underway; add your email and we will let you know when it clears.

What it looks like

Reviews want room to be read. This layout gives each one its stars, its name and its date, and resists the urge to tile them like photographs.

We came to Fieldnote with a name we hated and a menu nobody could describe. Both problems were gone in six weeks. Two sites open now and the brand carries them.

Nadia Okonkwo

Straight-talking, on budget, and they push back when you’re wrong — which is the part you’re actually paying for.

Tomas Lindqvist

Excellent creative work and a genuinely lovely team. Knocked a star off only because scheduling slipped by a fortnight over the summer.

Ruth Bellamy

They rebuilt our admissions campaign end to end. Applications up on last year and, for once, the photography looks like our students.

Marcus Adeyemi

Good studio, sharp work. Manufacturing is a hard sector to make look interesting and they mostly managed it.

Dominic Chau

Three years in and they still treat every brief like the first one. Rare.

Aoife Brennan

What a Google Reviews widget can show

Google Reviews is the odd one out here — it is not social content, it is testimony, and it comes with rules the other networks do not have.

What you get

Star rating, review text, reviewer name and the date it was left
Your replies as the business owner, if you want them shown
The running average and total count across the profile
Reviews for each location, if you run more than one

What it won’t do

Reviews for a business you do not own and cannot verify
Reviewer email addresses or any contact detail
Edits — a review changes on your site because it changed on Google
The ability to delete one you dislike; you can hide it from your wall, not from Google

How to add a Google Reviews feed

01
Verify your Business Profile
You need a verified profile at business.google.com for the location whose reviews you want. If someone else in the company verified it, you will need them to grant you access first.
02
Authorise the location
Pick Google Reviews in Sources and choose the location. Multi-location businesses can pull each one into its own feed, or combine them.
03
Choose what qualifies
Set a minimum star rating, or approve individually. Read the section below before you set that minimum to five.
04
Place it where the decision happens
A reviews block earns its keep next to a price, a booking form or an add-to-cart — not on an About page nobody visits.

Two rules that catch people out

Displaying reviews is well-trodden ground, and there are two places where the obvious move is the wrong one. Both are worth knowing before you build the page, not after.

Showing only five-star reviews while presenting an average is misleading, and regulators have taken an interest in exactly this practice. Filter for relevance if you must; do not filter to manufacture a rating
Review structured data about your own business, on your own site, will not produce star rich results in Google — their guidelines exclude self-serving review markup. Anyone promising you stars in search from a reviews widget is selling something
The widget still helps: visitors see the proof on the page, which is where it changes a decision
Replying to criticism in public, and showing that reply, reads better than a wall of unbroken praise

Google Reviews questions, answered

No — and be sceptical of any widget that says it will. Google's structured data guidelines specifically exclude self-serving reviews, meaning reviews about your own business hosted on your own site. The value of a reviews widget is on your page, persuading the person already reading it.