how to get google reviews on my website
Google's help pages describe no widget for showing your Google reviews on your own website; what they give you is a link to your reviews on Maps, an embeddable map, and two developer interfaces with attribution rules. In the other direction, your website can collect Google reviews by carrying the review link from "Read Reviews" and "Get more reviews".
Answered on this page
- how to get google reviews on my website
- Is there an official Google widget that shows my reviews on my website
- Can I copy a Google review onto my website by hand
- Do reviews on my website count toward my Google star score
- Will my website show stars in Google Search if I add my Google reviews to it
- Do I need a developer to show my Google reviews on my website
Checked against Google's help on 5 September 2026
The question hides two different wishes. One owner wants the stars and the reviews from the Google listing to appear on the website, so a visitor sees them without leaving. Another owner wants the website to bring in Google reviews, so a “leave a review” button lands the customer on Google. This article takes both, from Google’s own pages, and says plainly where those pages stop.
What Google’s pages give you and what they do not
Google’s Business Profile help covers collecting reviews and answering them, not displaying them elsewhere. The page “Create a Google link or QR code to request reviews” gives you a link and a QR code, and lists where to put them: “Include it on your receipts”, “Include it in thank you emails”, “Add it at the end of a chat interaction”, “Print and display the QR code in your store”. The page “Tips to get more reviews” adds replying and valuing all reviews. Neither page, and no other help page I could find, offers a block of your reviews to paste into a website.
What Google does document is on the map side and on the developer side. Google Maps lets anyone share a location, embed a map, and share a single review. Google’s developer documentation lets a programmer fetch the rating, the review count and a handful of reviews for a place, under written rules about how they must be shown. And Google’s documentation for search explains what marking up reviews on your site does and does not do for your appearance in search results. Those are the three sources the rest of this article draws on, and everything a widget vendor does sits on top of them.
The simplest route: a link or a button to your reviews on Google
The route that needs no developer and breaks no rule is a link. Your reviews live on your Google listing, and a button on your site that says “Read our reviews on Google” takes the visitor there in one tap. To point to one review, Google’s Maps help says: “To share a review, at the bottom of the review, tap Share.” That gives a link to that review on Google Maps, author and date included, which is exactly the source Google wants readers to be able to reach.
The second no-code option is the embedded map. Google’s Maps help, under “Share a map or location with others”, says: on a computer, open Google Maps, go to the part of the map you want to share, “At the top left, click Menu”, “Click Share or embed map”, then “Click Embed a map and then Copy HTML”. You paste that HTML into your page, or hand it to whoever edits the site. The map shows your listing on your own page, with Google’s own controls, and the visitor can open the listing from there.
Both routes keep the reviews on Google, where they are updated, moderated and answered. Nothing on your site goes stale, and nothing needs to be maintained when a review is removed or edited by its author.
The developer route and Google’s display rules
If you want the reviews themselves on the page, a developer can fetch them through Google’s interface for developers, the Places API, and Google’s rules for that are precise. The reference for a place says the reviews field is a “List of reviews about this place, sorted by relevance. A maximum of 5 reviews can be returned.” It also returns “A rating between 1.0 and 5.0, based on user reviews of this place” and “The total number of reviews (with or without text) for this place.” Each review carries the author, the stars, the text, the time and “A link to show the review on Google Maps.” Five is the ceiling; a page that shows “all our Google reviews” is not getting them this way.
Before any of this works, Google’s setup page says: “Before using the Places API, ensure you have a project with a billing account and the Places API enabled.” And: “Google Maps Platform products require API keys for authentication and billing purposes, linking your project and billing account to the API.” So the developer route means an account with Google, a payment method on file and a key that must be kept safe.
Then the display rules, from Google’s policies page for the Places API. “You must always credit the author when displaying photos or reviews.” “Attribute the author using all available resources (avatar, name, and profile link) when space allows.” “For each photo and review, end-users must always have access to view the individual source photo or review on Google Maps using the provided googleMapsUri.” If the page sorts or filters, “Include a clear notice that describes how reviews are being ordered and filtered including any search criteria applied.” Google recommends showing the relative date (“2 days ago”) because it “increases user trust in the content”, and recommends a line explaining that “Reviews aren’t verified by Google, but Google checks for and removes fake content when it’s identified.” The same page treats what you fetch as content to display, not to keep: it says the place ID “is exempt from the caching restrictions” and can be stored indefinitely, which tells you the reviews themselves are not.
The second developer interface is the Business Profile API, the one for owners rather than for anyone looking at a place. Google’s page “Work with review data” says it lets you “List all reviews”, “Get a specific review”, “Get reviews from multiple locations”, “Reply to a review” and “Delete a review reply”. Access is not automatic. Google’s prerequisites page says applicants must “Manage a Google Business Profile that is verified and active for 60+ days” and “Have a website representing the business listed on the GBP”, and must “submit your request using our GBP API contact form” from “an email address that is listed as an owner/manager on your business’s GBP”. Approval shows up as a quota on the project; until then, in Google’s words, “If your quota is 0 QPM (Queries Per Minute), your project has not yet been approved.”
Read the two routes side by side and the difference is plain.
| Places API | Business Profile API | |
|---|---|---|
| Who can use it | anyone with a Google Cloud project, billing and a key | an owner or manager whose access request Google approved |
| Reviews returned | at most 5, sorted by relevance | all reviews of your locations |
| Made for | showing a place to the public | managing your own profile and replying |
| Display rules | author credit, link to the source on Maps, ordering notice | the page read describes managing and replying, not display |
Whichever a developer uses, the page must keep obeying the rules after launch. A widget from another company is doing one of these two things under the hood, so the same questions apply to it: does it name the author, does it link to Google Maps, does it say how it sorts.
Will Google reviews on my site give me stars in search results
No, and Google says so in its documentation for the stars that sometimes appear under a result. The page on review snippets defines them as “a short excerpt of a review or a rating from a review website, usually an average of the combined rating scores from many reviewers.” For businesses it adds a rule that answers this question directly: “If the entity that’s being reviewed controls the reviews about itself, their pages that use LocalBusiness or any other type of Organization structured data are ineligible for star review feature.” Its example is the case at hand: “a review about entity A is placed on the website of entity A, either directly in their structured data or through an embedded third-party widget (for example, Google Business reviews or Facebook reviews widget).”
Two more lines on the same page close the side doors. “Don’t aggregate reviews or ratings from other websites.” “Ratings must be sourced directly from users.” And for anyone tempted to type a few in: “Don’t include fake or undisclosed incentivized reviews on your page.”
So a reviews block on your site is for the visitor who is already there, not for Google. It can be worth having for that reader. It cannot be sold to you as a way to get stars next to your website in search results, because Google’s own page rules that out.
The other direction: collecting Google reviews through your website
If what you meant was getting reviews from your website onto Google, the tool is the review link, and a website is one more place to carry it. Google’s steps: “Go to your Business Profile”, then “Select Read Reviews and then Get more reviews”. A box opens with the link and a QR code. “To copy the review link, select Copy.” Put that link behind a button on your site: on the thank-you page after a booking or an order, on the contact page, in the footer. Google’s own list of places is receipts, thank-you emails, the end of a chat and a printed code in the store; the website is not on the list, but the link is the same link and opens the same way wherever a customer taps it.
What the customer sees after the tap is Google, not your site. Google’s Maps help describes the customer’s side: sign in to a Google Account, open the place, tap “Reviews”, “Tap the 5 empty stars”, and write under “Share more about your experience”. Google adds that “All reviews are public and anyone can find what you add” and that a customer is “unable to add an anonymous review”. A visitor without a Google Account cannot leave a Google review, and no button on your site changes that.
Two rules follow the link onto your website. No gate in front of it: Google’s content policy says merchants must not “Discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers”, so a page that asks “how was it?” and sends only the happy answers to Google is a breach. And nothing in return: Google’s owner page says “Offering incentives, like free or discounted goods or services, in exchange for customers to post reviews, change reviews, or remove negative reviews is considered fake & misleading content and is strictly prohibited.” A plain button, the same for everyone, is what the policy allows: merchants may “Solicit or encourage the posting of content that does represent a genuine experience, without offering incentives to do so or attempting to influence the rating or the contents of the review.”
One number to keep straight. A review written into a form on your own website is not a Google review and does not touch your Google score, because Google says “The review score is the average of all ratings published on Google for that place or business.” If you want the score to move, the customer has to end up on Google.
How to check this yourself
- Open your own website on your phone and look for any way to reach your Google reviews. You will see either a button that opens your Google listing, a block of reviews, or nothing; that tells you which of the routes above you have today.
- If there is a reviews block, tap a reviewer’s name and look for a link to Google Maps. You will either land on the review on Google, as Google’s rules require, or nowhere; also look for a line saying how the reviews are sorted.
- Sign in to the account that manages your profile, select “Read Reviews” and then “Get more reviews”, and select “Copy”. You will see the review link; paste it into a private browsing window and you will see the sign-in request and then the empty stars, which is what a visitor from your site will meet.
- In Google Maps on a computer, find your business, click “Menu”, then “Share or embed map”, then “Embed a map” and “Copy HTML”. You will see the code for the map you can paste into a page.
- Search Google for your business name and look at your website’s result. You will see whether stars appear under it; Google’s review snippet rules say your own Google reviews cannot put them there, so if stars are promised to you, ask where they would come from.
If you would rather someone keep the reviews on Google answered every week and keep the review link in front of customers on the site and off it, that is what monthly review management is.
This article is part of the Website and video guide.
Questions
how to get google reviews on my website
There are three honest routes and no official Google widget. The simplest is a link or a button on your site that opens your reviews on Google Maps, or the embedded map Google gives you under “Share or embed map” and “Embed a map”. The developer route pulls reviews through Google’s interfaces for developers; the public one returns at most five reviews and requires the author’s name and a link back to the review on Google Maps. If you meant collecting reviews, put the review link from “Read Reviews” and “Get more reviews” on your site.
Is there an official Google widget that shows my reviews on my website
None of the Google help pages read for this article describes one. Google’s own pages give you the review link and QR code for collecting reviews, a “Share” option on each review, and an embeddable map; on the pages read, the reviews themselves come out only through Google’s developer interfaces, with rules on how they are shown. A widget sold by another company has to get the reviews from somewhere, and Google’s search documentation names an embedded Google reviews widget as its example of what does not earn stars in search results.
Can I copy a Google review onto my website by hand
Google’s pages read for this article do not address a review retyped by hand. The two rules they state for Google review content shown elsewhere are that the author must always be credited and that the reader must have a way to see the source review on Google Maps. Following both costs nothing: name the reviewer as Google shows them and link to the review with the “Share” option Google puts at the bottom of each review.
Do reviews on my website count toward my Google star score
No. Google says the review score is the average of all ratings published on Google for that place or business. A review written into a form on your own site is not published on Google and does not change that average. Showing your Google reviews on your site does not add to the count either; the reviews are the same ones, displayed twice.
Will my website show stars in Google Search if I add my Google reviews to it
No. Google’s documentation for review snippets says that if the entity being reviewed controls the reviews about itself, its pages that use LocalBusiness or any other Organization structured data are ineligible for the star review feature, and it gives a review placed on the business’s own website through an embedded Google Business reviews widget as the example. Google also says not to aggregate reviews or ratings from other websites.
Do I need a developer to show my Google reviews on my website
For a link, a button or the embedded map, no; you paste what Google gives you. For live reviews on the page, yes: Google’s interfaces need a project with a billing account and an API key, or an approved access request for the Business Profile API, plus code that follows the display rules on attribution and ordering. That is programming work, and the page has to keep following the rules after it goes live.
Sources
- review link and QR code: "Read Reviews", "Get more reviews", "Copy", "Save image as…", QR code only in a computer browser, where Google suggests sharing the link, checked 5 September 2026
- tips to get more reviews; incentives for reviews are fake and misleading content, checked 5 September 2026
- customer side: sign in, "Reviews", "Tap the 5 empty stars", reviews are public, no anonymous reviews, "Share" at the bottom of a review, checked 5 September 2026
- share a map or location: Menu, "Share or embed map", "Embed a map", "Copy HTML", checked 5 September 2026
- the review score is the average of all ratings published on Google for the business, checked 5 September 2026
- merchants may ask for genuine reviews without incentives or influencing the rating; no selective solicitation, no discouraging negative reviews, checked 5 September 2026
- review snippet guidelines: pages of a business that controls the reviews about itself are ineligible for the star feature, example of an embedded Google Business reviews widget; ratings sourced directly from users; do not aggregate reviews from other websites; no fake or undisclosed incentivized reviews, checked 5 September 2026
- Places API display rules: credit the author of every review, give access to the source review on Google Maps via googleMapsUri, describe how reviews are ordered and filtered, relative publish date recommended, reviews are not verified by Google, place ID exempt from caching restrictions, checked 5 September 2026
- Place object: reviews sorted by relevance, a maximum of 5 reviews returned; rating between 1.0 and 5.0; userRatingCount; review fields authorAttribution, rating, text, publishTime, googleMapsUri, checked 5 September 2026
- Places API needs a project with a billing account, the API enabled and an API key, checked 5 September 2026
- Business Profile API: list all reviews, get a specific review, get reviews from multiple locations, reply to a review, delete a review reply, checked 5 September 2026
- Business Profile API access: profile verified and active for 60+ days, a website representing the business, access request form, approval shown in the project quota, checked 5 September 2026