How to Display Reviews on Your Website (Without Breaking the Rules)

To display reviews on your website, use the official embed or widget from the platform where the reviews live (Google, Yelp, Trustpilot and others offer them), add a testimonials page for longer quotes you have permission to use, and collect product reviews directly if you sell online. Whatever method you pick, don’t hide negative reviews while implying you’re showing all of them, and don’t expect star ratings in Google for reviews about your own business.

Most of the work is choosing a format that fits your site. The part that causes real problems is the rules, so this guide covers both.

Why show reviews on your own site at all

Your reviews already exist on Google and elsewhere, so why repeat them? Because many visitors arrive on your site directly, from an ad, a referral or a social post, and never see your review profiles. A few recent, specific reviews near the point of decision (a pricing page, a booking form, a product page) answer the question “have other people like me been happy with this?” without sending them away to check.

Reviews on your site also give you a place to show depth: a customer describing exactly how you handled a tricky job says more than a star average ever can.

The three main ways to display reviews

Method	Best for	Main trade-off
Platform embed or widget (Google, Yelp, Trustpilot, Facebook)	Local and service businesses that already collect reviews on a public platform	Adds third-party scripts that can slow your page; limited control over layout
Curated testimonials page	Professional services, B2B, high-consideration purchases	Needs permission from each customer and careful handling under the FTC’s Endorsement Guides
On-site product reviews	Online stores and software with distinct products or plans	You’re now the platform, so the FTC’s rules on suppression apply directly to how you moderate

Platform embeds and widgets

Many review platforms provide an official way to show their reviews elsewhere. Yelp, for example, lets you embed an individual review from the business page using its “Embed review” option, and Trustpilot offers widgets for businesses with a Trustpilot profile. Third-party tools can pull in Google reviews too.

The advantage is credibility. An embedded review links back to the original, so visitors can check it’s real. The downside is that you show whatever the feed shows, and some widgets let you filter by star rating, which is where the legal risk starts (more on that below).

A curated testimonials page

A testimonials page lets you use longer quotes, a customer’s name and role, and context about the project. It suits businesses where a single sale is significant and buyers want to hear from people like them.

Because you choose which testimonials to publish, be honest about what the page is. Calling it “What some of our customers say” is accurate. Calling it “Our reviews” next to a hand-picked set of five-star quotes invites the question of where the others went.

Product reviews collected on your site

If you run an online store or sell distinct software plans, collecting reviews on each product page is often the most useful option for shoppers. It also makes you responsible for moderation. You need a written policy for what gets published and what doesn’t, and you need to apply it the same way to positive and negative reviews.

The FTC rules that apply to reviews on your site

Two sets of federal rules matter here. Neither is complicated, but both are easy to break by accident.

Review suppression under the 2024 rule

The FTC’s Trade Regulation Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials (16 CFR Part 465) treats review suppression as unfair or deceptive. One provision is aimed squarely at businesses that display reviews: you can’t misrepresent that the reviews shown on your website represent most or all of the reviews submitted when reviews are being suppressed based on their rating or negative sentiment.

The rule lists legitimate reasons to withhold a review, as long as you apply them to all reviews regardless of sentiment. These include reviews that contain trade secrets, defamatory, harassing or discriminatory content, other people’s personal information, clearly false information, reviews you reasonably believe are fake, and reviews unrelated to your products or services.

In practice, that means a “Customer reviews” section on a product page should include the critical ones. A widget labeled “Reviews” that silently filters out anything under four stars is exactly the kind of setup the rule targets. Our guide to the FTC fake review rule covers the rest of the rule and the penalties.

Testimonials under the Endorsement Guides

The FTC’s Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (16 CFR Part 255) apply to testimonials you publish. Two points come up most often:

• Typical results. If a testimonial describes a result on a key attribute, readers will likely take it as what customers generally achieve. If you can’t back that up, the Guides say you should clearly disclose the generally expected results. A small “results not typical” line isn’t enough on its own.
• Material connections. If the person giving the testimonial is an employee, a relative, a business partner, or received free products, payment or a discount, and readers wouldn’t expect that, the connection must be disclosed clearly and conspicuously.

Also avoid editing a quote in a way that changes its meaning. Trimming for length is fine; stitching together phrases to make a lukewarm review sound glowing isn’t.

Google star ratings and review structured data

Many businesses add review markup hoping for gold stars under their homepage in Google results. For most, it won’t work. Google’s review snippet documentation says that if the entity being reviewed controls the reviews about itself, its pages using LocalBusiness or any other Organization structured data are ineligible for the star review feature. That applies whether the reviews are written on your site or pulled in through a third-party widget.

Review markup can still be eligible for other types Google supports, such as Product and Software App, when the reviews are about that product and follow Google’s guidelines. So an online store’s product pages may show stars in results; a plumber’s homepage won’t, however the markup is written. Marking up reviews that aren’t visible on the page, or inventing an aggregate rating, breaks Google’s structured data policies and can lead to a manual action.

Getting permission to reuse reviews

A review on a platform isn’t automatically yours to copy. Two separate permissions are involved:

1. The platform’s terms. Most platforms prefer you use their official embed, widget or API rather than copying and pasting text. Using the official method keeps attribution and a link back, which also helps credibility. Check the current terms for each platform you use.
2. The customer’s permission. For a testimonials page, ads or sales decks, ask the customer before quoting them, and confirm how they want to be named (full name, first name and initial, role and company). Keep a record of the permission.

A simple email works: “Would you be happy for us to quote your review on our website, with your first name and city?” Most customers who wrote a positive review are glad to say yes. If you’re thanking reviewers publicly as well, our guide to responding to positive reviews has example replies.

Speed and accessibility

A review widget that slows your page or can’t be read by a screen reader does more harm than good. Before you add one, check:

• Page speed. Third-party widgets often load extra scripts, fonts and images. Test your key pages before and after adding one, and load the widget lower on the page or on interaction where possible.
• Real text, not images. Reviews shown as screenshots can’t be read by screen readers or search engines. Use text, and give star ratings a text equivalent (“4 out of 5 stars”).
• Carousels. Auto-rotating sliders are hard to read and hard to use with a keyboard. A static list of three to six reviews usually works better. If you use a carousel, give it pause controls.
• Contrast and size. Pale gray review text on a white card is a common failure. Make sure it’s as readable as the rest of your content.
• Freshness. A widget showing reviews from years ago suggests nothing has happened since. Feeds that update automatically, or a testimonials page you refresh regularly, avoid that.

A worked example: a home cleaning company

This is an illustrative scenario. A home cleaning company has a strong Google profile and wants reviews on its booking page. Its web developer suggests a widget that shows only five-star Google reviews under the heading “Our reviews.”

Here’s a better setup:

1. On the booking page, it embeds a Google reviews widget showing the most recent reviews, not filtered by rating, under the heading “Recent Google reviews,” with a link to the full profile.
2. On a separate “Customer stories” page, it publishes four longer testimonials, each with written permission, first name and neighborhood. One is from a customer who received a discounted clean for a referral, and the page says so.
3. It removes the aggregate rating markup its old theme added to the homepage, since the stars weren’t eligible to show and the markup described reviews that weren’t on that page.
4. It lazy-loads the widget below the booking form so the form appears first on mobile.

The result is a page that’s honest about what it shows and doesn’t depend on a filter the company would have to defend later.

Common mistakes

• Showing only happy reviews as “our reviews.” See the suppression rule above. It’s also the website version of review gating, which platforms ban at the collection stage.
• Writing or rewriting testimonials. Every quote should be the customer’s words. Invented or ghostwritten testimonials are fake reviews under the FTC rule.
• Copying reviews from other platforms without attribution. Use the official embed, or ask the reviewer directly.
• Adding self-serving review markup for stars. It won’t produce stars for your business pages and can create a structured data problem.
• Forgetting to disclose incentives. If a reviewer got something for their review, readers should be told.

If you want help collecting more reviews, replying to them and showing them properly across platforms, our review management service handles that as one process.

Frequently asked questions

Can I show only my best reviews on my website?

You can feature selected testimonials, but don’t present that selection as all or most of your reviews. The FTC’s 2024 rule prohibits misrepresenting that displayed reviews represent most or all reviews submitted when negative ones are being suppressed. Label curated quotes honestly and link to your full profile.

Can I copy my Google reviews onto my website?

The safest route is an embed, widget or API method that keeps attribution to the original review. If you want to quote a review in your own design, ask the reviewer for permission and credit them as they prefer. Check the current terms for each platform you use.

Will review schema give my business stars in Google?

Not for reviews about your own business. Google says pages using LocalBusiness or Organization structured data are ineligible for star review snippets when the business controls the reviews about itself. Product and software reviews can be eligible when they follow Google’s guidelines.

Do I have to show negative reviews on my product pages?

If you collect reviews on your site, you can withhold reviews for legitimate reasons, such as fake, abusive or off-topic content, applied the same way to all reviews. Withholding reviews because they’re negative while implying you show all of them is what the FTC rule prohibits.