You’ve got great Google reviews. Now you want them on your website. Makes sense — visitors on your site are already paying attention. A five-star rating right there in the page header could be what tips a visitor into becoming a customer.

Here are four ways to get there, from simplest to most technical.

Option 1: Google’s own Place badge

Google provides a small widget you can embed on any site. It shows your star rating and a link to your Google profile.

How to get it:

1. Go to Google My Business
2. Find your listing and click “Share”
3. Look for the embed option (HTML snippet)

Limitations: It’s just a badge. It doesn’t show the actual text of your reviews. The styling is minimal. You can’t control which reviews show.

This is fine as a trust signal, but it’s not the same as showing the actual reviews.

Option 2: A Google Reviews widget (third-party tools)

Several tools connect to the Google Places API and embed reviews on your site. Common ones include:

• EmbedSocial — pulls from Google, Facebook, Yelp. Plans from $19–79/mo.
• Elfsight — Google Reviews widget. Starts around $5–9/mo.
• Tagembed — aggregates multiple review sources. Plans from free to $29/mo.

How they work: You connect your Google Business Profile, the tool pulls your reviews via the API, and you paste an embed snippet into your site.

Limitations:

• Monthly fees add up ($60–300/year)
• Google rate-limits API requests — if you have lots of visitors, your widget may not load
• You can’t edit or filter which reviews appear (you get what Google shows)
• Google can change its API at any time, breaking the widget

Option 3: Build it yourself with the Google Places API

If you have a developer, you can pull reviews directly using the Google Places API.

What you need:

1. A Google Cloud project with the Places API enabled
2. An API key
3. Code to fetch and cache your reviews (you have to cache — the API has per-request costs)
4. HTML/CSS to display them

Limitations:

• Requires developer time
• API has per-request costs
• Google’s API returns a maximum of 5 reviews (yes, just 5)

That last point surprises a lot of people: the Google Places API only returns your 5 “most relevant” reviews. You don’t get to pick which ones. So if you want to display your best reviews, you can’t guarantee which ones will show up.

Option 4: Collect your own testimonials (full control, no Google dependency)

Here’s the alternative worth considering: instead of relying on Google’s API and their 5-review limit, collect your own testimonials directly.

This gives you:

• Complete control over which testimonials appear
• No API dependency, no rate limits, no monthly API costs
• The ability to feature the reviews that actually convert
• Testimonials that work even if someone hasn’t left a Google review yet

How it works with SocialProof:

1. Send a collection link to your customers (they don’t need an account)
2. They submit their testimonial (text, name, optional photo/rating)
3. You approve it in your dashboard
4. It embeds on your site with one script tag

Your existing Google reviews can still live on your Google profile and drive search visibility. The testimonials on your website serve a different purpose: they convert visitors who are already on your site.

Bonus: ask for both

When you send a testimonial request, you can include a second ask: “If you have a moment, a Google review would also help us a lot — [your Google review link].” You get the on-site widget AND the Google review.

Which approach is right for you?

Embedding your testimonials with SocialProof

Once you’ve collected a few testimonials, embedding them is one line of code:

<script src="https://socialproof.dev/widget.js" data-widget-id="YOUR_ID"></script>

Put it anywhere on your page — homepage hero, pricing section, checkout page. The widget is responsive, loads fast (async), and doesn’t require your visitors to send a request to Google’s servers.

Start collecting testimonials free →

No credit card. Free forever for 1 widget.