Google reviews widget for a dental practice website
Putting your Google reviews on your website is easy to do badly. The technical part takes an afternoon. The rules on showing reviews fairly, and the cost to your page speed, are what most practices miss.
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A Google reviews widget is a block of code on your website that pulls in reviews from your Google Business Profile and shows them to visitors, usually with your star rating and review count. For a dental practice website it can be a strong piece of reassurance on the home page and treatment pages. It can also slow the site down, break Google's display terms, or fall foul of UK rules if it only ever shows the five-star reviews. This guide covers the options and the rules.
Three ways to show Google reviews on your website
| Approach | What it involves | Trade-offs |
|---|---|---|
| Link or button | "Read our Google reviews" and "Leave a review" buttons pointing at Google | Free, fast and always current, but visitors leave your site to read |
| Widget or plugin | A third-party Google reviews widget for your website, or a WordPress plugin, configured with your profile | Quick to set up, free and paid tiers, but adds scripts and depends on the provider |
| Built with Google's Places API | Your developer requests your place details, including reviews, from Google | Official route with clear terms, but a maximum of five reviews and attribution rules |
Whichever you choose, add the plain links as well. A visitor who wants to check your full review history should be one tap away from it on Google.
See this for your own town.
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Run on our own practice first: ninth of the 14 practices measured in its town in May, first of 18 in September, on UK-wide search value. Page-one keywords: 6 in May, 194 in September.
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Is there a way to link Google reviews to my website?
Yes, and it is the simplest option. Copy your review link from your Business Profile by selecting Read reviews, then Get more reviews, as Google explains in its help on how to create a Google link or QR code to request reviews. For a "read our reviews" link, search for your practice in Google Maps, open the reviews and use Share. Put both on your contact page and in the footer. This is the only way to show patients your reviews with no extra code at all.
What Google's Places API allows
If your developer builds the display directly, Google's Places API is the official source. Its reference documentation says the reviews field is a list of reviews sorted by relevance, with a maximum of five returned. So the API cannot show your full review history, and you do not choose which five appear.
Google's Places API policies also set conditions on how you show them:
- You must always credit the author of each review, using their avatar, name and profile link where space allows.
- When the data is shown without a Google map, the Google logo must be displayed with it.
- You must not pre-fetch, cache or store Places API content beyond the allowed exceptions. The place ID can be stored.
- Your site needs publicly available terms of use and a privacy policy that reference Google's.
The caching rule catches a lot of sites. Copying review text into your own page and leaving it there is not the same as displaying it live through the API.
Choosing a widget or WordPress plugin
A Google reviews widget for WordPress, an embed code from a review service, or a carousel built into your theme all do roughly the same job. When you compare them, including the free Google reviews widget options, check these points before you install anything:
- Where the reviews come from. Ask the provider how it gets them and whether its method follows Google's terms.
- Filters. Many widgets let you hide reviews below a certain star rating. Read the next section before you switch that on.
- Page speed. Widgets load extra scripts, styles and avatar images. Test the page's speed on a phone before and after installing, and drop the widget if the difference is large. A slow page undoes work elsewhere in your SEO for dental practices.
- What happens if you stop paying. Some free tiers add branding, and some widgets disappear entirely when a subscription ends.
- Accessibility. Auto-scrolling carousels can be hard to read and to pause. A static list of recent reviews is often clearer.
Can you embed Google reviews on a website without a plugin?
Yes, through the Places API with some custom code, or by simply linking to your profile. There is no need for a plugin if your developer is comfortable with the API and its attribution rules.
The rules on showing reviews fairly
Reviews on your own website are marketing, so the advertising rules apply to them. Three sources matter.
The CAP Code. Section 3 of the CAP Code says marketing must not contain fake consumer reviews and must not publish reviews in a misleading way. Its examples of misleading publication include failing to publish, or removing, negative reviews while publishing positive ones, and giving greater prominence to positive reviews over negative ones. It also says marketers must hold documentary evidence that a testimonial is genuine, with contact details for the person who gave it, and must not use a testimonial without permission, with exceptions for accurate statements from a published source.
UK consumer law. Since April 2025, publishing consumer reviews in a misleading way has been part of the banned practice in Schedule 20 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. The CMA's fake reviews guidance gives selecting only favourable reviews to be presented, or highlighting positive reviews that do not reflect reviewers' experience overall, as examples of cherry-picking.
The GDC. The GDC's guidance on advertising repeats Standard 1.3.3: any advertising or information you produce must be accurate and not misleading.
What that means in practice
- Do not set the widget to show only five-star reviews. If you curate, keep the overall picture honest.
- Show your real overall rating and total review count next to any selection.
- Link to your full Google profile so visitors can see everything.
- If you copy individual reviews onto treatment pages as testimonials, keep a record that they are genuine and where they came from, and check the CAP rules on permission.
Reviews on treatment pages
Reviews that mention a specific treatment carry extra risk because of what they say.
- Factual claims in reviews. The CAP Code says claims in a testimonial that are likely to be read as factual must not mislead. A review promising a particular result becomes your claim once you publish it.
- Prescription-only medicines. If you offer anti-wrinkle injections, a review naming a prescription-only medicine on your site can amount to advertising it. CAP Code rule 12.12 says prescription-only medicines may not be advertised to the public.
- Patient privacy. A public Google review was posted by the patient, but your website adds the context. Avoid pairing a named review with anything that adds clinical detail about that person. The GDC's confidentiality standards cover what treatment a patient is having.
Will review stars show for my practice in Google search?
Not from your own website. Adding review structured data to your practice's pages will not earn you stars in search results. Google's review snippet documentation says review rich results for local businesses and organisations are only for sites that capture reviews about other businesses, and points to its guidelines on self-serving reviews. Your stars in Google come from your Business Profile, shown in the map results.
Is there a free bot that can create Google reviews?
This question appears in Google's own search suggestions, so it is worth a direct answer: any review that a bot or software writes is a fake review. Google's Maps content policy removes content not based on a real experience, and the CMA's guidance lists buying reviews generated by software applications such as bots as an example of what the law prohibits. Google's restrictions page says a business caught breaking the fake engagement policy can have its reviews unpublished or new reviews blocked. There is no safe version of this.
Where to put reviews on a dental website
- Home page. Your overall rating and count, a few recent reviews and a link to the full profile.
- New patient page. Nervous or new patients read reviews closely, and this is where reassurance helps most.
- Contact page. The "leave a review" link for patients who come looking for it.
- Treatment pages. Only with the care above.
Showing reviews is the second step. Earning them comes first. Working out your review target shows how many the practices in your town have, and how to reply to Google reviews covers the replies visitors will read alongside them.
Check your site and your reviews together
The free Practice Radar search audit shows how your practice appears in Google for your main searches, with your rating and review count next to the practices around you. No email needed.
Run on our own practice first: ninth of the 14 practices measured in its town in May, first of 18 in September, on UK-wide search value. Page-one keywords: 6 in May, 194 in September.
Thirty days free. No card, and nothing starts automatically when it ends.