Review Widget

An embeddable component (typically JavaScript or iframe) that displays a business's reviews on its own website — usually pulled from Google or an aggregation of multiple sources.

Definition

A review widget is the visible carousel, grid, or list of reviews on a business's homepage or services page. Implementations vary: some pull live from Google's Places API; some render static, periodically-refreshed snapshots; some aggregate reviews from multiple sources. The trade-off is performance and freshness — live API calls slow down page load and consume API quota; static snapshots can drift out of sync. The value of a widget isn't ranking (Google generally doesn't reward duplicating Google reviews on your own site for SEO) — it's conversion. Visitors who see social proof on the landing page convert measurably better than those who don't.

Example

A real estate agent embeds a widget showing his five most recent 5-star Google reviews on his agent-bio page. The widget refreshes every 24 hours. Conversion on the bio-page-to-contact-form path improves noticeably after launch — the agent attributes most of it to the social proof.

Related terms

  • Review Embed →A specific implementation of a review widget — an HTML snippet (often a script tag or iframe) that a business pastes into its website to display reviews, typically with the styling controlled by the embed vendor.
  • Review Schema Markup →Structured data (Schema.org Review and AggregateRating types) added to a webpage's HTML so search engines can display star ratings and reviewer information in search results — the 'rich snippet' stars.

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