You’ve put in the effort to earn those impressive 5-star Google reviews, and they can significantly enhance trust on your website. However, showcasing them correctly can often seem like a complex challenge that you may not have the time to tackle.
We understand your concerns. The last thing you want is a cumbersome plugin that hinders your site’s performance or becomes incompatible after an update. With our experience in assisting thousands of business owners, we recognize the key differences between a good plugin and an exceptional one.
To simplify your decision-making process, we have personally evaluated the leading options available. This guide presents our expert recommendations for the best Google reviews plugins that are user-friendly, effective, and can help you leverage social proof.
If you’re short on time, feel free to refer to the table below for a quick overview of our recommendations:
| # | Google Reviews Plugin | Ideal For |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Smash Balloon Reviews Feed Pro | Automatically showcases new reviews from Google |
| 2 | Widgets for Google Reviews | Quick, easy, and free |
| 3 | WP Business Reviews | Integrates reviews from various platforms |
| 4 | WP Review Slider Pro | Displays reviews on product pages |
| 5 | Reviews and Rating – Google Reviews | Showcases reviews from your Google Business Profile |
| 6 | Business Reviews Bundle | Displays reviews from various platforms |
| 7 | WP Review Pro | Allows you to include your own product reviews |
Why Should You Showcase Google Reviews on Your Website or Online Store?
Google reviews are customer feedback about businesses, services, or locations that appear on Google. These reviews are provided by real customers and often include comments along with star ratings.
Potential customers may encounter Google reviews of your business or products in Google search results. Positive reviews and high ratings can help establish trust, encouraging users to click through to your website, which can lead to increased traffic and sales.
Did you know that you can also feature Google business reviews on your WordPress site?
For instance, you can display positive reviews on your landing pages, WooCommerce product pages, checkout pages, and About pages.
These reviews will be automatically retrieved from Google, eliminating the need for you to add them manually to your site.
To begin, you’ll need a Google Reviews plugin for your WordPress site. Some plugins may ask you to generate a Google API key to link to your account, while many modern options, such as Smash Balloon, provide an easy one-click connection. For more details, check out our comprehensive guide on displaying Google reviews in WordPress.
When your customers view Google reviews on your website, they are more likely to leave their own positive feedback. This can boost your Google rankings, particularly in local searches, and enhance your business’s overall star rating.
Our Methodology for Evaluating WordPress Google Reviews Plugins
Selecting the ideal Google Reviews plugin for WordPress can be challenging. Not all plugins provide the same features or quality, and the best choice really depends on your specific requirements. Therefore, we evaluated a variety of Google Reviews plugins, examining their features, performance, and user-friendliness.
Here are the essential criteria we used to identify the top Google Reviews plugins:
- User-Friendliness.We prioritized plugins that are easy to install and manage directly from the WordPress dashboard. This allows you to focus more on engaging with your audience rather than struggling with plugin configurations.
- Data Synchronization and Accuracy.A Google Reviews plugin must effectively retrieve and showcase your most recent reviews. We assessed how reliably each plugin connects with the Google Places API to guarantee that reviews are current and accurately displayed on your website.
- Customization Options.Having the ability to personalize the appearance of your review displays is crucial for maintaining brand consistency. We recommend plugins that provide versatile customization options, enabling you to modify layouts, styles, and display settings.
- Responsive Features.We ensured that each plugin displays your Google Reviews seamlessly across different screen sizes, delivering a uniform experience for all users.
- Pricing Structure.Lastly, we considered the pricing of each plugin in relation to the features provided. Our goal was to present a variety of options, including free plugins and premium alternatives with advanced functionalities.
Why Trust CanadaCreate?
At CanadaCreate, we leverage years of practical experience in WordPress and plugin assessments to guide our recommendations. Our expertise in eCommerce, online marketing, and trust-building is particularly relevant to Google Reviews.
When recommending plugins, particularly those that highlight customer feedback like Google Reviews plugins, we take our responsibility seriously.
We don’t just rely on descriptions; we download, install, and test each plugin to ensure it meets our high standards for functionality, reliability, and user-friendliness.
We aim to ensure that we recommend tools that will truly enhance your website and improve your business’s reputation.
Our editorial process guarantees that our reviews are comprehensive, objective, and impartial. If you’re curious about how we conduct our plugin reviews, feel free to explore our complete editorial process.
Now, let’s explore some of the top Google Reviews plugins for WordPress.
1. Smash Balloon Reviews Feed Pro
Smash Balloon Reviews Feed Pro is the premier customer review plugin for WordPress. We have extensive experience using this plugin to showcase customer reviews across various online stores, and you can find our insights in our detailed review of Smash Balloon.
This plugin allows you to effortlessly display Google reviews on your website, along with reviews from Yelp, Facebook, WordPress.org, Trustpilot, and TripAdvisor, saving you the hassle of installing multiple plugins.
The reviews will be presented in a style that complements your WordPress theme, ensuring that the testimonials seamlessly integrate into your website.
Smash Balloon’s user-friendly editor enables you to personalize the display of reviews. You can select which content appears with each review, modify the layout of the feed, and even include a call-to-action button encouraging users to share their own feedback.
Additionally, the plugin offers moderation tools that automatically filter out unwanted content, such as competitor names or inappropriate language.
You can easily add the review feed to any post, page, or widget using a block or shortcode. New reviews are automatically updated, ensuring your visitors always see the most recent customer feedback.
Key features of Smash Balloon Reviews Feed Pro include:
- Simple setup process
- Automatically displays the latest Google reviews
- Reviews are styled to match your WordPress theme
- Supports additional platforms like Yelp, Facebook, WordPress.org, Trustpilot, and TripAdvisor
- Easily display reviews anywhere on your site using blocks or shortcodes
- Moderation options allow you to filter out unwanted review content
Drawbacks of Smash Balloon Reviews Feed Pro include:
- The free version only supports Google and Yelp reviews.
Reasons to choose Smash Balloon Review Feeds Pro:This plugin allows you to showcase Google reviews throughout your website effortlessly. It’s simple to install and use, and it refreshes the review feed in real-time to ensure you always display the most recent customer feedback.
2. Widgets for Google Reviews
Widgets for Google Reviews is a widely used and free WordPress plugin for displaying Google reviews. It focuses on simplicity, making it quick and easy to use without any unnecessary features.
Despite its lightweight design, the plugin provides a variety of customization options for showcasing Google reviews. It offers 40 widget layouts and more than 25 design styles, allowing you to present reviews in a carousel, grid, list, and other formats.
We appreciate the ability to use filters to exclude unwanted reviews and to display them anywhere on your site using shortcodes.
Key benefits of Widgets for Google Reviews:
- Automatically displays the most recent reviews.
- Offers 40 layouts and 25 design options.
- Presents Google reviews in various formats such as carousel, grid, and list.
- Allows filtering out negative reviews.
- Completely free to use.
Drawbacks of Widgets for Google Reviews:
- Does not support reviews from other platforms.
- Lacks any additional features
Reasons to Choose Widgets for Google Reviews:This free and easy-to-use plugin is perfect for beginners and small business owners. It provides all the essentials to create a basic Google reviews feed on your website.
3. WP Business Reviews
WP Business Reviews allows you to display customer reviews from Google, Facebook, Yelp, and Zomato on your website. We appreciate the versatility of combining reviews from different platforms into one feed or showing them individually.
You can also manually add extra reviews that you receive, ensuring that valuable positive feedback isn’t overlooked.
Moreover, you can select from light, dark, or transparent styles to align with your website’s design. The reviews can be presented in a gallery, carousel, or list format, and you can control the length of each excerpt while tagging your top reviews for visibility.
We value the plugin’s advanced filtering options that help prevent spammy reviews from being shown and allow you to exclude negative reviews with low star ratings.
Additionally, we found the plugin’s tagging and grouping features to be both flexible and beneficial. For instance, you can tag your top reviews to ensure they appear prominently.
Our thoughts on WP Business Reviews:
- Automatically showcases the latest reviews
- Supports reviews from Facebook, Yelp, and Zomato as well
- Allows you to display reviews from various platforms either together or individually
- Highlight your top reviews to ensure they stand out
- Offers multiple display formats, including gallery, carousel, and list
- Ability to filter out negative reviews
Drawbacks of WP Business Reviews:
- Does not support TripAdvisor or Trustpilot
- The available light, dark, and transparent styles may not be compatible with all themes
- No free version available
Reasons to choose WP Business Reviews:This plugin effectively aggregates reviews from various platforms into a single feed. Its support for Zomato reviews makes it an ideal choice for restaurants, cafes, pubs, or bakeries.
4. WP Review Slider Pro
WP Review Slider Pro is a WordPress plugin designed to showcase your social media reviews on your website. It supports popular review platforms such as Google, Facebook, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Amazon, and over 90 others.
Reviews can be displayed in either a grid or slider format. Choose from 12 customizable templates to match your WordPress theme.
We appreciated the ability to filter reviews by length, rating, source page, and more, allowing us to showcase the most positive feedback prominently.
The plugin automatically updates your reviews using the WordPress Cron system, which is the built-in task scheduler for WordPress.
Highlights of WP Review Slider Pro:
- Supports over 90 different review platforms
- Automatically displays the latest reviews
- Offers 12 customizable templates
- Allows reviews to be displayed anywhere on your site using shortcodes
- Integrates seamlessly with WooCommerce
- Includes a free version
- Features for spam prevention and moderation
Drawbacks of WP Review Slider Pro:
- The provided templates may not be compatible with all WordPress themes
Reasons to choose WP Review Slider Pro:This plugin supports a wider range of review platforms than most competitors, enabling you to showcase testimonials from various popular platforms in your industry, in addition to Google reviews.
5. Reviews and Rating – Google Reviews
Reviews and Rating – Google Reviews is a free plugin designed specifically to help you highlight reviews and ratings from your Google Business Profile.
Google Business Profile is a powerful tool that allows you to showcase your local business information on Google, making it visible in search results. By integrating it with the Local SEO features from AIOSEO, you can significantly improve your local business listings on Google.
This plugin gathers data from your location using your Google Place ID and converts it into a block of reviews that can be easily displayed on your website.
We appreciate the ability to present these reviews in various formats, including lists, carousels, columns, or tiles, with a selection of templates that fit your website’s design. Additionally, you can personalize your reviews with over 150 variations, featuring both dark and light modes and 14 different color schemes.
We also discovered that you can effortlessly sort and filter reviews to showcase only the content you desire. For instance, star rating filters allow you to display only the most favorable reviews, and you can choose to include or exclude reviews based on specific keywords.
When you’re ready, you can place the reviews anywhere on your website using shortcodes or widgets.
Here are the features we appreciate about the Reviews and Rating – Google Reviews plugin:
- Displays Google reviews and ratings directly from your Google Business Profile account.
- Automatically showcases the latest reviews.
- Offers over 150 design variations and themes.
- Easily showcase reviews throughout your website using shortcodes or widgets.
- Customize the displayed content with various filters.
- Free of charge.
Drawbacks of Reviews and Ratings – Google Reviews:
- Lacks support for additional review platforms.
Reasons to choose Reviews and Ratings – Google Reviews:This plugin is perfect for displaying reviews and ratings directly from your Google Business Profile account without any added complexity.
Related information:Check out our guide on how to handle the shutdown of Google Business Profile sites.
6. Business Reviews Bundle
Business Reviews Bundle is a top-rated plugin that enables you to showcase reviews from Google, Facebook, and Yelp on your site. You can combine reviews from multiple platforms into a single feed and merge ratings into an overall score.
Choose from five distinct layouts to present reviews as a slider, grid, trust badges, or list. You can also highlight the most favorable reviews by including or excluding specific words and hiding lower-rated reviews.
During our evaluation, we appreciated the trim feature that allows you to shorten lengthy reviews and include a ‘read more’ link, ensuring they don’t occupy excessive space on your website.
You can easily showcase reviews on any post, page, or widget using either a block or a shortcode.
Here’s what we appreciate about the Business Reviews Bundle:
- It automatically displays the most recent Google reviews.
- It also integrates with Facebook and Yelp review platforms.
- You can showcase reviews from various platforms in one consolidated feed.
- There are five different layout options available.
- You can filter reviews based on ratings and specific keywords to include or exclude.
- Utilize blocks or shortcodes to present reviews anywhere on your website.
- A free version is available for users.
Here’s what we find lacking in the Business Reviews Bundle:
- It does not support TripAdvisor or Trustpilot.
- The free version limits you to displaying only five Google reviews.
Reasons to consider the Business Reviews Bundle:This plugin is an excellent choice if you want to showcase reviews from multiple platforms, including Google and Yelp.
7. WP Review Pro
WP Review Pro is an excellent product review plugin for WordPress. It enables you to showcase reviews from Google, Facebook, and Yelp, but its primary focus is on allowing you to create your own product reviews complete with star ratings.
While it offers useful features like templates, WooCommerce integration, and shortcodes, the support for Google Reviews is not as comprehensive as some other plugins on our list.
Specifically, we were let down by the plugin’s limitation of displaying only 5 Google reviews at once, and it does not offer a way to filter out negative reviews.
This plugin is best suited for users who primarily want to feature their own reviews on their websites.
What we appreciate about WP Review Pro:
- Offers numerous features for adding your own reviews to your website
- Includes WooCommerce integration
- A free version is available that supports Google reviews
What we find lacking in WP Review Pro:
- Lacks spam filtering and moderation features
- You can only display up to 5 Google reviews
- Does not support TripAdvisor and Trustpilot
Reasons to recommend WP Review Pro:This is the top product review plugin for online stores, offering seamless integration with WooCommerce. It can also be utilized to create a specialized review site in WordPress.
What Is the Best Google Reviews Plugin for WordPress?
The top Google reviews plugin for WordPress is Smash Balloon Reviews Feed. It automatically displays new Google reviews, making it an ideal choice for busy business owners looking to save time and streamline their workflows in WordPress.
Additionally, it supports other well-known user review platforms like Yelp, Facebook, WordPress.org, Trustpilot, and TripAdvisor, ensuring that the reviews seamlessly match your WordPress theme.
If you’re looking for a straightforward, free plugin that is quick to set up and doesn’t include unnecessary features, we recommend Widgets for Google Reviews.
For those needing WooCommerce integration to showcase reviews on product pages of their eCommerce site, WP Review Slider Pro is a great option.
Frequently Asked Questions About Google Reviews Plugins for WordPress
In this guide, we have compared several popular Google review plugins for WordPress. If you still have questions about integrating reviews into your WordPress site, here are the answers to some common inquiries.
How can I add Google reviews to my WordPress website?
After selecting a Google reviews plugin for your WordPress site, you will need to install, activate, and configure it.
The steps you need to follow will vary based on the plugin you select. For more information, check out our guide on displaying Google reviews in WordPress.
Can you filter or moderate Google reviews before they are shown on your site?
Yes, most of the recommended WordPress Google reviews plugins allow you to filter the types of reviews displayed on your website.
For instance, you may want to exclude negative reviews with low star ratings or avoid showing reviews that mention your competitors.
Are there any free plugins available for displaying Google reviews?
Yes, we highlight several free Google reviews plugins in this article, and some premium options also offer free versions.
The most widely used free plugin is Widgets for Google Reviews. Another great choice is Reviews and Rating – Google Reviews.
Apart from Google, what are some other well-known review platforms?
Google serves as a powerful review platform for website owners because your reviews can appear on search engine results pages, particularly when customers search for local businesses.
Other well-known review platforms include Yelp, Facebook, Trustpilot, G2 Crowd for technology reviews, TripAdvisor for travel insights, Angie’s List for service recommendations, Zomato for food reviews, and Glassdoor for job-related feedback.
Top WordPress Guides for Customer Reviews
We hope this guide has assisted you in discovering the best Google reviews plugins for WordPress. You may also find our tutorials on utilizing reviews, ratings, and testimonials in WordPress helpful.
- How to Showcase Your Facebook Page Reviews on Your WordPress Site
- How to Create a Niche Review Website in WordPress Like a Professional
- How to Incorporate Rotating Testimonials in Your WordPress Site
- Comparison of the Best Customer Reviews Plugins for WordPress
- How to Create a Customer Reviews Page in WordPress
- Comparison of the Best Testimonial Plugins for WordPress
If you enjoyed this article, please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also connect with us on Twitter and Facebook.
