How AI assistants decide which business to recommend
Use of AI tools for local business recommendations went from 6% to 45% of consumers in a single year, according to BrightLocal’s 2026 survey.
Learn
Definitions, policy, research and the corrections most articles in this area get wrong.
What is here
Twenty-three reference pages and a glossary of sixteen terms, starting with what a review widget actually is. Written to be accurate rather than promotional, which means several of them contradict things this site would otherwise like to claim.
The one that does that most is review schema markup, which explains why a business reviewing itself no longer gets stars in search results.
Browse
Every page in this section, with the rest linked from each one.
Search & AI visibility
Do reviews affect local SEO?
Yes, for local search.
Review schema markup explained
What it is, which type to use, and the 2019 rule that decides whether your stars can appear in search at all.
Do reviews loaded by JavaScript get indexed?
Google renders JavaScript and indexes what it produces, but on a delay and not guaranteed.
Why your Google reviews aren’t showing
Google reviews disappear for four main reasons: the review broke a policy and was removed, an automated filter caught it, the business profile was merged or changed, or the review never successfully posted in the first place..
Policy & law
Google’s review policy, in plain English
Google’s review policies prohibit fake reviews, incentivised reviews, conflicts of interest, off-topic content, harassment and personal information.
The FTC rule on fake reviews and testimonials
The FTC rule on consumer reviews and testimonials, in force since 2024, prohibits fake and incentivised reviews, undisclosed insider reviews, and suppressing or misrepresenting the reviews a business displays.
Yelp’s recommendation filter and why you can’t ask
Yelp runs automated recommendation software that decides which reviews appear on your page and which are moved to a “not currently recommended” section behind a link.
How to remove a fake or defamatory review
You cannot delete a Google review.
GDPR, consent and showing customer names and photos
A review containing a person’s name, photo or anything identifying is personal data, and displaying it on your website is processing it.
Practical playbooks
How to ask customers for reviews
Ask directly, once, soon after the experience, and make it one tap.
How to get more Google reviews
Ask every customer, soon after the experience, with a direct link that opens the review box in one tap.
How to respond to reviews, good and bad
Reply to every review, briefly, in public, and write for the person reading it next rather than the person who wrote it.
How many reviews you need, and what rating actually converts
Twenty is the floor: 47% of consumers say they will not use a business with fewer than that.
Where to put reviews on your website
Put reviews where the decision happens, not where there is space.
Technical
Google Reviews API guide
The Google Places API returns a maximum of five reviews per place, chosen by Google, with no way to page through the rest.
The five-review limit in the Google Places API
The Places API returns at most five reviews per place.
Google Customer Reviews vs Google reviews
Google reviews are the reviews people leave on your Google Business Profile — the stars next to your business in Search and Maps.
Review widgets and page speed
A third-party widget affects page speed mainly through Cumulative Layout Shift and, if loaded badly, through blocking the main thread.
Accessible review widgets (WCAG 2.2)
An accessible review widget is keyboard operable, announces its content to a screen reader, meets contrast requirements, and does not move on its own without a way to stop it.
Research
Online review statistics 2026
The most cited current source is BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, published in February 2026 from a representative panel of 1,002 US adults.
Review widget, review platform or reputation management?
Three different categories: review widgets display reviews you already have, review platforms collect and host reviews for you, and reputation management software monitors and routes reviews across many locations..
What is a review widget?
A review widget is a block you embed in a web page that displays reviews customers left on platforms like Google, Facebook or Tripadvisor, and keeps them current automatically..
Glossary
Sixteen terms, each defined in two sentences with a real example.
- Social proof
Social proof is the tendency to judge something by how other people have judged it.
- User-generated content (UGC)
User-generated content is any content about a brand created by its customers rather than by the brand: reviews, photos, videos, comments, forum posts, social media mentions..
- Testimonial vs review
A review is unsolicited feedback left on a platform you do not control, alongside everyone else’s including the critical ones.
- Aggregate rating
An aggregate rating is the average score across all reviews of something, together with how many reviews it came from.
- Review velocity
Review velocity is the rate at which a business receives new reviews — how many arrive per week or month, rather than how many exist in total..
- Verified review
A verified review is one the platform can tie to a real transaction — a confirmed purchase, a completed booking, a finished job..
- First-party vs third-party reviews
First-party reviews live on infrastructure you control — your own website, your own store.
- Review syndication
Review syndication is the distribution of reviews from where they were collected to other places they can appear — a retailer’s site, a comparison engine, Google Shopping..
- Google Place ID
The unique identifier Google assigns to a place. Find yours below.
- Google Business Profile
A Google Business Profile is the free listing a business has on Google Search and Maps — name, hours, photos, and the reviews customers leave..
- Rich results and rich snippets
Rich results are search results enhanced with extra detail pulled from structured data on the page — star ratings, prices, images, FAQs, recipe times..
- Review gating
Review gating is the practice of filtering who is asked to leave a public review, so that satisfied customers are invited and unhappy ones are not..
- Reputation management
Reputation management is the practice of monitoring and influencing what is publicly said about a business — reviews, search results, press and social mentions..
- Widget, plugin, app or embed
A widget is a self-contained block of functionality embedded into a page.
- NPS, CSAT and CES
NPS, CSAT and CES are survey metrics for measuring customer sentiment.
- Facebook Recommendations
Facebook Recommendations are the replacement for Facebook star reviews, introduced in 2018.
How this section is written
The answer in the first two sentences. A section on what most people get wrong, because that is the part not already available elsewhere. Tables and numbered steps rather than prose where the content allows. Dates kept true.
Not legal advice
The pages on the FTC rule, platform policy and GDPR are summaries by people who are not lawyers. Have one read anything you rely on.