How to Embed Google Reviews on BigCommerce (Step-by-Step)
How to show Google Business Profile reviews on a BigCommerce store with Page Builder, why embedded Google reviews won't produce review stars in search (and what to do about markup instead), and how to display them in line with Google's attribution rules and UK review law.
In this article
Google reviews are about your business: delivery, service, whether the parcel arrived. That makes them useful on a BigCommerce store, especially for shoppers who haven't bought from you before. It also sets limits on where they belong and what they can do for search. This guide covers placement with BigCommerce's own tools, the Google rules that decide what's worth doing, and how to present reviews honestly.
What Google reviews can and can't do on your store
Two lines in Google's review snippet guidelines settle the search question. The first: "Don't aggregate reviews or ratings from other websites." The second covers local businesses and organisations: if the entity being reviewed controls the reviews about itself, its pages using LocalBusiness or Organization markup are ineligible for star results, whether the markup is added "directly in their structured data or through an embedded third-party widget (for example, Google Business reviews or Facebook reviews widget)". Google introduced the self-serving rule in 2019.
So embed Google reviews for the shopper who is on the page. If you want stars in search results, they come from first-party product reviews collected on your store and marked up against the specific product; the review schema and rich results handbook covers how. Trustpilot vs Feefo vs Google reviews compares the sources if you collect from more than one.
Where Google reviews earn their place
Step by step with Idukki
Google reviews on BigCommerce
- 01
Add Google as a review source
In the Idukki dashboard, add a review source, choose Google and select your business location.
- 02
Moderate
Check what was imported. Hide reviews that break your content rules (for example, personal data), not ones that are merely critical.
- 03
Choose a layout
Build a collection of the reviews and pick a layout that suits text reviews. Mixing in customer photos can make the section more persuasive.
- 04
Copy the embed code
Open the collection's publish step and copy the embed code.
- 05
Place with Page Builder
Storefront › Themes › Edit in Page Builder, drag an HTML widget into the homepage or a new page, paste, save and publish.
A dedicated reviews page. In Page Builder, Create new page asks for a title and URL, then lets you add widgets. A "/reviews" page with an HTML widget holding the embed, a sentence explaining how reviews are chosen and a link to your Google profile is a tidy setup. Site-wide. If you want a short reviews strip on every page, BigCommerce's global regions are the tool: in Cornerstone 4.11 and later there's a single default global region on every page except checkout. Anything placed in a layer marked "-- Global" appears everywhere that region exists, so use it deliberately.
You don't need to connect your BigCommerce catalogue to show Google reviews. You only need it if you plan to tag products to customer photos or video in the same widget; then connect a store-level API account in Idukki's BigCommerce settings.
Presenting Google reviews properly
Google's Places API policies set out how apps that display Google reviews must present them. If your tool fetches reviews another way, they are still a sound standard:
- Credit the author with name and avatar next to each review.
- Link to the source so shoppers can read the review on Google, and link to the full profile.
- Describe the selection. Google asks for a clear notice of how reviews are ordered and filtered. "Most recent Google reviews" or "Selected reviews; read them all on Google" is enough.
- Show relative dates ("2 months ago"), which Google recommends for trust.
- Don't imply Google verified them. Google says its reviews aren't verified by Google, though fake content is removed when found.
Selection is also a legal question. The UK Competition and Markets Authority's guidance on the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 treats publishing consumer reviews "in a misleading way" as a banned practice. Hand-picking five-star reviews is normal marketing; presenting them as your overall rating when your profile says otherwise is not. For growing the pool honestly, see how to get more Google reviews, and for replying to the critical ones, Google review response examples.
Performance
Text reviews are light; the risk is layout shift, where a section loads late and pushes content down. Wrap the embed in a `div` with a `min-height` in the HTML widget, and for sections below the fold add `data-ugc-lazy="1"` to the placeholder element so the widget mounts only when it's close to the viewport. Google's good threshold for Cumulative Layout Shift is 0.1 or less; compare PageSpeed Insights before and after on the page you changed.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Reviews appear on every page | Widget placed in a global region | Move it to a page-specific region via the Layers menu. |
| Page Builder preview looks broken | Embed code pasted incompletely | Re-copy the full code; check the live storefront rather than the preview. |
| Wrong business's reviews | A similarly named location was selected | Remove the source and re-add it, checking the address. |
| New reviews not showing | Import not refreshed yet | Give it time, then check the source in the dashboard. |
| No stars in Google search | Expected: self-serving and aggregated reviews are ineligible | Use first-party product reviews for star markup. |
| Two sets of product rating markup on a PDP | Theme or review app already outputs ratings | Keep one source of product review markup per page. |
FAQs
How do I add Google reviews to BigCommerce?
Get embed code from a review widget that imports your Google Business Profile reviews, open Page Builder from Storefront › Themes, drag an HTML widget onto the page and paste the code. Save, publish and check the live storefront.
Will Google reviews on my BigCommerce site show stars in search results?
No. Google's guidelines exclude self-serving reviews for businesses, including those shown through embedded Google Business review widgets, and say not to aggregate reviews from other websites.
Should I use Script Manager for a Google reviews widget?
Not for an inline section. Script Manager places code in the header or footer of many pages. Page Builder puts the reviews where you want them.
Can I show only my five-star Google reviews?
You can curate, but label the selection and link to your full profile. Presenting a filtered set as your overall rating can mislead shoppers and, in the UK, breach the DMCC Act's rules on reviews.
Do I need a Google API key?
Only if you build the integration yourself on Google's APIs. A review widget provider handles the connection.
Sources
- 1Google Search Central: Review snippet structured data guidelines · Self-serving reviews ineligible; don't aggregate reviews from other websites
- 2Google Search Central Blog: Making review rich results more helpful (2019) · Self-serving review rule, including embedded widgets
- 3Google Maps Platform: Policies and attributions for Places API · Author attribution, links to source, describing ordering and filtering
- 4BigCommerce Help Center: Page Builder · HTML widget, Create new page, global regions
- 5CMA208: Fake reviews guidance (GOV.UK) · Publishing consumer review information in a misleading way is prohibited
- 6web.dev: Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) · Good CLS threshold of 0.1 or less
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