Some business owners have moved on. They chase TikTok trends, pay for placements in curated directories, and ask customers to leave reviews on niche platforms most people have never heard of. Yelp gets love from restaurants. TripAdvisor still holds sway for travel. But somehow, Google gets treated like old news. It’s useful for maps, sure, but often overlooked when it comes to customer reviews.
That’s a mistake.
Google remains the first stop for almost everyone. If someone hears about your business and wants to know if it’s legit, they’re not opening Yelp. They’re typing your name into Google. Right there in the sidebar, your star rating is the first signal of trust or trouble. It shows up before your bio, before your website, before anything else. Those stars, pulled from real users with verified accounts, carry more weight than most people realize.
It’s not just about how many reviews you’ve earned. It’s about where they appear. Google surfaces reviews constantly. They show up in search results, in maps, on mobile, on desktop. You don’t need to click to find them. They’re just there, front and center, whenever someone looks you up. That kind of exposure is rare and powerful.
Still, many business owners treat it like a background detail. They’ll respond to a Yelp review from last week but ignore Google comments for months. They’ll stick their Google score at the bottom of their site, if they bother to show it at all. Some skip it entirely, convinced that it’s only useful for plumbers or sandwich shops.
The truth is, every business is local when someone’s searching nearby. A consultant, a law firm, a creative agency—they all show up on the map. And in that moment, the volume of reviews, the average rating, and the latest feedback can make or break interest.
That’s why it’s frustrating that Google gives you almost no control when it comes to showing off your reviews on your own site. You can embed a basic badge or drop in a dated widget, but that’s about it. You can’t style it. You can’t filter it. You can’t make it match the rest of your layout without jumping through hoops.
A lot of people either give up or settle. Some try to hack around the problem. But you don’t need to do either. If you want to display your reviews in a way that reflects your brand and your voice, there’s a better way.
CustomView: Display Reviews Your Way for Google Reviews is a free WordPress plugin that pulls in your Google Business reviews and gives you full control over how they appear. You can style them however you want. You can choose what to show and where to show it. You’re not stuck with generic layouts or clashing fonts. It’s also available directly from WordPress.org.
You don’t control what people say in reviews. But you can decide how those reviews appear on your site. In 2025, when AI-generated noise is everywhere, genuine feedback from real people stands out more than ever. It’s proof that your business does what it says.
Google might not be trendy. But it’s still the front door to your business. Ignoring it is just handing that advantage to someone else.
