Google review badge: the Google customer reviews badge, the 5 star badge and a Google rating badge for your website
Google does not give you a review badge for your Business Profile. There is no official widget, no snippet in the Business Profile dashboard, nothing to copy. The only badge Google publishes is the Google Customer Reviews badge in Merchant Center, it is for online sellers, and Google says most merchants need 100 or more eligible reviews before it shows a rating at all. Everyone else builds the badge themselves. Build one on the right.
Badge layout, live
Sources
Layout
Brand color
Minimum rating
No reviews match those filters
Turn a source back on or lower the minimum rating.
·
reviews shown
from Google · G2 · direct
Drops next to any CTA: signup, pricing, checkout.
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Automated request email
From: Your Company <[email protected]>
Subject: Quick favor? It takes 40 seconds
Hi Jordan,
You've been with us for 3 months, thanks for that. Would you share how it's going? One click below, 40 seconds, done.
Sent automatically 90 days after signup · timed to the customer's timezone
See it land in your own inbox
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Set the accent color and the minimum rating, then copy one script tag. Switch to Carousel or Wall for the bigger layouts.
The short version
What a Google review badge actually is, and who can get one
A review badge is the compact layout: your average score, five stars and the review count, in a pill small enough to sit beside a button. Almost every article about it blurs two completely different things, so start here.
0
official badges for a Business Profile
If your reviews live on your Google Business Profile, the local listing with the map pin, Google gives you no badge, no widget and no embed code. That gap is the entire reason a widget market exists.
100
reviews before the Merchant badge shows a score
Google's own help page says merchants are usually able to obtain a rating after collecting 100 or more eligible reviews, counted per country. Below that, the badge renders the words "Rating not available".
5
reviews, the Places API ceiling
Building a badge from Google's Places API gets you the overall rating plus at most five individual reviews, and calls that include the reviews field bill at $25.00 per 1,000.
Those three numbers explain every confusing search result on this topic. The free badge people remember seeing belongs to online retailers in Merchant Center. The badge a plumber, a law firm, a dental practice or a SaaS company wants is a third-party widget, because Google has never shipped one.
Compare before you install anything
Four ways to put a Google rating badge on a website
These are the only real options in September 2026. Two of them are free and heavily restricted, one is a build, and one is a subscription. Pick on the constraints, not on the price tag.
| Route | Who can use it | Cost | Updates itself | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Customer Reviews badge | Online sellers with a Merchant Center account | No fee | Yes | Needs the program agreement and roughly 100 eligible reviews per country before a rating appears |
| A static image or screenshot | Anyone | No fee | No | Goes stale the day after you make it, and a wrong star count reads worse than no badge |
| Build from the Google Places API | Teams with a developer | $25.00 per 1,000 review calls, plus build time | Only if you schedule it | Five reviews maximum, review text may not be cached, and you own the maintenance forever |
| A review widget with a badge layout | Any business with a website | From $24/mo billed yearly | Yes | It is a subscription, and quality varies enormously on page weight |
The screenshot badge is worse than it looks
It is the route most small sites take, and it quietly backfires. A visitor who checks your Google listing and finds 4.9 across 212 reviews, next to a graphic on your homepage claiming 4.7 across 38, has just learned that your site is out of date. Frozen numbers only ever drift downward in credibility.
Check what a badge costs you in page weight
A badge is the smallest thing on the page, so it should be the cheapest. Some widget scripts pull in a framework, web fonts and a full review payload just to render one pill. Before you commit, load the vendor's demo and watch the network tab. A rating badge has no business costing you a second of load time.
The official badge, in detail
What the Google customer reviews badge requires
This is the one badge Google actually ships. It is worth knowing the rules, because most businesses searching for a Google review badge discover halfway through setup that they do not qualify for it.
It is a Merchant Center program, not a Business Profile feature
Google Customer Reviews collects post-purchase survey responses from people who bought from your online store. The badge reports that store rating. A service business with a map listing and hundreds of Google reviews is in the wrong product entirely and cannot use it.
You must accept the program agreement first
Google requires you to accept the Google Customer Reviews Program Agreement before you integrate the badge on your site. Violating that agreement, the privacy policies, or manipulating your product offers, gets the account suspended and removes the badge from your pages.
The rating is per country, on a rolling year
You need enough reviews from a country during the past year for the store rating to appear to shoppers in that country. Google puts the usual figure at 100 or more eligible reviews. A US store expanding into Canada starts that count again from zero.
Below the threshold it says "Rating not available"
There is no minimum score, which sounds generous until you see what happens without volume: Google states the badge simply reads "Rating not available". A badge that admits it has no rating is doing the opposite of social proof on a checkout page.
Two practical consequences follow. If you run an online store with real order volume, take the free badge, it is good and it costs nothing. If you are a local service business, a B2B software company, an agency or a new store, that route is closed and the honest answer is a widget.
Four steps
How to add a Google rating badge with ReviewJet
From a blank page to a live badge is a few minutes of work, and only one of those steps touches your site's code.
1
Connect your review sources
Point ReviewJet at your Google Business Profile. Add Trustpilot, G2 and the reviews you collect yourself in the same step if you have them, so the badge reflects your whole reputation rather than one platform's slice of it.
2
Pick the badge layout
Choose Badge in the studio above. Set the accent color to your brand, and set a minimum rating if you would rather the average be drawn from your four and five star reviews only.
3
Paste one script tag
Copy the embed and drop it where the badge belongs. WordPress takes it in a Custom HTML block, Shopify in a section or theme file, and any hand-built site takes it straight in the markup.
4
Leave it alone
New reviews change the number without anyone editing the page. That is the whole difference between a badge and the screenshot it replaces, and it is why the badge is still right two years from now.
Placement
Where a 5 star badge earns its keep, and where it is wallpaper
A badge works by removing doubt at the exact moment doubt appears. Position matters more than design here, and the wrong placement wastes a good rating.
Beside the primary button
Under the signup, quote or booking button is the highest-value slot on any page. The visitor has decided they are interested and is deciding whether to trust you. A rating and a review count answers that in half a second, without them leaving to check your listing.
In the pricing table header
Price is where hesitation peaks. A badge sitting above the plans reframes the number as something other people already paid and rated well. If you sell a service, put it directly above the quote form instead.
Not the footer
A footer badge is seen by people who already scrolled past every decision point on the page. It is not harmful, it is just not doing anything. If the footer is your only badge placement, move it up and put a fuller wall of reviews lower down instead.
Pick the right layout
Badge, carousel or wall: which one belongs on this page
A badge is one of three shapes the same review data can take. Most sites need more than one, on different pages, for different jobs.
Badge
Score, stars, count. Fits in a header, a nav bar or a button row without pushing anything down the page. Use it sitewide, where you need proof but have no space for it.
Carousel
A sliding strip of individual reviews. The right shape when the words matter more than the score, and the standard choice for a homepage band or a mid-page break.
Wall
A dense grid of review cards. Built for a dedicated testimonials page where a visitor arrived specifically to read what other customers said before buying.
The pattern that works: one badge near every call to action, one carousel on the homepage, one wall on a page you can link to from both. All three read the same review pool, so the numbers never disagree with each other.
Who needs the widget route
Three businesses the official Google badge leaves out
Local service businesses
Contractors, clinics, law firms, salons and studios collect their reviews on a Business Profile, which the Merchant Center badge cannot read at all. Their Google rating is often the best asset they own and the hardest one to display. A widget badge is the only route.
B2B software teams
Their reviews are split between G2, Trustpilot and Google, so any single-platform badge understates them. Averaging across sources is the honest number, and it is usually a better one. See how the multi-source review aggregator handles that.
Agencies running client sites
One badge, twenty client domains, twenty different Google listings. Doing that through Merchant Center is not possible, and doing it through per-domain vendor pricing gets expensive fast. Workspaces and white label review management exist for exactly this.
Questions people ask
Google review badge questions, answered
Not for a Google Business Profile. Google publishes no badge or widget that shows your Business Profile star rating on your own site. The one official Google badge is the Google Customer Reviews badge, which lives in Merchant Center and is built for online sellers, not for local service businesses.
It is a Merchant Center badge that shows your store rating from the Google Customer Reviews program. You accept the program agreement, add the badge code, and Google fills in the rating. Google states that merchants usually need 100 or more eligible reviews before a rating appears, and it is counted per country.
Pick your source first. If you sell online and are in Merchant Center, use the Google Customer Reviews badge. Otherwise use a review widget: connect your Google Business Profile, choose the badge layout, set your accent color and minimum rating, then paste one script tag where you want the badge to sit.
For the official Google Customer Reviews badge, Google says most merchants get a rating after collecting 100 or more eligible reviews, and those reviews must come from the same country as the shopper seeing the badge. A widget badge has no threshold: it shows whatever rating and review count you already have.
The Merchant Center badge carries no fee, but it needs an eligible online store and roughly 100 reviews before it displays a rating. Widget badges are a paid product almost everywhere, because someone has to keep pulling and refreshing your reviews. ReviewJet starts at $24 a month billed yearly.
It is the compact version of a review badge: your average score, a row of stars and the review count, usually in a rounded pill. It is the layout people place beside a call to action, in a header, or next to a checkout button, where a full review carousel would take too much room.
Only partly, and it is an expensive way to do it. The Places API returns your overall rating and review count, but a maximum of five individual reviews, and any request that includes the reviews field bills at $25.00 per 1,000 calls. Google also does not permit caching review text.
Not by itself. Star ratings in a search snippet come from review structured data that Google chooses to display, and Google ignores self-serving reviews about your own business on your own site. A badge is social proof for visitors already on the page, which is a different job.
Next to the decision. The header, the pricing table, the form and the checkout button are where a badge earns its keep, because that is the moment a visitor hesitates. A badge in the footer is decoration. Most sites run one badge sitewide and a fuller review section on the landing pages that sell.
Not with any single platform badge, because each vendor shows only its own reviews. A multi-source widget can: it pools reviews from Google, Trustpilot, G2 and requests you send yourself, then averages them into one score. That is the point of an aggregated badge rather than three separate ones.
Keep reading
Related badge, widget and Google review pages
Google reviews widget
The full widget rather than the badge: every layout, what it costs and how the Business Profile connection works.
Google Places API pricing
What a review call actually bills, the five review ceiling and the caching rules, if you plan to build the badge yourself.
Trustpilot carousel widget
The sliding layout, what Trustpilot charges for its widget library, and the multi-source alternative.
Google reviews on WordPress
Where the embed goes in a block theme, and the plugin decisions that affect your page speed score.
Google review link generator
Get more reviews before you display them: the direct link that opens the review box in one tap.
Can I use Google reviews on my website?
The attribution and permission rules for republishing Google review content, before you design anything.
A rating badge that is never out of date
One score across Google, Trustpilot, G2 and the reviews you collect yourself, in a pill small enough to sit beside any button.
From $24/mo, billed yearly. No per-review fees.