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Website with company reviews: where to put them, and why
One click, and Google will show my articles more often in your results.
Anyone wondering whether their website needs a reviews section usually starts from the same idea: showing them helps you rank better on Google, maybe even with star snippets under your link in search results. It's a reasonable expectation, and it's also wrong: Google says so itself in its own documentation, and that's the place to start before deciding where to put reviews.
Why you'll never see stars under your own website
Google publishes a precise rule on structured data for reviews, in a support page last updated September 8, 2026: if a business shows reviews about itself on its own page, that page isn't eligible for star snippets in search results. This applies whether the page's code declares the reviews directly or they come from a third-party widget, including a Google Business or Facebook widget. The rule goes back to a Google announcement from September 16, 2019, and it still holds today: there's no penalty, the only effect is that the stars don't show up. Your Google Business Profile, worth noting, is a separate system with its own rules: this limitation only concerns regular search results.
In practice, a reviews widget on your homepage will never get you star snippets under your link in Google, whichever platform you use to collect them. Anyone promising otherwise is describing something the system doesn't offer.
So why add them, and where
If they're not for the stars, they still serve a real, different purpose: convincing someone who has already landed on your site and is deciding whether to reach out. To be honest about it, there's no public data measuring which position converts best: no reliable source compares a homepage, a dedicated page and an individual service page. Business logic, though, is the same as for any other element meant to reassure a visitor: it belongs near the point where they decide, for example next to the contact form or on the service page they're weighing, not tucked away on a page few people see first.
It's also worth not settling for a single storefront. According to BrightLocal's 2025 Local Consumer Review Survey, 74% of consumers check two or more review sites before deciding to use a local business, and only 27% stop at the first one they find. A business that only looks after its own page, leaving its Google Business profile untended, is probably letting down most of the people evaluating it.
What changed on April 2, 2023
Since April 2, 2023, the decree that brought the EU's Omnibus directive into Italian law has been in force, adding two rules to the Consumer Code aimed squarely at businesses publishing reviews. It's now considered misleading in all cases to state that published reviews come from customers who genuinely bought or used a product or service without having taken reasonable and proportionate steps to check it, and the same goes for sending or commissioning fake reviews. A business that gives access to consumer reviews must also treat information about whether and how it guarantees their authenticity as relevant for transparency: leaving it out can itself count as a misleading omission.
This hasn't stayed on paper. In December 2023, Italy's competition authority (AGCM) fined Facile Ristrutturare and its parent company Renovars a combined 4.5 million euros, the sum of two separate penalties: one for fake reviews published on two external platforms and traced back to the company's own staff, alongside a stated "98% satisfied customers" figure that was never verified. In March 2026 the same authority fined the Trustpilot group 4 million euros, one of the review platforms most widely used by Italian businesses too, for not giving enough information on how paid services affect a business's score and the "Verified" label attached to its profile. Even relying on an external platform, in other words, isn't automatically safe: it's worth checking how it actually works before choosing it, not just what it costs.
The guarantee
Thirty days to change your mind.
In more than ten years I have never had a client unhappy with the work delivered. That is why I can afford to say this: you have 30 days from accepting the quote to stop, or until the site goes live if that comes first. Within that window I refund everything you have paid and we part ways, with no further claim and no argument. There are no conditions to meet and nothing to prove: you decide.
You get me, within one working day.
No switchboard, no support form. If you write or call and I do not answer within one working day, you do not pay that month.
I take the risk at the start. It is the only way I have to say “trust me” and have it mean something.
Where to start
The first step costs nothing: make sure the business's Google Business profile is active and well kept, since that's where most people searching look first. An external platform, like Trustpilot or Feedaty, makes sense if it genuinely helps collect reviews in a more organized way, not just because "everyone has one": before turning one on, check how it says it verifies the authenticity of what it shows, for the same reason AGCM fined a platform that wasn't doing that well enough. And if you decide to publish a customer's name and photo alongside their review, ask for their explicit permission first: that's good practice regardless of which platform you choose.
To see how reviews also factor into local ranking, meaning the listing that shows up on Google Maps, there's ranking on Google Maps: the mechanism there is different, because reviews directly count toward showing up higher in map results.
If you'd like an opinion on where to put reviews on your site, or which platform makes sense for your business, get in touch and let's look at your situation together.