Publish authentic customer testimonials on a website

Collect an attributable experience

After a completed project, invite the customer to describe the original need, what was delivered and what proved useful. Ask for concrete examples rather than praise. Keep the original response and receipt date in a place available to the content owner.

Do not assemble a quotation from separate conversations or assign it to an invented person. If you shorten the wording, have the published version approved. The case-study guide distinguishes feedback, measured results and illustrations.

• Original source and date retained.
• Quotation faithful to the response.
• Numerical results tied to a measurement method.

Agree on exactly what may appear

Have the final quotation and each associated element approved: identity, role, organization, portrait, logo and link. Fictional example: a customer permits a first name and occupation but not their organization’s name; the card must respect that scope. Show the intended placement near the service too. Permission to describe a project does not automatically define every use of identity.

Do not turn approval for one project presentation into unrestricted use of a person’s identity or image. Record whom to contact for a correction or removal. If someone is recognisable in a photograph, check the rights connected to that image as well.

• Final wording approved.
• Name, image and logo cleared separately.
• Correction contact identified.

Explain the evidence to readers

Place feedback near the service it helps explain. A dated, accurately attributed sentence is more useful than a carousel of generic claims. Identify the customer’s role, type of work and any important limit on the result described.

Do not publish an average score, review count or Review markup without the underlying reviews and eligibility for the search feature. Google’s review-snippet documentation requires marked-up information to match visible, eligible content.

Distinguish publishing a testimonial from eligibility for Google review stars. For LocalBusiness and Organization types, Google excludes this feature when the reviewed entity controls reviews about itself. The rule also covers a third-party widget embedded on the entity’s own site; hosting reviews elsewhere does not automatically create an exception. An authorised testimonial can still help readers, but must not be sold as a promise of stars in search results.

Fictional arithmetic exercise with no real customer review: four ratings are 5 and one is 1 on the same 1-to-5 scale. The sum is 21 across 5 ratings, giving 4.2; averaging the two group means, 5 and 1, would give 3 and mislead here. Keep the series, scope and count. ratingCount counts ratings and reviewCount reviews; do not interchange them for convenience. Use a decimal point for a structured value, such as 4.2, independently of local display formatting. This exercise justifies no real review or review markup.

• Feedback linked to a relevant offer.
• Date and context understandable.
• No invented or extrapolated rating.

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Plan correction and removal

Check attribution, links and context without silently rewriting the reported experience. Fictional example: the author changes employer after the project; a new job title must not imply that the new organization was the customer. Clarify the original context if publication remains authorized. For withdrawal or misleading information, check every reuse, including cards, translations and markup.

Keep an inventory of everywhere each testimonial appears. Review images, captions and structured data when making changes. The content operations guide offers a simple review cycle.

• Every placement recorded.
• Identities and links reviewed.
• Removal applied in every language.