Displaying Google Reviews

Steuard can show your Google reviews on the site — a rating lockup with your average, stars, and total count, a wall of review cards, and a "Write a review" link straight to Google — with optional structured data for search engines and AI assistants. Each Google connection is a Review post under Steuard → Reviews; its title is the connection's label.

Before you start #

Steuard's standard review source is Google Places. Before creating anything in Google Cloud, know what it supplies:

• Your overall Google star rating and total review count.
• Up to five reviews selected by Google and ordered by relevance. They are not necessarily the five newest reviews.
• No owner replies, and no sort order — Places reviews always display in the order Google returns them.
• A live Places request when a review widget or the Moderation tab renders. Steuard stores the Place ID and encrypted API key, but it does not store Places review responses.

Google requires a Cloud project with billing enabled. Places API usage is pay-as-you-go, so review Google's current Places API pricing and billing information and consider adding a budget alert in Google Cloud.

The Before you begin panel on the Review post's Connection tab keeps these prerequisites, review limits, cost context, key-storage details, and common error fixes beside the form. Its Open the Google Places setup guide link returns to this article in a new tab.

Create and restrict your Google Places API key #

1. Open Google's Set up the Places API (New) page and sign in to Google Cloud.
2. Select an existing Cloud project for this website, or create a new project.
3. Open Billing and link an active billing account to the project. Billing must be enabled even if your usage remains within a no-charge allowance.
4. Open APIs & Services → Library, search for Places API (New), open that exact result, and click Enable. Do not choose the legacy Places API.
5. Open APIs & Services → Credentials, click Create credentials → API key, and then edit the new key.
6. Ask your hosting provider for the public outbound IP address that PHP or WordPress uses when it connects to places.googleapis.com. This may differ from the IP address in your website's DNS records. If your host uses more than one stable outbound IP address, collect all of them.
7. Set Application restrictions to IP addresses and add the public outbound IP address your web server uses for requests to Google. Set API restrictions to Restrict key, then select Places API (New). Do not use a Websites (HTTP referrers) restriction; Steuard sends these requests from the server.
8. Click Save, then copy the API key. Treat it like a password: do not put it in screenshots or support messages.

Google recommends IP-address restrictions for server-side Places API (New) requests. If your host cannot provide a stable public outbound IP address, ask the host how to secure outbound Google Maps Platform requests before using the key on a production site.

Connect Google Places in Steuard #

1. Go to Steuard → Add New Review. The post title is the connection's label — use the restaurant or location name; it appears in the block editor's connection picker.
2. On the Connection tab, confirm that Source Type is Google Places.
3. Paste the restricted key into Places API key.
4. Under Business, enter the business name and city, click Find your business, and choose the correct name and address.
5. Click Publish (or Update). Steuard runs a live check of the saved key and business, then shows Connected, Needs attention, Not tested, or Incomplete at the top of the box.

The status remains after you reload the page. Connected verifies the saved review credentials and business selection. Places reviews are requested live when the widget, block preview, or Moderation tab renders; they are not prefetched by the daily review task. Drafting a Review post takes that connection off the site.

Steuard encrypts the saved API key using the site's WordPress security keys and salts and does not display it again. Leave the key field blank on later saves to keep the stored value. If the security keys or salts change, re-enter and save every review connection.

Open Fix common Places errors in the Before you begin panel when setup fails:

• HTTP 400 — re-copy the API key, search for the business again, choose the correct result, and save.
• HTTP 403 — turn on billing and Places API (New), then allow the server's public outbound IP in the key restrictions.
• HTTP 429 — check the Places API quota in Google Cloud and try again after the rate limit resets.
• No search results — search with the exact business name plus its city or street address.

Meet the Google Maps publishing requirements #

Steuard's standard Places templates implement Google's current Places API policies and attribution requirements:

• The widget identifies the content as Google Maps in its header and shows any additional data-provider attribution returned by Google.
• Each card uses the supplied reviewer name, avatar, and Google Maps profile link.
• View on Google Maps opens the individual source review. Report review uses Google's supplied reporting link.
• The widget explains Google's relevance ordering and the site's display filters. It also shows relative dates, translated-review notices, and the month and year visited when Google supplies them.
• Author and source URLs are preserved in the individual Review entries when structured data is on.

Do not hide these elements with CSS or remove them from a theme template override. If your theme already contains steuard/reviews/card.php or steuard/reviews/list.php, update that override to preserve all the attribution and disclosure markup before publishing Places reviews.

Google's content-storage rules permit the Place ID to be stored, but not the Places review response. Steuard therefore fetches Places reviews for immediate display, does not put them in its transient or stale-data caches, skips Places during the daily review task, and marks a rendered Places page as non-cacheable. Confirm that any full-page cache, host cache, or CDN honors the response's no-cache instruction.

Before publishing, provide public website terms that state Google Maps use is subject to the Google Maps/Google Earth Additional Terms of Service and a public privacy policy that incorporates the Google Privacy Policy. Google notes that requirements vary for customers with an EEA billing address and that following its implementation guidance does not replace legal advice.

Display options #

The Display tab tunes what shows on the front-end.

1. Section heading is shown above this connection's reviews. It starts as "What the neighborhood says"; clear the field to display no heading.
2. Maximum reviews caps how many of the supplied review cards render. Increasing it cannot retrieve more than Google's five selected reviews.
3. Minimum star rating filters out reviews below the threshold.
4. Google links — show a Write a review button in the header that opens Google's review form for your business. It uses the Place ID chosen on the Connection tab.
5. Structured data adds machine-readable review data to pages that show these reviews. It is off for new connections and does not produce star ratings in Google results. See Do my reviews show star ratings in Google search results?.
6. Display delay holds a new review back for a chosen number of hours before it becomes eligible to appear.

These are saved per connection. A block or shortcode can override maximum reviews, minimum rating, and the Write-a-review link for one placement; structured data and display delay remain connection-wide. See Managing Review Display and Moderation for the full behavior and examples.

The star color and the accent used for review links and the button fallback are site-wide rather than connection-specific. Change them under Steuard → Menu Options → Display → Appearance, where the preview also shows the menu accent and tag colors. See Customizing Menu and Review Appearance.

Moderation #

The Moderation tab lists every review Google supplies. Check Hide to keep one off the site permanently — hidden reviews are removed from the page and from the structured data (when it is on), though your overall star average and count stay as Google reports them. Review Managing Review Display and Moderation before combining moderation with a display delay or placement-specific block settings.

Putting reviews on a page #

Add the Steuard Reviews block to a page for a connection picker, labeled controls, and a live preview. You can also use [steuard_reviews] anywhere WordPress accepts a shortcode.

With no attributes, the shortcode shows the oldest published Review post using the display settings saved on it:

[steuard_reviews]

For a specific connection, open its Review post's Shortcode tab and click Copy shortcode — it gives you [steuard_reviews connection="123"] with that post's ID. Paste the copied shortcode as-is. See the Steuard Reviews Shortcode Reference for every supported attribute and worked examples.

The View the full reviews shortcode reference link beside Copy
shortcode opens that same reference directly in a new tab.

On the page, the section opens with the heading and a rating lockup — your average, stars, and total review count — with the Write-a-review button beside it. Review cards flow into a wall of up to two columns that collapses to a single column on phones, and Google's attribution and ordering disclosure sit below the cards.

Show the rating in text #

To mention the rating anywhere else — a hero line, an About paragraph, or a plain-text file such as llms.txt — use [steuard_rating]. It prints "4.4 out of 5 from 125 Google reviews" from the current review data as plain text, with format, decimals, and fallback attributes. See the Steuard Rating Shortcode Reference.