How to Add Google Reviews to Google Sites (Free, No Add-On)

Google Sites is the website a lot of small practices, studios, clubs and local services actually run on. It comes with a Google account, it publishes in a click, and it has no reviews block. Your Google reviews sit one tab away on Maps while the site that is supposed to win the booking shows none of them.

Fixing that takes one Embed code block and one line of code. This guide covers the steps, what Google Sites does with your code once you paste it, the one height decision that keeps the reviews from being cut off, and the honest answer on custom domains and SEO.

What You Need First: The Embed Code

The only ingredient is a single embed code, one script tag you paste once. Here is how to get yours:

1. Open the reviews widget builder and search your business name and city. It finds your Google Business Profile and previews your real rating and recent reviews.
2. Pick a layout: carousel, grid, masonry, list, slider, or a compact badge. Pick light or dark to match your theme.
3. Copy the one line of code it gives you. That single script tag is the entire integration.

How to Add the Embed Code Block in Google Sites

With the code copied, the whole job happens in the Google Sites editor. Google's help article on adding content and code to your site lays out the steps, and the two rules in it matter: "JavaScript code must be within <script> tags" and "CSS code must be within <style> tags." The widget code is already a script tag, so it meets the rule as pasted.

1. Open your site in Google Sites and go to the page where the reviews should appear.
2. On the right, click Insert, then Embed.
3. A dialog opens with two tabs, By URL and Embed code. Click Embed code.
4. Paste your one line of widget code into the box and click Next. Google Sites shows a preview of the code running.
5. Click Insert. The block lands on the page, and you can drag it into position and resize it like any other block.
6. Click Publish in the top right. The editor does not update the live site until you publish.

Two things to get right. Paste the code in the Embed code tab, not By URL. The URL tab expects a web address and does nothing with a script. And if the preview in the dialog is blank for a moment, wait a second: the widget fetches your reviews when the script runs, and the preview renders once that finishes.

Google's help page also mentions a second place for code: a Full page embed, added from Pages, then Add, then Full page embed. That turns a whole page over to your code. It is the wrong tool for a reviews widget, which belongs beside your booking button rather than on a page of its own.

What Google Sites Does With Your Code

This is the part the other Google Sites reviews guides skip, and it explains the one problem everyone hits.

Google Sites does not put your code into the page. We read the published HTML of a Google Site on a custom domain and found each Embed code block rendered as an iframe titled "Custom embed."

The frame carries a sandbox attribute and a scrolling="no" attribute, and its source is a Google-hosted page on a googleusercontent.com address. Your pasted code is stored on the block and written into a second frame nested inside the first.

Google's own frame code, which is public, settles the height question. It has a mode where "The frame grows to fit its content," and that mode is switched on only for a kind of embed Google calls a liquid app. A normal Embed code block has it switched off. In the off setting the inner frame gets overflow: auto, which means your code scrolls inside the block instead of making the block taller.

So the block is a box of fixed size. Whatever you drag it to in the editor is the height visitors get, on every page width.

To see what that does to a reviews widget, we rebuilt Google's frame structure locally from its own code and the live markup, loaded the widget inside it at a 900-pixel page width, and measured. Each layout has a natural height, and the block either clears it or it doesn't.

A 600-pixel block holding a carousel left 283 pixels of blank space under the reviews. Too tall is a gap, too short is a scrollbar, and neither fixes itself.

Set the Height: A Size for Each Layout

Given a fixed box, pick the layout first and size the block to it. Three pieces of advice follow from the measurements above:

• Use the carousel or the badge on Google Sites. Both keep a single row no matter how many reviews you have, so one height works for good. From the measured heights, a carousel block of about 350 pixels and a badge block of about 60 pixels leave a small margin at full page width.
• Avoid grid and list unless you cap the count. Both grow with every review. With a free account showing up to 50 reviews, a list runs thousands of pixels tall, and a fixed block turns that into a scrolling window. If you want a list, set the widget's max reviews to three and size the block for three.
• Leave a margin for phones. Cards get taller on a narrow screen because the text wraps more, so a block that just fits on desktop can scroll on mobile. Check the published page on a phone, and if the bottom is cut off, add height.

Two smaller things: reviews with a Read more link expand in place, and the extra lines have nowhere to go but an inner scroll, so the carousel's truncated cards are the friendlier choice. And Google Sites resizes a block with the drag handle at its bottom edge, so a quick drag and a publish is all a height change takes.

Does It Work on Every Google Site, Including a Custom Domain?

Google Sites has no paid tier that gates the Embed code block. The block is in the Insert menu of every site, whether the site publishes to a sites.google.com address or your own domain.

On domains, Google's custom domain help page is plain: "You can use a custom domain for a site published on Google Sites." You connect one under Settings, then Custom domains, then Start setup.

The same page adds three rules: "Only the owner of a site can connect it to a domain," "You can connect up to five custom domains to one site," and "It may take up to 48 hours for changes to your domain to become visible on the Internet." If your site lives in a work or school account, the page says to contact your administrator.

None of that touches the widget. We checked our own records: of the 304 websites that loaded the widget during October 2026, one was a Google Site, and it had been loading reviews across 24 separate days since August. Google's sandbox hides which site it is, even from us, which is a privacy point in Google Sites' favor and a good illustration of how sealed the frame is.

One sharing setting does matter. Google's publishing help explains that a published site is either Restricted or Public. A business site needs Public, or visitors see a sign-in wall rather than your reviews.

Put It on Every Page That Sells

Google Sites has no site-wide code setting. Google's help page describes exactly two homes for code, an Embed block on a page or a Full page embed, so each page that needs reviews gets its own block. That is less convenient than a reusable component, and it is also an opportunity, because each copy can show different reviews.

• Homepage: a carousel under the banner, or a badge beside your main button, so proof sits next to the decision.
• Service pages: the highest-value spot. Put the block near the booking or enquiry button, and with a free account filter it by keyword, so the tutoring page shows tutoring reviews and the summer camp page shows camp reviews.
• Contact and pricing pages: a badge near the form reassures people at the moment second thoughts creep in.

Our guide to where to put reviews on your website so they convert goes page by page if you want the placement logic in full.

Will Google Reviews Help Your Google Site's SEO?

Be precise here, because the widget sales pages are not.

Your Google Business Profile reviews will not earn star ratings in the search results. Google's review snippet documentation says that when the business being reviewed controls the reviews about itself, those reviews are ineligible for the star feature, and it covers reviews added "either directly in their structured data or through an embedded third-party widget." It names Google Business review widgets as its example.

Google Sites adds a second limit. Because the widget runs inside Google's sandboxed frame, the review text is part of a separate document, not your page's HTML.

On WordPress, Squarespace, Webflow and plain HTML the embed code can carry your latest reviews as text in the page itself. Google Sites, like Wix, keeps pasted text inside the frame, so that route is closed, and AI assistants that fetch your page without running scripts see no reviews either way.

The reviews that move your rankings are the ones on your Google Business Profile: their count, their recency, and your replies. The widget's job is to stop a visitor leaving your site to go check. For the full picture across every platform, see the complete guide to putting Google reviews on your website, and for the SEO question in depth, do reviews on your website help SEO gives the honest answer.

Troubleshooting: Google Reviews Not Showing on Google Sites

Nearly every "it's not working" report on Google Sites comes down to one of these:

1. The code went in the By URL tab. That tab expects a web address. Delete the block, insert a new Embed, and use the Embed code tab.
2. The reviews are cut off or scroll inside the block. The block is shorter than the widget. Drag it taller, using the table above as a guide, and publish again.
3. The block is tall and mostly empty. Same cause in reverse. Drag it shorter, or switch to a carousel so one height always fits.
4. You never published. The editor shows the widget, but visitors see the last published version. Click Publish and reload the live page.
5. The site is Restricted. Under Share, set the published site to Public, or only signed-in people you have added can see any of it.
6. The code got truncated. The whole embed is one script tag, so a missing closing bracket kills it. Re-copy it fresh from the widget builder.

If the widget renders but shows only a handful of reviews, that is not a bug. Without a connected account, Google's public API supplies five reviews of its choosing. A free account unlocks your full synced library. For every other cause, the guide to Google reviews not showing on your website walks through ten fixes.

The Bottom Line

Google Sites gives you a site in an afternoon and no way to show the reviews that would make it convert. One Embed code block closes that gap, as long as you treat the block as the fixed box it is.

Key Takeaways:

• Adding Google reviews to Google Sites takes one line of embed code in an Embed code block. No add-on, no monthly fee, no paid tier.
• Google Sites renders embedded code in a sandboxed frame of fixed height that does not grow to fit the reviews. Size the block to the layout, and check it on a phone.
• A carousel at about 350 pixels or a badge at about 60 pixels fits for good. Grid and list grow with every review, so cap the count if you use them.
• A custom domain changes nothing. Google's help page allows up to five per site and says to allow up to 48 hours.
• Your Google Business Profile reviews won't earn stars in search, and on Google Sites the text stays inside Google's frame. Treat the widget as on-page proof, not SEO.

Building on another platform too? We have step-by-step guides for adding Google reviews to WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, Webflow, Framer, and GoDaddy.

Once your reviews are on your site, the next lever is collecting more of them. Start with our guide to getting more Google reviews, and if you'd rather not write the replies yourself, create a free account and each new review arrives in your inbox with a ready-to-send draft.

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