Google reviews vs testimonials: why you want both

There's a guy in Rockford I know who has two hundred and forty Google reviews. Four point nine stars. Twenty years of furnace work behind it, and every one of those reviews earned honestly.

His website is one page from 2011 with a phone number on it.

And there's the other version of the same guy, the one with the sharp new site full of glowing quotes, who doesn't come up when you search "furnace repair" plus the name of his own town.

Both of them are leaving money on the table, and for opposite reasons.

They are not the same tool

A Google review and a testimonial on your website get confused constantly, including by people selling software for one or the other. They do different jobs.

A Google review gets you found. It feeds the map pack, the three businesses that show up above everything else when somebody searches your trade and your town. Nothing in local business is worth more than those three slots, and review count and rating are a large part of who lands there. You don't control the words. You can't take one down. That lack of control is exactly why strangers believe them.

A testimonial on your site closes. Nobody finds your website by searching for testimonials. They're already there, mid-decision, reading your prices and wondering if you're going to show up when you said. A testimonial sitting right next to that doubt is what settles it. You choose what appears and where it goes, which is precisely why it carries less weight with a stranger and more weight at the moment of deciding.

One gets you found and the other convinces, and a business running only one of them is running half a business.

The mistake almost everybody makes

Almost everybody picks one.

Usually it goes: somebody reads that Google reviews matter for local search (true), so every ask goes to Google, and the website sits there with a stock photo and no proof on it. Visitor lands, reads the price, has the doubt, finds nothing that answers it, closes the tab. That visitor was already sold enough to click. Losing them at the last step is the most expensive kind of losing.

Or it goes the other way. Beautiful site, wall of quotes, and the business is on page four for its own trade because there are eleven Google reviews and the newest one is from 2023.

Do not ask one client for both

This is the practical bit, and the part I see done wrong most often.

Asking the same client for a Google review and a website testimonial in the same breath is asking for two favors. People will do one favor happily. Two starts to feel like a job, and the usual result is that they mean to do both, do neither, and feel a little guilty about it for a week.

So split them. Not evenly, and not at random. Ask based on the client.

Send to Google the client who is quick with their phone, who already left you a thumbs up over text, who mentioned they found you on Google in the first place. That last one especially. Somebody who arrived by search understands search, and they'll leave a review in ninety seconds.

Ask for a testimonial the client whose story is good. The one where the job went sideways in an interesting way and you handled it. The one who told you at the door exactly why they'd been putting the work off. Google reviews are short by nature. A written testimonial has room for the detail that persuades somebody, and you want your best story somewhere you control the placement.

If you truly want both from one person, get them a month apart, and lead with Google.

Can you just copy the Google reviews onto your site?

You can, and it's better than an empty page. Attribute them plainly, say where they came from, and don't edit the words.

But understand what you're putting up. Google reviews run short and they run generic, because the box appears when somebody is standing in a parking lot with one thumb free. "Great service, on time, would use again." As a review it's fine. As a testimonial it's weak, and forty of them stacked up on a page read like wallpaper.

The stuff that changes minds is what somebody writes when you ask them a real question, like what had gone wrong the morning they called, or what they'd been dreading before you showed up. You are not getting that out of the Google review box, and there's no point copying over what isn't there.

The order I'd do it in

If you're starting from nothing, and most people reading this are:

1. Claim your Google Business Profile. Free. Takes an afternoon. If you haven't done this, nothing else on this list matters yet.
2. Get to ten Google reviews. Ten is roughly where a business stops looking brand new. Ask the last ten clients you're on good terms with.
3. Put three real testimonials on your website, next to the price and next to the contact form. Three that name a real problem outwork a page of "great service".
4. Then keep both going, slowly, forever. One ask a week is plenty. It compounds and it doesn't feel like a campaign.

What this looks like a year out

The Rockford furnace guy, if he'd done both, would come up first when the heat quits in February and have a website that closes the caller who was also getting a quote from two other outfits.

Google reviews decide whether the phone rings. What's on your website decides what happens after it does.

The second half is the one Exalted handles: your client answers a real question, you approve it, and it lands on your site without you touching the website. It doesn't care whether you're a plumber, an HVAC tech or a bookkeeper. Google's half you do yourself, and you should.