Reviews and testimonials: Crawl Audit check 121

Short answer: real reviews near your call to action help people decide. Fake or cherry-picked ones are now illegal in the UK and the US. Check 121 warns when it can't find a reviews or testimonials section on the page. Only add reviews you can trace back to a real customer.

What Crawl Audit checks

• Pass: an element whose class name contains "review", "testimonial", "rating" or "stars".
• Warning: none found.

It's a markup test, not a judgement on the reviews themselves. A testimonial in a plain paragraph won't be seen, and a widget class called "rating" passes even if it's empty.

What the rules say

• UK: since 6 April 2025, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 bans submitting or commissioning "a fake consumer review", or one that "conceals the fact it has been incentivised", and bans "Publishing consumer reviews, or consumer review information, in a misleading way". That includes "giving greater prominence to positive consumer reviews over negative ones".
• The CMA's guide for businesses: "You should have a published policy that clearly prohibits fake reviews."
• The UK advertising code (CAP 3.47): you must "hold documentary evidence that a testimonial or endorsement used in a marketing communication is genuine" and hold the giver's contact details.
• US: the FTC's rule on reviews and testimonials took effect on 21 October 2024. The FTC: "A business that puts testimonials on its own website is disseminating them and is not merely "hosting" them."

Stars in Google

Review markup on your own site won't earn star ratings in search for your business. Google: if "the entity that's being reviewed controls the reviews about itself", pages with LocalBusiness or Organization markup "are ineligible for star review feature", including reviews shown through an embedded widget. See check 14.

Doing it properly

• Use real reviews, with a name, role or company the customer agreed to show.
• Keep the source: the email, the Google review, the signed note.
• Show a fair mix, not only five-star ones, and don't edit their meaning.
• Say if a review was incentivised, for example with a discount.

This is a summary, not legal advice.

Sources

• legislation.gov.uk, Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, Schedule 20; CMA, Fake reviews guidance (4 April 2025), checked 6 October 2026.
• ASA, CAP Code section 3; FTC, Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule: Q&A.
• Google Search Central, Review snippet (updated 8 September 2026).