Live Google rating

A business's Google rating is often the most persuasive thing on its site. Baked into a build, a figure like "5.0 from 120 reviews" goes out of date as new reviews come in. The live rating keeps it current on its own.

Add it to a site

Pick Live Google rating under Client add-ons on the Runs page, choose the client and press Start. The star rating and review count then come straight from the business's Google listing and refresh weekly, with nothing for anyone to update by hand.

• It finds the right listing first. If Klaudius can't be sure it has the business's own listing, it stops and asks, because a stranger's reviews on a client's site are worse than no rating at all.
• Every mention updates together. If the site shows the rating in several places, such as the hero and the reviews section, Klaudius wires all of them to the same live figure. If the site showed none, it adds one where it fits.
• It never shows a broken number. If Google is unreachable, the site falls back to the figures it launched with, so a visitor never sees a zero or an invented count.

Before you pitch it

It costs effectively nothing to run. Google is asked for the figure about once a week per site, which stays inside Google's free monthly allowance.

The editor and the live rating don't share the number. On a site with the editor, the rating is either live or edited by the owner, never both. Klaudius asks which you want.

A rebuild resets it. Rebuilding a site puts back the launch figures, so ask Klaudius to add the live rating again afterwards.

A site can also show up to five Google review cards, credited "from Google". These cost a little more per lookup than the rating alone; ask Klaudius if a client wants them.

Read more on the blog: A Google review count that updates itself.