The verdict
Building a reviews page for a clinic this year I left five reviews off it. Three because there was nothing to read, and two because of who wrote them. Google’s own contribution policy treats reviews written by employees, contractors or anyone with a professional relationship to the business as a conflict of interest, so republishing those on your own site is the last thing you want to do with them.
A reviews page is a republishing job, and republishing means deciding what goes in. That decision is the whole of the editorial work, and most people building these pages never make it consciously, because the plugin takes everything.
On the build I am describing there were a hundred and eleven reviews and a hundred and six went up.
The three with nothing to read
Rating-only reviews. Five stars, no words.
On the profile they count. They contribute to the average and the total, which is exactly what they are for. On a page whose entire value proposition is that a prospective patient can read other patients describing your treatment, a card with no text is a blank space taking up a column.
It is the reading that does the work here, not the tally. BrightLocal’s February 2026 survey of 1,002 US adults found 97% of people read local reviews. A review with no words cannot be read.
Leave them off. They also skew any count you print in the header, which matters more than it sounds, and I have set out why in why your own reviews do not belong in your schema.
The two I removed on principle
One was written by a clinician who works at the practice. One was written by somebody on the marketing side of the account.
Neither was dishonest. Both people genuinely rate the practice. That is not the point.
Google’s policy on user contributions names this directly. Content is prohibited when it is based on a conflict of interest, which includes current or former employment, a contractual or consultory relationship, or other professional or personal affiliations, and the policy classes it as rating manipulation.
So those two should arguably not be on the profile either. That is the client’s call and their relationship with the platform, not mine to action on their behalf. What I do control is whether I take a review I know is conflicted and give it a second life on a page I built. The answer to that one is easy.
The edge case I could not resolve
One review was left by somebody sharing a surname with one of the clinicians. It might be a relative. It might be a coincidence in a town where that surname is common.
I included it and flagged it to the client, because guessing at a family relationship from a surname is not a judgement I am equipped to make and quietly deleting a real patient’s review is worse than the alternative. Somebody at the practice knows the answer in two seconds. That is who should decide.
What happens to everything else
The rules for what stays
- Verbatim, typos included. The moment you tidy them they stop reading as real, and you have started editing testimony. Correcting someone’s spelling in a quotation attributed to them is not a small thing.
- First name and last initial. Enough to attribute, not a republication of a full name on a new domain.
- No invented dates. If the source only shows relative dates, you do not have real ones. Making them up to look thorough is fabricating a detail.
- The source ordering. Do not re-sort to put your favourites first. If a reader cross-checks against the profile, the page should look like what it claims to be.
- A link out, so it can be checked. A reviews page nobody can verify is a testimonials page.
Why the exclusions are the trustworthy part
A page with everything on it looks like an export. A page where somebody has clearly made choices, and where the choices are defensible if asked, reads differently.
It is also the only defence you have if anyone ever questions the page. “We publish every text review from the profile except rating-only ones and anything with a conflict of interest” is a policy you can state in one sentence and stand behind. “We used the plugin” is not.
That page and how it gets built is covered in why a reviews page you own beats a review widget.
The short version
- A hundred and eleven reviews, a hundred and six published. The five exclusions are the editorial work.
- Rating-only reviews come off. Nothing to read, and they skew the count in your header.
- Staff and account reviews come off. Google names employment and contractual relationships as a conflict of interest.
- Ambiguous cases go to the client. Do not guess at family relationships from a surname.
- Verbatim, typos and all. Editing a quotation attributed to someone is not tidying.
- No invented dates, no re-sorting, and link out so it can be checked.
- State the policy in one sentence. That is what makes the page defensible.
If a site should be ranking and it isn’t, that’s the work I do. SEO for chiropractors covers where the effort belongs in a practice, and local SEO treats the profile and the pages behind it as one job.
