A Badge summarises a Google business rating in one block, rather than listing the reviews one by one. It is the compact option when you want social proof without giving up a lot of page.
It needs the same two Google credentials as the full review wall: a Places API key and the location’s Place ID.
For the full settings tour of the Social Reviews widget, see Social Reviews Widget Settings Overview.
Requirement – This widget is a part of The Plus Addons for Elementor Pro, make sure it’s installed & activated to enjoy all its powers.
Before You Start
- Edition: Pro — Social Reviews ships only in The Plus Addons for Elementor Pro. The widget does not exist in the free plugin at all: no widget file, no CSS and no JavaScript, so there is nothing to fall back to.
- Prerequisite: Elementor (free) installed and active.
- Widget to enable: go to The Plus Addons > Widgets, search for Social Reviews and turn its toggle on.
- Prerequisite: a Google Places API key (the Google Cloud project needs billing enabled) and the location’s Place ID.
- Prerequisite: your server must be able to make outbound HTTPS requests. Facebook and Google are called server-side while the page renders, not by the visitor’s browser.
If you do not have the key and the Place ID yet, the steps for both are in How to Add Google Reviews in Elementor?.
Add the badge
- Edit the page with Elementor and drag the Social Reviews widget onto it.
- In Content > Content, set Type to Badge, then pick one of the three Style pictures.
- Set Source to Google.
- Paste your API key into Access Token and the Place ID into Page/Place Id.
- Optionally change the badge title in the Google Review field. It starts as Google Reviews.
Badge Options
The badge’s wording lives in Content > Badge Options.
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Postfix Content | The text after the figure. | Recommended By |
| Prefix Content | The text before it. Style-1 only. | People |
| Show Recommended | Shows the recommendation line. | on |
| Prefix Content Text | The question above the buttons. | Would You Recommend |
| (Single | Multiple) Button | Shows the recommendation buttons. | on |
| First Button / Second Button | Their labels. | YES / NO |
| Show Icon | Shows the source icon. | on |
How It Behaves
- The badge is a single block. Layouts, columns, filters and the load-more options only exist when Type is Reviews.
- It has its own cache setting. The badge’s Extra Options section carries its own Refresh Time, separate from the one shown for reviews. Default 1 day.
- A failed Google call is shown inside the badge. With a key Google rejects, the badge text becomes Recommended By REQUEST_DENIED People and The provided API key is invalid. — Google’s status word is pushed into the middle of your own wording.
Limitations
- A badge that cannot reach its source still draws itself. With a bad Facebook token the badge renders its normal chrome — the avatars and Recommended By People — with a bare 400 in the corner and Something Wrong where the rating belongs. With a bad Google key the provider’s status lands inside the wording, so it reads Recommended By REQUEST_DENIED People. A badge showing a number or Something Wrong means the credential failed.
- Google’s error is passed straight through, with a misleading prefix. A wrong key renders Error No : 200, The provided API key is invalid. and REQUEST_DENIED. The 200 is the HTTP status of a request that succeeded and came back carrying an error — it is not an error code, so do not go looking one up.
- There are two sections called Extra Options. One appears when Type is Reviews and one when it is Badge, and each has its own Refresh Time. Setting one does not set the other.
- Reviews are fetched on your server, and cached. Nothing is requested from the visitor’s browser, so a source that works on one host can fail on another that blocks outbound requests. Refresh Time (default 1 day) decides how often the request is repeated.
- Google needs billing enabled on the project, even inside the free tier.
- The badge field is spelled Page/Place Id. In the Social Reviews repeater the same field is Page/Place ID.
Not verified
So you know exactly what has and has not been checked:
- A wall of real Google reviews. This page was checked without ever entering a real access token, API key or place id, so what the finished Google feed looks like once connected was not observed for this revision. Everything below that does not need a credential was checked on a published page.
- The badge with a real rating in it — the score, the review count, and whether the YES and NO buttons do anything.
- Performance, Save Data and Delete All Transient. The cached path was never exercised — what is written here comes from the panel’s own notes and defaults.
- The Style tab. Only the three content Style presets were rendered; no colour, typography or per-source styling control was exercised.
Troubleshooting
The badge wording has REQUEST_DENIED in the middle of it
The API key was rejected. Check that the key is right, that the Places API is enabled on its project, that billing is on, and that any key restriction allows your server.
The badge shows Error No : 200
200 is the HTTP status of a request that reached Google and came back carrying an error. It is not a code to look up — read the text beside it.
Most of the panel is gone
Expected. Type is Badge, so Review Option, Columns Manage, Filter Option and Load More/Lazy Load are all hidden.
