How to Add Reviews to Blogger: Gadget or Post, Not Both

Blogger has two places to put a review widget, and they do almost opposite things. A Layout gadget puts it on every page of the site. A post's HTML view puts it inside one article. Both take the same embed code, neither warns you which one you picked, and the mistake only surfaces later, when you notice the reviews are on your one blog post about parking and nowhere else. Sort that out first and the rest is a two-minute job, because Blogger has no plugin system to negotiate with and no code editor to break.

Two Places, and They Do Opposite Things

A Layout gadget is site furniture. It sits in a position your theme defines and appears on every page: home, every post, every archive page. That is what you want for a reviews block, because a reviews block is a property of the business rather than of an article.

A post embed is content. It lives inside one post's body, travels with that post, and appears nowhere else. That is right when the reviews are part of what the article is saying, and wrong when you wanted them on the site.

The reason people get this wrong is that the post editor is where you spend your time. Adding something to a post feels like adding it to the site, and on Blogger it is not. If you are unsure which you want, you want the gadget.

There is one more practical difference. A gadget is edited from Layout, so a writer working on posts cannot delete it by accident. An embed pasted into a post body is one careless paragraph selection away from disappearing.

The HTML/JavaScript Gadget

From the Blogger dashboard, open Layout. You will see your theme's positions laid out as boxes, each with an Add a Gadget link. Click the one where the reviews should sit, choose HTML/JavaScript from the list, paste the widget embed into the content area, and save.

Give it a title or leave the title blank. A blank title renders the gadget with no heading, which is usually what you want for a review widget that already carries its own visual framing.

Save the Layout arrangement afterwards. Blogger's Layout screen has its own save step separate from the gadget dialog, and skipping it is a quiet way to lose the work.

Why Your Theme Decides Where the Gadget Can Go

Because Blogger themes are XML documents that declare their own gadget sections, and the Layout screen only offers the positions your current theme declares. Blogger itself does not define a standard set.

That is why instructions naming a position never match what you see. A minimal theme might expose a sidebar and a footer and nothing else, while a busier one offers slots above the post, below the header, and between the post and the comments. Look at your own Layout screen rather than at a tutorial's.

It also means switching themes can strand a gadget. If the new theme does not declare the position your gadget was in, the gadget stops appearing, and there is no warning. Check Layout after any theme change.

If your theme has no position where the reviews would do any good, the honest answer is that the theme is the constraint, not Blogger. A sidebar-only theme will always put your proof in a sidebar.

Putting Reviews Inside One Post

Open the post, and switch the editor from Compose view to HTML view using the control at the top left of the editor. Paste the embed where it should sit in the body, then switch back or publish.

Pasting into Compose view does not work and fails in a specific, recognisable way: Blogger escapes the markup, so the raw code prints on the published page as visible text. If you have ever seen your embed code appear as a paragraph on a Blogger post, that is what happened.

Reserve this for reviews that belong to the article. A post about a job you did is a good place for reviews about that kind of job. A general reviews block is not article content and belongs in a gadget.

How Do You Build the Widget?

Paste your Google, Facebook or Trustpilot profile URL, preview your real reviews and rating, then pick from over 100 layout styles across slider, marquee, grid, list, masonry and badge families. Colours and fonts adjust, which is worth doing because Blogger themes vary enormously and a default-styled embed can look pasted on.

The rating comes from the profile's own aggregate rather than from the cards on screen, so the number on the page matches the number a visitor finds if they check.

The output is one line of HTML, and Blogger has no plugin system, so this is the whole mechanism. Free plan, unlimited widget views, and nothing to keep compatible with a platform that has changed very little in years.

Which Position Should You Use?

If your theme offers a slot directly below the post body, use it. That is where a reader finishes an article and decides whether to act, and it beats a sidebar for the same reason a footer beats nothing.

A sidebar gadget is the common fallback and it works, but choose a compact layout for it. A three-column grid squeezed into a 300px sidebar looks broken; a vertical list or a rating badge fits the space it has been given.

Avoid putting the same widget in two positions. Blogger makes it easy, because gadgets are just boxes you can add anywhere, and a site showing the same reviews in the sidebar and the footer reads as padding rather than proof.