Approving reviews before they publish

A review left through your form does not go straight onto your page. It waits in a queue so you see it first — which matters mostly for spam and for the occasional message that is a support request rather than a review.

The queue is in two places, and both show the same thing: on your dashboard home, and under the Pending tab of Manage Reviews.

Approving one

Each waiting review shows the rating, the text, the customer's name and any photos or video they attached. Two buttons: publish it, or discard it.

Publishing puts it on your page immediately, in the widget on your website, and in the average shown at the top. Any photos the customer attached travel with it — you do not upload them again and they do not get left behind.

Discarding removes the review and everything attached to it. That is not reversible, so it is meant for spam and mistakes rather than for reviews you did not enjoy reading.

Publishing automatically

If reading every four and five star review is not a good use of your morning, set a rating at or above which reviews publish themselves. It is on the Collection screen, it is off until you turn it on, and it works on every plan including Free.

With a threshold of four, a five star review appears on your page without waiting for you, and a three star review waits in the queue first. That leaves the queue holding what you would actually want to read.

A review below your threshold does not wait for ever. If you have not published or discarded it within 3 days of it arriving, it is published too, whatever its rating. The threshold decides when a review goes live, never whether: a page that published its good reviews at once and held the rest indefinitely would be showing a filtered set, which regulators treat as review gating. Those 3 days are yours to read it, publish it yourself, or discard it if it is spam. This applies to reviews left on your form or from your store and to reviews imported from Google, and only while automatic publishing is on — with it off, every review waits for you as before. Kudo publishes these once a day, so a review can go live up to a day after its 3 days are up, and never before.

The 3 days start when a review reaches your queue, or when you turn automatic publishing on, whichever is later. So turning it on never publishes your old waiting reviews the next morning: every review already in the queue gets a full 3 days from the moment you switch it on. Turning automatic publishing off stops the clock, and turning it on again starts a fresh 3 days.

Reviews imported from Google

Imported Google reviews follow the same rule as reviews left on your form. With automatic publishing off, they wait in your queue for you. With it on, those at or above your rating arrive published, and those below it wait in the queue for 3 days and are then published too, unless you publish or discard them first. For an imported review the 3 days are counted from when it reached Kudo, not from the date it was written on Google. You can hide any published review afterwards.

What you cannot do

You cannot edit what a customer wrote. Their words are theirs; you can hide the whole review or publish it, and nothing in between. A tool that let you rewrite reviews would make every review on every page worthless, including the honest ones.

You cannot make the reward for leaving a review depend on the rating, and Kudo does not offer a way to. If your page gives a discount code for a review, everyone who leaves one gets it, whatever they said.

And you should not use the queue to publish only the good ones. Filtering out negative reviews while presenting the rest as your full set is review gating; regulators in several markets treat it as deceptive, and it is also the most reliably self-defeating thing a business can do here — a page of nothing but five stars converts worse than an honest 4.7, because buyers read a perfect average as filtered.

Replying is better than hiding

A negative review with a calm reply underneath it reads as a business that answers. The same review with no reply reads as one that did not notice. Every published review has a reply box on every plan, and on AI Pro Kudo can draft one for you to edit — it does not send anything by itself, and it will not promise a refund or a discount on your behalf.

Frequently asked questions

Where is the queue?
On your dashboard home, and in the Pending tab of Manage Reviews. Both are the same queue, so approving in one clears it from the other.

Why has a review not appeared on my page?
Almost always because it is still waiting for approval. Check the Pending tab. The other possibility is that it was published and then hidden — a hidden review disappears from your page and from your website widget together.

Can I set reviews to publish without me?
Yes. Choose a minimum rating on the Collection screen and reviews at or above it publish themselves. It is off by default and available on every plan.

What happens to reviews below my automatic publishing rating?
They wait in your queue for 3 days so you can read them, publish them yourself, or discard spam. Any you have not published or discarded by then are published too, whatever the rating. With automatic publishing off, nothing is published without you.

Do I have to approve imported Google reviews?
Only if you want to read them first. With automatic publishing on, those at or above your rating arrive published and the rest are published after 3 days in your queue. With it off, they wait for you like any other review.

If I turn on automatic publishing, are my old waiting reviews published straight away?
No. Reviews already in your queue get a full 3 days from the moment you turn it on, so you have time to read them, publish them yourself, or discard spam first.

Can I delete a review I do not like?
You can hide any published review, and discard anything in the queue. What you cannot do is edit it, or advertise a filtered set as your complete reviews.

Does hiding a review remove it from my website widget too?
Yes. A hidden review is hidden everywhere — your page, the widget, and any feed Kudo produces.

Still stuck? Write to support@getkudo.co and tell us which review you are looking for.