Overview
The Moderation and display section gives you control over how reviews are published, who appears as the author, and which badges are displayed. You can access these settings by navigating to Reviews → Settings → General → Moderation and display section.
1. Automatically publish reviews
Control which reviews appear on your site immediately and which require manual approval using the Automatically publish reviews setting.
If disabled:
All reviews from verified buyers and guests (if allowed) will remain in a pending/unpublished status.
You must manually approve each review in Growave admin → Reviews → Manage reviews to make it visible on your store.
If enabled:
You must choose a specific star rating threshold to determine publishing behavior:
Option 1: All reviews
Verified buyers: All reviews are published immediately, regardless of the star rating.
Guest users: Reviews are published automatically only after the guest confirms their email via the link sent in the "Unverified review" notification.
Option 2: Minimum star rating
Select a threshold (e.g., 4+ stars) to apply different rules based on the rating.
Reviews meeting the threshold (e.g., 4 and 5 stars):
Verified buyers: Published immediately.
Guest users: Published automatically after email verification.
Reviews below the threshold (e.g., 1 to 3 stars):
Standard rule: Reviews are held in a pending status for up to 14 days (per Shopify's transparency rules).
Customization: You can adjust this hold period between 0–14 days. After this period expires, the reviews are published automatically. You can manually publish or unpublish reviews during the 14-day window. If you unpublish a review before the 14-day period ends, it will not be auto-published again.
Exception for guests: If a guest has not verified their email, their review will remain in pending status and will not auto-publish, even after the 14-day period expires.
2. Show reviews for unpublished, draft, or archived products
By default, if a product is marked as draft, archived, or unpublished in your Shopify admin, any reviews associated with that product are hidden from your storefront.
If you are looking at your Growave Manage Reviews dashboard and see a review has a "Draft" status badge next to the product title, this means the Shopify product it belongs to is currently not live (e.g., it is archived, marked as draft or unpublished).
If you want these reviews to be published and visible in the Reviews widgets on your store, even when the product is no longer available for purchase, enable the Show reviews for unpublished products setting.
Alternative: If you want to move the draft product review to a live, similar product, you can group them using the Group product to share reviews feature.
3. Display reviewer names
Choose how the author's name appears on the Reviews and Q&A widgets. Options include:
Full name (e.g., John Smith)
Shortened last name (e.g., John S.)
Shortened full name (e.g., J.S.)
Anonymous
Allow customers to choose
📘 Note
If you select "Allow customers to choose," a dropdown menu titled "Display name publicly as" will appear in the review and question submission forms, letting the customer choose their preferred format.
4. Review source indicators
Display indicators next to the reviewer’s name in the storefront Reviews widgets to help ensure transparency and legal compliance.
You can choose which indicators to display:
Verified customer purchase: Confirms the reviewer bought the item from your store.
Verified by store owner: Manually verified by the admin.
Imported review: Indicates the review was migrated from another platform.
Incentivized review: Indicates the customer received a reward (points/discount) for writing the review.
By default, all review source indicators are enabled, except for the Incentivized reviews.
5. Require review titles
Enable this setting to make the Title field mandatory on the review form. If disabled, customers can submit a review with only a star rating and body text.
6. Allow review editing for customers
Enable this to let customers update their review Star rating, Text, Title, or Images after submission. This ensures feedback remains accurate if their experience changes.
To receive alerts when a customer updates a review, ensure you have enabled Get notified about reviews in the Review request rules section.
⚠️ Important
As a shop owner, you cannot edit customer reviews from the Growave admin panel. You can only reply to them or manage their visibility.
7. Choose reviews sorting
Set the default order in which reviews appear on your storefront widgets. Options include:
Most relevant
Most recent
Highest rating
Lowest rating
With photos
Most helpful.
8. Review usage consent
Use this setting to collect explicit customer consent for the processing of their personal data, including any text and media (user-generated content) submitted with a review. Enabling this feature helps your store comply with data protection regulations such as GDPR and CCPA.
✅ Tip
To see exactly what customer data is collected during this process, please refer to the Customer experience: Leave a review flow guide.
How to enable Review usage consent
In the Review usage consent section, enable the Require customers to provide consent before posting a review checkbox.
Optionally include a link to your Privacy Policy alongside the consent message.
Enable the Include a Privacy Policy link checkbox.
Enter your Privacy Policy URL in the input field that appears.
📘 Note
The field is required when this option is enabled and must contain a valid URL. When enabled and the URL is provided, a clickable "View Privacy Policy" link will appear next to the consent text.
How it works on the storefront
When enabled, a consent checkbox appears at the bottom of the review submission form before the customer can post their review. The review cannot be submitted without the customer actively checking this box. The checkbox is unchecked by default and reads:
I agree to the processing of my review content and uploaded media. View Privacy Policy (link appears only if enabled)
If you have any questions or need assistance, don't hesitate to contact our support team at [email protected] or use the chat icon in the bottom-right corner of the Growave admin panel. We're here to help! 🤗