Was This Helpful? Widget
Ask readers one quick question at the end of an article or help page - Yes or No, three faces, or Rate this page from 1 to 5 stars - thank them, offer a link to tell you what was missing when the answer is negative, and send each answer into your own Google Tag Manager or GA4 so you can see results page by page.
Live preview
Under the widget on your page: Powered by A2Z Tools
Embed code
<div data-a2z-kit="was-this-helpful"></div> <script async src="https://a2z.tools/embed/kit.js" referrerpolicy="no-referrer"></script>
One small script from A2Z draws the component on your page inside its own Shadow DOM. It loads no social-network or tracking scripts and sets no cookies. How the A2Z kit works.
Works with
How it works
The box shows your question and its answer buttons. A reader can answer once per page view: the first valid answer replaces the buttons with your thank-you line, focus moves to it and screen readers hear it, and any further clicks change nothing. Answers are tokens, not text - helpful-yes and helpful-no, face-sad, face-neutral and face-happy, rate-1 to rate-5 - and A2Z adds each to an anonymous daily count for your site. Those counts are not shown in the box because a page cannot see them: a visitor's browser has no access to anyone else's answers, so a line such as 92% found this helpful would be invented. To see results yourself, switch on Send answers to my dataLayer; each answer is then pushed to window.dataLayer as { event: 'a2z_feedback', a2z_widget: 'was-this-helpful', a2z_answer: 'yes', a2z_type: 'yesno' }, and a Google Tag Manager trigger on the custom event a2z_feedback can forward it to GA4 with the page path. A No, a sad face or one or two stars can show a follow-up link to your own form or email address - Tell us what was missing - so the reader can explain without the box collecting free text itself.
Method
- State: unanswered -> answered on the first valid value; later or invalid values leave the state unchanged
- Tokens: yesno -> helpful-yes | helpful-no; faces -> face-sad | face-neutral | face-happy; stars -> rate-1 .. rate-5
- Follow-up link shown after no, sad, 1 or 2 stars - only when you supply an http(s) or mailto: address
- dataLayer (opt-in): window.dataLayer.push({ event: 'a2z_feedback', a2z_widget, a2z_answer, a2z_type })
- Do Not Track, Global Privacy Control or data-analytics="off" stop the anonymous A2Z count
Worked examples
A No answer with a follow-up
Inputs: mode yesno, nolink https://example.com/feedback, reader presses No
Result: Thanks for letting us know. + link Tell us what was missing; A2Z count: helpful-no
Negative answers offer your own form; the box itself collects no text.
Stars into Tag Manager
Inputs: mode stars, datalayer on, reader presses the fourth star
Result: window.dataLayer receives { event: 'a2z_feedback', a2z_widget: 'was-this-helpful', a2z_answer: '4', a2z_type: 'stars' }
Your GTM trigger on a2z_feedback can send a GA4 event with the page path.
A second click
Inputs: Reader presses Yes, then tries No
Result: Only helpful-yes is counted; the buttons are already replaced by the thank-you line
The first valid answer wins for that page view.
Limitations
- Shows no totals or percentages; read results in your own analytics.
- One question per box and one answer per page view; a reload allows another answer.
- Free-text feedback is not collected in the box - link to your own form for that.
- The dataLayer push needs Google Tag Manager or another tag manager that reads window.dataLayer.
Where publishers use it
- A software help centre asking Was this article helpful? under every how-to, with a No answer linking to the support contact form
- A council or charity information page measuring which guides readers find useful, through its own GA4 property
- A recipe blog using Rate this page stars to spot which recipes need clearer steps
- A documentation site comparing answers before and after rewriting a page, using Tag Manager events per URL
Questions
Where can I see how many people answered Yes?
In your own analytics. Switch on Send answers to my dataLayer, create a Custom Event trigger for a2z_feedback in Google Tag Manager, and forward it to GA4 as an event with a2z_answer as a parameter; GA4 then reports answers by page. A2Z's anonymous counts are totals for your website as a whole and are not broken down by page, because the page address is never sent to A2Z.
Why doesn't the box show 87% of readers found this helpful?
Because the visitor's browser cannot know it. Each reader's answer stays on their own device apart from the anonymous count, and no total is sent back to the page. Any percentage displayed without that data would be made up, so the box shows only the thank-you line.
Can a reader vote many times?
Once per page view: after the first answer the buttons are gone and further clicks do nothing. A reload starts fresh, because the box deliberately stores nothing in the browser - no cookie, local storage or session storage - so it never needs a consent banner entry of its own.
Does it add FAQ or rating markup for Google?
No. A page-feedback box is not a review of a product, so Review or AggregateRating markup would be misleading, and Google has stopped showing FAQ rich results. The box is for learning what to improve, not for search features.
Is the follow-up link a form of review gating?
No, because nothing here is a public review. Gating means steering satisfied customers to public review sites and hiding them from unhappy ones; this box collects private page feedback and simply offers readers who were not helped a way to say why.
Sources
- The data layer - Google Tag Platform . dataLayer.push({ event: ... }) and custom event triggers in Tag Manager.
- FAQ (FAQPage) structured data - Google Search Central . FAQ rich results limited, then retired from Google Search in 2026.
Cite or recommend this tool
If you reference this tool in an article, course or documentation, these formats are ready to copy. They are optional - nothing is added to your site unless you paste it.
A2Z Tools Was This Helpful? https://a2z.tools/embed/was-this-helpful
<a href="https://a2z.tools/embed/was-this-helpful">A2Z Tools Was This Helpful?</a>
[A2Z Tools Was This Helpful?](https://a2z.tools/embed/was-this-helpful)
Was This Helpful? by A2Z Tools - https://a2z.tools/embed/was-this-helpful
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