Photo reviews for WooCommerce, and the GPS inside them

Photo reviews are not built into WooCommerce

WooCommerce's product reviews are WordPress comments with a star rating. Customers can write text and pick stars, and that is all. To let them add photos you need an extension (WooCommerce sells one, and there are free plugins on WordPress.org) or an outside review service. Our list of free WooCommerce review plugins compares the free ones.

Photos help: a shopper sees the real colour and size of the product in someone's kitchen rather than in a studio. They also bring something most shop owners do not think about. A photo taken on a phone can carry the place where it was taken, if location is on for the camera, and a product photo is often taken at home.

What WordPress does with the location

We took one test photo, gave it GPS coordinates (the Eiffel Tower, not anyone's home) and an orientation tag, and added it to the media library of our WooCommerce demo store the way an upload does. Then we downloaded every file WordPress produced from the public site and read the metadata.

WordPress rotated the photo upright and generated 8 sizes for the theme and WooCommerce, from a large view to the gallery thumbnail. All 9 files it served still had the coordinates. Anyone who downloads a review photo from such a store and opens it in a metadata viewer can see where it was taken.

Why WordPress keeps it

This is a choice in WordPress's code, not a bug in a plugin. When WordPress creates resized copies with Imagick, it removes metadata it does not need but keeps a list of “protected” profiles, and EXIF is on that list. The same rule applies to a customer's review photo.

// wp-includes/class-wp-image-editor-imagick.php, WordPress 7.1.4
$protected_profiles = array(
    'icc',
    'icm',
    'iptc',
    'exif',   // GPS coordinates live inside EXIF
    'xmp',
);
// every other profile is removed; these five are kept in each resized copy

Review plugins use the same path

We looked inside Customer Reviews for WooCommerce 5.127.0, a free plugin that WordPress.org lists with over 80,000 active installations. Its review form saves photos with media_handle_upload(), the standard WordPress function, so they end up in the media library like our test photo. We found no step in its code that removes EXIF or GPS. We did not test every plugin, so check yours. Upload a photo with location turned on, download the published file, and read it.

# Check a review photo yourself (exiftool is free for macOS, Windows and Linux)
exiftool -GPSPosition -Model photo.jpg

# A cleaned photo prints no GPSPosition line

How to collect photos without the location

The fix has to happen before the photo is stored. Once the file is public, the coordinates are in every copy. A plugin or code that strips EXIF on upload works if it runs on review photos too, not only on images you add in the admin. Ask the plugin's author whether review uploads are cleaned, and test it yourself.

Formgong does it on upload. Before a photo is stored, JPEG, PNG or WebP, the GPS block in its EXIF is blanked. The camera model and orientation stay, so portrait photos still show the right way up. Videos lose their location tags the same way, including the one an iPhone writes into a MOV file. Each photo is also scanned for viruses, and a review with photos waits for your approval in every moderation mode except the automatic AI one, which checks the photos itself.

Photos and video come with every plan, the free one included. The photo and video docs list the limits, and the WooCommerce setup page shows how to add the widget to a store. An optional “Add a photo” email asks customers who left a review without one, a few days later, to add a picture through their edit link. You can start from the Formgong home page.

Tested another review plugin?

If you checked a WooCommerce review plugin and it does or does not keep the location, tell us at support@formgong.com with the plugin version. We will repeat the test and add it here.

What Formgong Reviews includes for free

• Unlimited review sites and reviews. Text, photo, video and voice reviews on Free.
• A widget with no view limit. The review widget, carousel, badge and stars in product lists load as often as your pages do.
• Review emails in your store's name. Sent after each order with your logo and colours, replies to you, no email service to set up; buyers can rate inside Gmail without leaving the email, and get one reminder (how it works).
• Bring your old reviews. Import from Judge.me, Yotpo, Loox, Shopify Product Reviews, WooCommerce, Etsy or a CSV.
• You decide what shows. Approve each review or choose a publishing mode, reply in public or in private, and let shoppers ask the author a question.
• Google. A Merchant Center review feed, and product rating markup through the WordPress plugin.
• Reviews from your form. People who filled in your contact form can get a review request automatically.
• One account for the rest. Contact forms with Telegram and Google Sheets, an AI help chat, and free website templates.