There is no shortage of articles about getting more Google reviews. The trouble is that most of them recommend at least one thing that breaks Google policy, and some recommend something that a federal rule has made enforceable in the United States since October 2024.
This guide keeps the two apart. Every tactic described here as allowed is something Google says in writing that you may do. Everything described as prohibited is quoted from either Google policy or the Federal Trade Commission rule on consumer reviews. We run digital marketing for small businesses, so we have an obvious commercial interest in you reading this, which is exactly why each claim below points at a published source rather than at our own experience. None of it is legal advice.
Why reviews are worth the effort
Google explains local ranking in three words: relevance, distance and prominence. Prominence is the part you can influence, and Google says it is affected by things like links to your website and, explicitly, your review count and review score. That makes reviews one of the few local ranking inputs a business owner can work on directly without touching their website at all.
The conversion side is larger still. BrightLocal surveyed 1,002 US adults for its Local Consumer Review Survey published in February 2026 and found that 97% read reviews for local businesses and 41% always read them when browsing. Star ratings act as a filter before anyone reads a word: 68% of respondents require at least four stars and 31% will only use a business rated 4.5 or higher.
There is a newer reason as well. The same survey found 82% of consumers read AI generated review summaries, and 23% rely on those summaries alone without opening the reviews themselves. Whatever is written about you is increasingly being compressed into a sentence by a machine before a human ever sees it, which is a theme we cover in our guide to getting found in AI search.
The four things you must not do
Start here rather than with the tactics, because these are the mistakes that cost businesses a profile they spent years building.
1. Do not buy reviews, and do not write them
Google prohibits reviews or ratings that have been paid for, directly or in kind, and any contribution not based on a real experience. Since 21 October 2024 this is also a matter of federal law in the United States: the FTC rule on the use of consumer reviews and testimonials prohibits selling or buying fake consumer reviews, and the Commission can seek civil penalties against knowing violators. The standard is actual knowledge, or knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances, that the practice is prohibited.
The market clearly agrees with the regulator. In the BrightLocal survey, 97% of consumers thought businesses should face punishment for fake reviews, and 57% thought they should be banned from the platform outright.
2. Do not offer anything in exchange for a review
This is the rule most often broken by well meaning owners, usually in the form of a prize draw or a discount on the next visit. Google is unambiguous: offering incentives such as free or discounted goods or services in exchange for customers posting reviews, changing reviews or removing negative reviews is treated as fake and misleading content and is strictly prohibited.
Here is the nuance almost every article gets wrong, in one direction or the other. The FTC rule is narrower than Google policy. The FTC states that its rule does not prohibit giving incentives for reviews, as long as there is no express or implied requirement that the review express a particular sentiment. Asking customers to tell you how much they loved their visit in return for a coupon carries that implication and is prohibited; a neutral incentive is not covered by the rule.
That distinction matters for testimonials you collect yourself, but it does not help you on Google. Legal under the federal rule is not the same as allowed on the platform, and the platform is where your reviews live. Treat incentives as off limits for anything posted to Google.
3. Do not ask only the customers you think are happy
Sending a review request only to customers who scored you well, sometimes called review gating, is sold as good practice surprisingly often. The FTC addresses it directly and the answer is more careful than either side usually reports: the rule does not contain a specific prohibition against asking only customers you believe are happy, but the FTC adds that the practice could violate the FTC Act.
What the rule does clearly cover is suppression - misrepresenting that the reviews shown on a site represent all or most of the reviews submitted when reviews have been withheld because they were negative. Threatening a customer to make a review go away is also covered.
The practical version is simple. Send the same request, at the same point in the job, to everyone. It is defensible, it is less work than maintaining two lists, and a profile with a couple of three star reviews and thoughtful replies reads as more credible than an unbroken wall of five stars.
4. Do not have staff, family or your agency write them
Google treats a conflict of interest as a policy violation, and names current or former employment and contractual or consulting relationships as examples. The FTC rule adds a second layer: reviews and testimonials by company insiders, including officers, managers, employees and agents, must clearly and conspicuously disclose the connection, and the disclosure has to be unavoidable rather than hidden behind a link.
On a small local profile a cluster of reviews from people who share your surname or your office is also one of the easiest patterns to spot. It is the highest risk, lowest reward thing on this list.
What you are actually allowed to do
Asking is allowed. Google says so plainly, and tells you how: to leave reviews, you can ask customers to visit a Google link or scan a QR code. Everything below is built on that one sentence.
Get the review link, then put it where the conversation already is
Sign in to your Google Business Profile and use the Ask for reviews option to generate your short link and QR code. Both open the review box directly rather than dropping the customer on your profile to find their own way there, and every step you remove costs you fewer responses.
Then place it where you already talk to customers rather than in a campaign of its own: the job completion email, the invoice footer, your email signature, the SMS you send when work is finished, and a printed QR code at the counter, on the van or on the last page of the handover pack. If you have never claimed or completed your profile, start with our guide to optimizing your Google Business Profile first, because the review link lives inside it.
Ask at the moment the value lands
The best moment is the one where the customer can see what they paid for: the repair works, the project goes live, the order arrives and is what they expected. For service work that is usually the day the job is signed off. For products it is a week or so after delivery, once they have actually used the thing.
Pick two or three of these moments, write them down, and always use the same ones. A review request that arrives at a random point in the relationship reads as a chore; one that arrives when someone is pleased reads as a natural question.
Ask in person, then follow up in writing
A verbal request from the person who did the work, followed by the link in writing within the hour, outperforms either on its own. The verbal ask supplies the motivation and the written link supplies the mechanism. Keep the message short, say why it helps a small business, and ask once. A single polite reminder a week later is reasonable; a third message is not.
Make it somebody specific job
Review programmes rarely fail because the message was wrong. They fail because after three weeks nobody remembers to send it. Assign the task to a named person, attach it to an existing step that already happens every time - the final invoice, the sign off email, the delivery confirmation - and check the count once a month. If your systems can send the request automatically at that step, better still.
Aim for a steady trickle, not a burst
Recency is doing more work than volume. In the BrightLocal data, 74% of consumers look for reviews written in the last three months and 32% want reviews from the last two weeks. A business with forty recent reviews can present better than one with two hundred that stopped arriving in 2023.
That has a practical consequence: a handful of reviews every month, indefinitely, beats thirty in one week and then silence. The steady version also looks nothing like review buying, which tends to arrive in clusters. Set a modest target you can actually sustain - two or three a month is a real target for most small businesses - and keep it running.
Reply to every review, including the good ones
Replies are the cheapest part of this entire subject and the most neglected. BrightLocal found 89% of consumers expect owners to respond to reviews, and 80% say they are more likely to use a business that responds to all of them.
Google adds a useful caution about how: rather than sending an identical thank you to everyone, focus on the reviews where you can share a helpful update or answer a question. Those two pieces of advice fit together better than they first appear. Reply to everything, but let the reply do some work - name the specific job, answer the question the reviewer raised, mention the thing you have since changed. Prospective customers read replies to find out what you are like to deal with when something is not perfect.
When the review is bad
First, assume it stays. Google says only reviews that violate its content policies are eligible for removal, and asks you specifically not to report a review because you disagree with it or dislike it, adding that Google does not get involved in conflicts between businesses and customers. Reporting an honest negative review is time you will not get back.
Reviews that genuinely break policy - spam, off topic content, conflicts of interest, harassment, a review that is clearly about a different business - can be reported from the profile. Evaluation typically takes several days, and there is a one time appeal if your report is rejected.
For everything else, the reply is the product. Answer within a day or two. Acknowledge the specific problem rather than the emotion, avoid arguing about facts in public, give a direct route to put it right, and stop. Something close to: we are sorry the installation ran over - that is on us, and we have changed how we schedule second visits. Please call me on the number below and I will make it right. That reply is written for the next hundred people who read it, not for the reviewer.
One thing to resist: pressuring a customer to take a review down. The FTC rule covers unfounded legal threats, physical threats and intimidation used to prevent or remove a negative review, and a screenshot of that message is worse for you than the review ever was.
A routine you can start this week
- Day 1. Claim and complete your Google Business Profile if it is not already done, then copy your Ask for reviews link and save the QR code.
- Day 2. Write one request message of three or four sentences. No incentive, no mention of stars, no suggestion of what to say. One link.
- Day 3. Decide the single moment in your process when it gets sent, and add it to whatever already happens at that moment.
- Day 4. Reply to every review currently on your profile that has no reply, oldest first.
- Day 5. Ask the last ten customers you were on good terms with. Once each. This is the only batch you should ever send.
- Every month after. Check the count, reply to anything new within two days, and confirm the request is still going out.
That is the entire programme. There is no advanced version, which is why review generation is one of the few parts of local marketing a business can genuinely run without an agency.
Where this fits with everything else
Reviews influence one of the three things Google says drives local ranking, and they influence whether someone who has already found you decides to call. They do not fix a website that loads slowly, a page that does not say what you sell, or a business that is invisible for its main service term. Those are separate jobs, covered in our plain English explanation of how SEO works.
We help clients set up review requests as part of our digital marketing and SEO work. What we do is build the routine, write the message and keep the replies current. What we will not do, for any client, is write reviews, buy them, filter out unhappy customers before asking, or promise a star rating - all of which are either against Google policy, against the FTC rule, or both. If you want a hand setting the routine up, get in touch.
Frequently asked questions
Can I offer a discount in exchange for a Google review?
Not on Google. Google states that offering incentives such as free or discounted goods or services in exchange for posting, changing or removing a review is considered fake and misleading content and is strictly prohibited. The Federal Trade Commission rule is narrower than that - it prohibits compensation conditioned on a particular sentiment rather than incentives outright - but the platform rule is the one that decides whether your reviews survive, so treat incentives as off limits.
Is it against the rules to ask only my happy customers for reviews?
It is riskier than most articles admit. The FTC says its review rule does not contain a specific prohibition against asking only customers you believe are happy, but adds that the practice could still violate the FTC Act. Separately, the rule does prohibit suppressing negative reviews and then presenting the surviving reviews as though they were all of them. The safe approach is to ask every customer with the same message at the same point in the job.
Can my employees or family leave reviews for my business?
Google treats reviews from people with a conflict of interest, including current or former employees and people in a contractual relationship with the business, as a policy violation. The FTC rule adds a second layer for insider reviews by officers, managers, employees and agents, which require a clear and conspicuous disclosure of the connection. A handful of staff reviews is one of the fastest ways to get a profile flagged, and it is not worth the risk.
How do I get a link that takes customers straight to the Google review box?
Sign in to your Google Business Profile and use the Ask for reviews option. Google gives you a short link and a QR code that open the review form directly, and says you can ask customers to visit the link or scan the code. Put that link in your job completion email, your invoice footer, your SMS follow up and your email signature, and print the QR code for your counter or your van.
Can I get a bad Google review removed?
Only if it breaks a Google content policy, such as spam, off topic content, conflicts of interest or harassment. Google says only reviews that violate its policies are eligible for removal, and specifically asks you not to report a review because you disagree with it or dislike it. Evaluation typically takes several days and there is a one time appeal if your report is rejected. For an ordinary unhappy customer, a calm public reply is the better answer.
