How to ask for reviews without breaking the rules

What is allowed

You may ask any customer for a review, at any time, through any channel. You may make it easy with a link, a QR code or a text message. You may remind someone once.

What is not

• Offering a discount, entry to a draw, or anything of value in exchange for a review
• Asking only your happy customers while filtering out the unhappy ones ("review gating")
• Writing reviews yourself, or having staff or family write them
• Bulk-requesting from a purchased list

The second one catches people out most. Sending a survey and only forwarding the five-star respondents to Google is against policy, even though it feels like common sense.

When to ask

Immediately after the moment of satisfaction — the job finished, the event over, the delivery installed. Wait a week and the enthusiasm has gone. For event businesses, the day after is far better than the day of.

Answer every review

A reply is not for the person who wrote it. It is for the next person reading, who is deciding whether to call you. That is especially true of negative reviews, where a calm, specific, non-defensive reply frequently does more good than the review did harm.

Volume and recency both count

Forty reviews from three years ago read as a business that peaked. A steady trickle — a handful every month — reads as a business that is busy now, and local search treats it that way too.