Reviews
Asking well, and answering properly.
Reviews are now a gate rather than a bonus. People read them before contacting you, they weight recent ones heavily, and both Google's policies and federal rules constrain how you may collect them. The slow, compliant method is the only one worth using.
How do you get more reviews without breaking platform rules?
Ask everybody, promptly, with a link that takes one tap, and never offer anything in exchange. Asking selectively based on who you expect to be happy is review gating and is prohibited. Offering a discount, a free service or any other incentive for a review breaches Google's content policy and, where the incentive is conditioned on the review being positive, the Federal Trade Commission's rule on consumer reviews.
Timing matters more than wording. The moment the work is finished and the customer is pleased is when people actually leave a review, and a request that arrives a week later converts far worse.
Responding to every review, individually, matters nearly as much as collecting them. BrightLocal's 2026 survey found 89% of consumers expect a response and half view templated replies negatively.
Reviews are a threshold, not a score
Most people are not comparing your 4.7 against a competitor's 4.8. They are checking whether you clear a bar, and if you do, they move on to something else. Understanding that changes where the effort goes.
The bar has two parts: enough reviews to be credible, and recent enough that the business is evidently still operating the way the reviews describe. BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 United States consumers found 47% will not use a business with fewer than twenty reviews, and 74% prioritise reviews from the last three months.
That second figure is the one that changes how the work is run. A business with two hundred reviews from four years ago is in a weaker position than one with thirty from this quarter. Flow beats total.
It is also more robust. A business collecting a handful of reviews a month absorbs the occasional bad one without its average moving. A frozen profile has an average that one angry customer can visibly dent.
What consumers actually do
BrightLocal runs an annual consumer survey. It is a vendor study with a stated method and a base of 1,002 United States adults, so treat it as a well documented sample rather than census data.
SourceLocal Consumer Review Survey, BrightLocal, 2026, base 1,002 US consumers
Twenty reviews is a reasonable floor to aim at rather than a target to stop at, and the recency figure is why this is a permanent process rather than a campaign.
How a compliant review system works
There is a faster way to do this that gets profiles suspended and can carry federal penalties. This is the other way.
Ask everybody, not the people you expect to be happy
Filtering who gets asked based on their likely rating is review gating. Google prohibits it and the Federal Trade Commission's rule covers suppressing negative reviews and misrepresenting that displayed reviews reflect all reviews received. It is also, in practice, unnecessary: businesses that ask everybody usually find the average is higher than they feared.
Ask at the moment of satisfaction
Immediately after the work is finished and the customer is visibly pleased, usually within a day. This single variable does more for review volume than anything else, and a request that arrives a week later converts far worse.
Remove every step you can
A direct link straight to the review form, sent by text as well as email, because a link tapped on a phone converts far better than one requiring a laptop. The ask should take under a minute.
- One link, one tap, no intermediate landing page collecting a rating first
- Sent by the channel the customer already uses with you
- Short, in a human voice, from a person rather than a system
See the remaining steps: How a compliant review system worksHide the remaining steps: How a compliant review system works
Offer nothing in exchange
Google's Maps content policy prohibits content posted because a business offered an incentive such as payment, a discount, or free goods or services, including incentives offered for revising or removing a negative review. The FTC rule covers compensation conditioned on a review's sentiment. No prize draw, no discount, no free upgrade.
Respond to all of them, individually
BrightLocal's 2026 survey found 89% of consumers expect a response, 81% expect it within a week, and 50% view generic templated replies negatively. Write each reply for the next person reading it rather than for the reviewer.
Keep it running
This is a permanent process, not a campaign, because the recency expectation means a burst of reviews decays in value over a quarter. Build it into how the work finishes rather than into a marketing calendar.
We publish review schema only from reviews collected through a first-party process we run. We do not mark up third party ratings as structured data.
What to do about a review you cannot remove
Start with whether it actually breaches policy. Reviews that are not about a genuine experience, that contain prohibited content, or that are posted about the wrong business can be reported and are sometimes removed. A review that is simply negative and genuine stays, and no vendor can remove it.
The reply is written for the next reader, not for the reviewer, who has already decided. Calm, specific, non-defensive, and offering to resolve it away from the public thread. A defensive reply does more damage than the review did.
Read the full breakdown: What to do about a review you cannot removeHide the full breakdown: What to do about a review you cannot remove
In healthcare there is an additional and serious constraint: a public reply must not confirm that the person was a patient. That rules out the natural response, which is to explain what happened. The compliant reply acknowledges the feedback generally and invites the person to make contact directly, and it is worth having that wording agreed in advance rather than written in anger.
Never threaten. Using unfounded legal threats, physical threats or intimidation to get a review removed is specifically prohibited under the Federal Trade Commission's rule, and it is the kind of thing that becomes the story.
The structural answer is volume and recency. One poor review among forty recent good ones reads as an outlier. Among five reviews from two years ago it reads as a pattern.
What is actually prohibited
Several of these are still routinely sold as review services. All of them put your profile and your business at risk.
- Buying reviews, in any form, including from a service that claims they are from real people.
- Offering a discount, a free service, a prize draw entry or anything else in exchange for a review.
- Offering an incentive to revise or remove a negative review, which the Maps content policy addresses explicitly.
- Review gating: asking only customers you expect to be positive, or routing unhappy customers to a private form instead of the public review.
- Staff or owners reviewing their own business, or asking family to, without disclosing the relationship.
See the full checklist: What is actually prohibitedHide the full checklist: What is actually prohibited
- Reviewing competitors negatively, which is both a policy breach and a legal exposure.
- Publishing review schema for reviews you did not collect, or an aggregate rating you cannot substantiate.
- Threatening legal action to get a review removed, which is named in the FTC rule.
The Federal Trade Commission's rule on consumer reviews took effect in October 2024 and carries civil penalties. Beyond the platform risk, this is now a regulatory matter rather than a policy preference.
The rule has teeth
The Federal Trade Commission's rule on the use of consumer reviews and testimonials, 16 CFR Part 465, took effect on 21 October 2024. The penalty amount adjusts annually for inflation, so check the current figure before relying on it.
Source16 CFR Part 465, rule on the use of consumer reviews and testimonials, eCFR
Which is the practical answer to anyone offering to accelerate your review count. The saving is small and the exposure is not.
How to measure review work
New reviews per month, which is the flow number and matters more than the total. A business adding four a month is in a stronger position than one with a large stalled total.
Recency distribution, meaning how many reviews were left in the last ninety days, because that is the window consumers say they weight.
Read the full breakdown: How to measure review workHide the full breakdown: How to measure review work
Response rate and response time, both visible to anybody reading the profile.
Average rating, watched as a trend rather than a target. Chasing a perfect average is what leads to gating, and a genuine profile with a small number of mixed reviews reads as more credible than a uniform five.
And the connection to visibility: Google names prominence as one of three inputs to local ranking, and review signals feed it, which makes this simultaneously conversion and visibility work.
We do not publish a price for this piece of work on its own, because the right scope depends on what already exists. What is published is the bundle pricing: 2,400, 3,600 or 4,800 dollars a month depending on which channels are running. You can read the full breakdown on the pricing page, and you will get an exact number in writing before anything starts.
How this connects to the rest
Review work sits inside reputation and CRM, and it is the piece with the most immediate effect on both enquiries and local visibility.
It feeds local SEO and Google Business Profile management directly, since review signals are part of the prominence input Google publishes.
It overlaps with marketing automation, because the request has to be triggered reliably at the right moment, which is a workflow problem rather than a marketing one.
And it matters for AI visibility, since assistants summarise what people say about you. BrightLocal's 2026 survey found 82% of consumers read AI generated review summaries, which means the substance of your reviews is being read back to prospective customers.
Count how many reviews you received in the last ninety days.
Not your total. The last ninety days. That number, more than any other, tells you where you stand with the people deciding whether to call you.
Straight answers.
Can we offer a discount for a review?
No, and we will decline to run it. Google's Maps content policy prohibits content posted because a business offered an incentive such as payment, a discount or free goods and services.
The Federal Trade Commission's rule also covers compensation conditioned on a review expressing a particular sentiment. The risk lands on your profile and your business.
Can we ask only our happy customers?
No. Filtering who gets asked based on expected sentiment is review gating, and it is prohibited both by platform policy and by the FTC rule on suppressing reviews.
It is also usually unnecessary. Businesses that ask everybody typically find the average is higher than they expected.
Can you remove a bad review?
Only if it violates the platform's policy, for example if it is not about a genuine experience or was posted about the wrong business. Those can be reported and are sometimes removed.
A genuine negative review stays. The productive response is a calm public reply and enough recent positive reviews that it reads as an outlier.
How many reviews do we need?
There is no number that guarantees anything. As a practical benchmark, BrightLocal's 2026 survey found 47% of consumers will not use a business with fewer than twenty, which makes twenty a floor rather than a target.
Beyond that, flow matters more than total, because 74% of the same sample said they prioritise reviews from the last three months.
How do we reply to a review in healthcare?
Without confirming that the person was a patient, which rules out explaining what actually happened. Acknowledge the feedback generally and invite them to make contact directly.
Agreeing that wording in advance is worth doing, because the compliant reply is counterintuitive and nobody writes it well while annoyed.
Should we respond to positive reviews too?
Yes, individually. BrightLocal's 2026 survey found 89% of consumers expect a response and half view generic templated replies negatively.
The reply is for the next person reading the profile, which is why a specific one is worth more than a stock thank you.
Where this comes from.
Primary documentation and published research behind the guidance on this page.
- Incentivized or biased reviews, Google Maps content policy (opens in a new tab)
- Fake engagement, Google Maps content policy (opens in a new tab)
- FTC rule banning fake reviews and testimonials (opens in a new tab)
- Guidelines for representing your business on Google (opens in a new tab)
- How Google improves local ranking results (opens in a new tab)
Talk to the team
A short call, a look at how the business currently shows up, and a straight answer on what we would do first.