How to Get Google Reviews: 12 Legal Methods (2026)

If you want to know how to get Google reviews without breaking any rules, start with the reason most happy customers never write one: nobody asked them, or someone asked a week late without a link. Once the request becomes a normal part of finishing every job, reviews arrive steadily. You never touch what people write or how many stars they give.

Google takes reviews seriously. Its help page on local ranking lists them under “prominence”, saying that more reviews and positive ratings count in a business’s favour. Customers care about recency too. In BrightLocal’s 2026 survey of 1,002 US adults, 74% said they look for reviews written in the last three months. We haven’t found an equivalent UK survey, so treat that figure as a rough guide.

What Google allows and what it bans

You only need one rule before the methods. Under Google Maps policy, a business may ask for reviews that reflect a genuine experience, as long as it offers nothing in return and doesn’t try to influence the rating or the content.

Everything else follows from that:

• Allowed: asking every customer, sending a link, displaying a QR code, sending one reminder, replying to reviews.
• Not allowed: paying for reviews, offering discounts or gifts, asking only happy customers, writing reviews yourself or through staff, pressuring people to review on the spot, or telling them what to write.

The banned practices are covered in detail further down. First, the methods that work.

How to get more Google reviews: 12 legal methods

1. Get your direct review link

Without a direct link, a customer has to find you on Maps, open your profile and hunt for the button. Each extra step is a reason to leave it for later.

You’ll find the link in your Business Profile under Read reviews → Get more reviews. Copy it from there or download the QR code. Google’s help page says review QR codes can currently only be generated in a browser on a computer, not on a phone. We cover the setup step by step in how to create a Google review link and QR code.

One detail people forget: only someone signed in to a Google Account can leave a review. Google lets people create an account with any email address, so they don’t need Gmail.

2. Ask right after a good experience

Timing matters more than wording. The best moment is when the customer has just got what they came for: the car is back on the road, the new windows are in, the client is leaving the salon happy with her hair.

A week later, all they remember is that it went fine, and writing feels like a chore. A month later, they’ve forgotten the technician’s name. I’d send the request the same day, or the next morning at the latest.

3. Ask for Google reviews in person, with a prepared line

Asking face to face works best, but people often fumble it by improvising or apologising. Have one line you say the same way every time.

Example for a garage:

“Glad the car’s sorted. I’ll text you a link to our Google page later today. If you get a minute to say how it went, it really helps us.”

Two things to notice. The request is about their experience, not five stars. And the customer doesn’t have to do anything there and then. Google’s policy says businesses should not require or pressure people to leave reviews while on the premises, and should not ask for specific content. That includes asking customers to mention a particular member of staff, so “say Jane looked after you” doesn’t belong in the script.

4. Send a review request text within a few hours

A link in a text message opens with one tap and doesn’t get buried under newsletters. For trades and garages, SMS is usually the most practical channel.

Example review request message:

“Hi, thanks for bringing your car in today. If you have a minute, we’d be grateful for a Google review: [link]. Hilltop Garage”

Keep it short and signed, with a single link. Leave out discount codes and offers. A discount sitting next to a review request could easily read as an incentive.

5. Add the link to your thank-you email

If you already email customers an invoice, a confirmation or a job summary, add one sentence with the link at the end. Google itself suggests putting the link in thank-you emails.

Email suits businesses where the customer expects to hear from you anyway: consultants, course providers, clinics, estate agents. A subject line like “Thanks for visiting us” works better than one with the word “review” in it, which tends to put people off.

6. Display a QR code where customers wait

A printed QR code at the till, in a clinic waiting room or on the garage counter is one of the options Google lists. It works best where customers have a few minutes and their phone in hand.

A short line is enough, for example “Happy with us? Leave us a Google review.” Mind the difference between a sign and pressure, though. A QR code on the wall is fine. A receptionist standing over the customer until the review is submitted is not.

7. Put the link on everything you hand over

Google names receipts among the places to share your link or QR code. Invoices, handover sheets, guarantee certificates and the back of a business card work just as well.

For tradespeople, paper documents handed over at the end of a job are the obvious spot. A small QR code in the corner with “Review us on Google” bothers nobody, and it stays in the drawer with the invoice.

8. Send the link where you already talk to the customer

If you arrange jobs over WhatsApp, Messenger or website chat, send the link there. Google’s help page mentions adding it at the end of a chat and sharing it by WhatsApp.

The customer already knows you in that conversation, so the message doesn’t arrive from an unknown number.

9. Send one reminder, not five

Some customers read the message, think “later” and forget. One reminder after two or three days is reasonable.

I wouldn’t send a second one. Google’s rules ban pressuring customers, and repeated messages start to feel exactly like that. If someone doesn’t write a review after a reminder, they don’t want to, and that’s fine.

10. Reply to reviews

Replies don’t bring in reviews directly, but they show future customers that someone reads them. Google’s advice is to skip the identical “thank you” for everyone and reply where you can share a helpful update or answer a question, keeping it short.

We suggest replying to every critical review and to every review where the customer described something specific. For negative reviews, Google’s guidance is to protect the reviewer’s privacy, avoid personal attacks, apologise where it’s appropriate and be honest about what you can and can’t do. We go through this in detail in how to respond to negative reviews.

11. Make asking a routine, not a competition

Reviews build up where a business asks consistently, not in a campaign once a quarter. Agree who asks and when: the engineer at handover, the receptionist at payment, or a system that sends it automatically when the job is closed.

One restriction many owners don’t know about: Google bans asking staff to collect a certain number of reviews. A target of “five reviews per technician per month” breaks the rules even if every review is genuine. Track whether the request went out. Keep the number of reviews written out of staff targets.

12. Send an automatic request after every job

Sending texts by hand lasts a few weeks, then gets dropped in the busy season. It’s more reliable to have the request go out on its own when you mark a job as done.

This is how we set it up in Clientee CRM: when a job is completed, an SMS or email with the direct link goes out, one reminder follows a few days later, and you’re notified as soon as a new review comes in. The important part is that every customer gets the Google link. A low score can trigger an alert so you can contact the customer yourself, but it never stops them from posting publicly. The full process is on our Google reviews page.

What’s banned under Google’s policy

These are the practices Google removes content for and can restrict a profile over. Some of them are also illegal in the UK.

Any reward for a review

Google Maps policy bans offering incentives, such as payment, discounts, or free goods and services, in exchange for posting any review, or for editing or removing a negative one. It makes no difference whether the reward depends on five stars. The reward for the review itself is the problem.

That includes “everyone who reviews us goes into a draw for a voucher” and a free coffee for showing a posted review.

Review gating: asking only happy customers

Review gating means first asking the customer something like “How did we do?” and sending them to Google only if they answer positively. Unhappy customers end up at an internal form instead.

Google’s policy states that businesses may not “discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers.” So every customer should get the Google link. You can run an internal survey as well, but it must not decide who gets to leave a public review.

Fake and bought reviews

Google removes content that isn’t based on a genuine experience, including reviews paid for directly or in kind. Packages of “50 reviews for £X” sold online fall into this category.

Writing negative reviews about a competitor to damage their reputation is banned as well.

Reviews from people close to the business

Reviews written under a conflict of interest break the rules. Google lists current or former employment, contractual or consulting relationships, family ties and competitors as examples. So a review from your brother-in-law, your accountant or a former apprentice doesn’t belong on your profile, even if they really did use your services.

Pressure and scripted content

As covered under in-person requests, Google doesn’t want businesses to require or pressure customers to review on the premises, or to ask for specific content. A tablet at reception with staff waiting until the customer submits a review is risky.

What Google can do

According to Google’s Business Profile help, when it finds fake engagement it can remove the reviews and restrict the profile. The examples it gives:

• the profile can’t receive new reviews or ratings for a set period,
• existing reviews and ratings are unpublished for a set period,
• the profile shows customers a warning that fake reviews were removed.

Google says it emails the owner before applying a restriction, and the business can appeal.

What UK law says about fake reviews

On 6 April 2025, the consumer protection provisions of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 came into force. They replaced the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 and added a specific ban on fake reviews. The rules apply to any trader selling goods or services to consumers, so a local garage or salon is covered.

Three points every owner should know:

Fake reviews are banned outright. Schedule 20, paragraph 13 lists as always unfair “submitting, or commissioning another person to submit or write” a fake consumer review. The Act defines a fake review as one that “purports to be, but is not, based on a person’s genuine experience”. Commissioning includes “incentivising by any means”, so buying reviews from an agency is treated the same as writing them yourself.

Hidden incentives are banned too. The same paragraph bans reviews that conceal they were incentivised. The Act only bans hiding the incentive, but Google bans incentives altogether, so for your Google profile the answer stays simple: offer nothing.

How you display reviews on your own website matters. Paragraph 13 also bans publishing reviews “in a misleading way”, and one example in the Act is removing or not publishing negative reviews while publishing positive ones. If your website has a reviews widget or a testimonials page that shows only five-star reviews, review it. The CMA also expects anyone who publishes consumer reviews to take reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent and remove fake ones. Its short guide for businesses mentions a published policy that prohibits fake reviews. This article isn’t legal advice, so have a solicitor check the wording on your own site.

The penalties are real. According to the CMA, it and the courts can now fine traders up to 10% of their worldwide turnover, and businesses may also have to compensate affected consumers. If you also trade in the EU, check the consumer law of each country you sell into, as the rules on reviews differ in detail.

Where to start tomorrow

You don’t need all twelve methods at once. For most small businesses, this order works:

1. Copy your direct review link from your Business Profile and download the QR code.
2. Write one line for asking in person and one text message. Share both with the whole team.
3. Send the link to every customer on the day the job is finished, without picking and choosing.
4. Put the QR code on the counter or in the waiting room, and on your invoices.
5. Once a week, read new reviews and reply to the critical ones and the ones with specific detail.
6. If you show reviews on your website, check that negative ones aren’t filtered out.

When manual sending starts slipping in the busy season, switch to an automatic request after each job. The rules stay the same: every customer gets the same link, and nobody gets anything for a review.