Google reviews are often the first thing a customer looks at before calling you. They also count toward your ranking on Google Maps. So many businesses want more of them, faster… and unknowingly use prohibited methods that can get their profile suspended.
What Google prohibits
- Offering an incentive: discount, gift, loyalty points, contest entry.
- Filtering customers: asking only those you expect to be satisfied.
- Buying reviews or having them written by friends, employees or an agency.
- Offering something in return for changing or removing a negative review.
Google can remove your reviews, penalize your profile or suspend it.
A suspended profile disappears from Google Maps, which is often a local business’s main source of calls.
Methods that work (and are allowed)
- Ask at the right moment: right after a job is done, when the customer is happy with the result.
- Send a direct link to the review form by SMS, WhatsApp or email: every click you save increases responses.
- Make the request visible on site: a card or plaque with a QR code or NFC chip at the counter.
- Ask every customer, without exception.
- Reply to every review, positive or negative: Google and future customers can see it.
A website that does this work for you
A custom, Google-optimized brochure website, live in 24h from CHF 690, with no subscription.
Connecting your reviews to your website
Reviews shown on your website reassure visitors at the moment they hesitate. On the websites we build, we can display your Google rating and a few recent reviews, with the right structured data for Google.
Source: Google Maps and Google Business Profile policies for user-contributed content.