How to Get More Google Reviews

When someone searches for a business like yours nearby, Google shows a map of businesses with their stars and review count before any website.

Google says review count and rating count toward prominence, one of the three things its local results are mainly based on (Google Business Profile Help, "Tips to improve your local ranking on Google").

And once someone finds you, reviews do the selling: customers read what others said about showing up on time, the price and how problems were handled, and a business with recent reviews and replies from the owner looks active and trustworthy.

In your Google Business Profile, choose "Ask for reviews" (it may say "Get more reviews") and copy the short link Google gives you. It opens the review box for your business directly, so the customer doesn't have to search for you.

Save it in your phone's text shortcuts and put it in your email signature, on your invoices and on a small card with a QR code you can leave after a job.

Reviews come from a routine, not a campaign. Decide who asks (the tech who finishes the job, or the office when the invoice goes out), and make it the last step of every job.

Ask every customer, in the language you work with them in, so the request reads as easily as the job went. Check once a week how many reviews came in, and talk with the team about the ones that mention them by name.

Google lets you reply to reviews from your Business Profile, and every reply shows under the review for everyone to see. For a good review, thank them by name and mention the job in a sentence or two.

For a bad review, stay calm: apologize for the experience, state the facts without arguing, and offer to make it right with a phone number or email. Future customers read the reply as much as the complaint. Answer the old reviews nobody replied to, as well.

You can't remove a real review because it's negative. Reply, fix the problem if there is one, and sometimes the customer updates their review themselves.

If a review breaks Google's rules, like spam, a review from someone who was never a customer or one with hateful or off-topic content, you can report it from your Business Profile and Google decides whether to take it down.

The best answer to one bad review is a steady stream of good ones.

Some shortcuts can get reviews removed or your profile restricted. Google's policies prohibit asking only the customers you expect to be happy (review gating), offering a discount, gift or anything else in exchange for a review, posting reviews for your own business and having employees or family review you.

In the U.S., the FTC's rule on consumer reviews and testimonials, in effect since October 2024, also bans fake reviews, paying for reviews that have to be positive or negative, and suppressing negative ones, with penalties for each violation.

Real reviews from real customers are the only kind worth having.

One more note: Yelp's rules are different. Yelp asks businesses not to request reviews from customers at all, so put your effort into Google and let Yelp reviews come on their own.

If you'd rather it happen on its own, we do review management for small businesses: every customer is asked by text and email when the job is done, in English or Spanish, and nobody is ever left out of the asking. The free 2-minute assessment works out your price.