The rules in one paragraph

To ask for reviews for a Google Business Profile, you may invite any customer to describe a genuine experience. You may not offer an incentive, ask only customers you expect to be positive, discourage negative reviews, pressure people to review while they are on your premises, set staff a quota of reviews, or ask for reviews that include particular words. Those limits come straight from Google's contribution policy, and every template below is written to stay inside them.

Source

Google's rules on fake engagement and rating manipulation.

Prohibited and restricted content: Maps user contributed content policy (Google)

When to ask

Ask once the experience is complete and the customer has had a chance to judge it, but before it fades. For most businesses that means a single message within a day.

  • Retail and jewellery: with the digital invoice or a follow-up message the same day. For made-to-order or altered pieces, ask after collection, not at the order counter.
  • Restaurants: on the bill or table card for dine-in; in the delivery confirmation for orders.
  • Hotels: in the checkout email, not at check-in.
  • Service and repair: when the job is marked complete.
  • App and online orders: after delivery, not after payment.
One reminder at most

If you send a reminder, send it once, to everyone who has not reviewed, a few days later. Repeated messages start to feel like pressure.

Message templates

Each template thanks the customer, asks for an honest review and gives one link to the right store's review form. Replace the bracketed parts. None suggests a rating, a word to use, or a reward.

Hi [name], thank you for visiting [brand], [store area] today. If you have a minute, we'd value an honest review of your visit on Google: [link]. It helps us and other customers. Thank you!
WhatsApp or SMS
Subject: How was your visit to [store]? Thank you for shopping with us at [store]. We read every review and use them to improve. Would you share an honest review on Google? [Leave a review]. Thank you, the [store] team
Email after purchase
Thank you for staying with us. If you'd like to tell other travellers about your stay, you can leave an honest review on Google here: [link]. We read every one.
Hotel checkout email
Tell us how we did. Scan to review [store] on Google.
Printed table card or counter stand, with the QR code

Avoid phrases such as "if you loved your visit, please leave us five stars" or "mention our friendly staff". Both try to influence the rating or the content, which Google's policy prohibits.

Asking in person

Staff can tell customers that reviews help and point to the QR code. What they should not do is ask the customer to post before leaving, hand them a phone, or watch them write it. Google's policy names requiring or pressuring customers to review on the premises as rating manipulation.

  • Good: "If you have time later, there's a QR code on your receipt to review us on Google."
  • Not allowed: "Can you leave us a five-star review now? It's for my target."
  • Not allowed: offering a dessert, voucher or loyalty points to anyone who shows a posted review.

Why you should not filter who you ask

A common pattern is to send a satisfaction survey first and pass only happy respondents to Google, while unhappy ones go to a private form. This is review gating. Google's policy forbids selectively soliciting positive reviews, and the practice also leaves you with a misleadingly rosy public profile and fewer chances to fix real problems in public.

You can still run a private survey. Send the Google request to everyone regardless of their survey answer, and treat the survey as a separate channel.

Review gating

Why review gating breaks Google's policy and what to do instead.

Asking in harder situations

Most requests are routine. A few situations need more care, because they are exactly where a well-meant request can cross Google's rules.

  • After a complaint was resolved. You can send the same review request you send everyone. Do not make a refund, replacement or gesture conditional on a review, and do not ask the customer to change an earlier review; Google's policy names incentives for revising or removing a negative review as fake engagement.
  • Regular customers. Ask once, not on every visit. Loyal customers who review every week start to look like a pattern.
  • Big events and sales. A festive sale can bring thousands of customers through in days. Keep asking the normal way rather than running a separate push; a burst of reviews is something Google's systems check.
  • Staff and family. Do not ask them to review the store. Google treats reviews based on current or former employment and other close relationships as conflicts of interest.
  • Corporate and bulk buyers. Ask the person who actually experienced the service, not a purchasing contact who never visited.
Source

How Google's moderation looks at bursts of reviews.

How reviews on Google Maps work (Google, 2 February 2022)

Measure what changes

Track new reviews per store per month before and after you start asking. A sudden fall in one store's volume usually points to a broken link, a printer that stopped adding the QR code or a message template that was switched off. Then read what the new reviews say. A higher volume of reviews gives you a much clearer picture of recurring issues at each store.

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Doing this with Falcon

Falcon reads the public Google Maps reviews for every one of your stores and shows volume, sentiment and themes per store and month, so you can see where asking is working and what customers are saying once they do. Each finding links to the reviews behind it.