How to get more Google reviews on your Business Profile, within Google's rules

What Google allows, and what it forbids

For a Google Business Profile, how to get reviews is mostly a question of asking well and asking everyone. Google's contribution policy explicitly allows merchants to solicit or encourage reviews that represent a genuine experience, as long as they do not offer incentives or try to influence the rating or the content.

The same policy lists what merchants must not do. In Google's terms:

• Offer incentives, such as payment, discounts, free goods or services, in exchange for posting a review, revising one, or removing a negative review.
• Discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers.
• Require or pressure customers to leave ratings or write reviews while they are on the premises.
• Have staff solicit a set number of reviews, or solicit reviews that include specific content.
• Post content based on a conflict of interest, which Google says may include current or former employment.

Step 1: get your review link and QR code

Each verified Business Profile has its own review link and QR code. In Business Profile, open your reviews and choose the option to get more reviews. From there you can copy the link or save the QR code; on a computer, right-click the code and choose "Save image as". Google notes that review QR codes can currently be generated only in a computer browser, not on a phone.

Use the link for the specific store the customer visited. A national brand with one generic link sends every review to one profile, which helps nobody.

Step 2: ask at the moment the experience ends

Google suggests sharing the link on receipts, in thank-you emails, at the end of a chat conversation, and printed in your store, and adds that requests can go by email, WhatsApp message or Facebook post. In practice the best moment is shortly after the experience is complete, while it is fresh but after any problem has had a chance to surface.

• Retail and jewellery: on the printed and digital invoice, and in the post-purchase WhatsApp or SMS message, with the specific store's link.
• Restaurants and QSR: on the bill or delivery receipt, and on a table card with the QR code, without staff asking diners to post before they leave.
• Hotels: in the checkout email, after the stay has ended.
• Services and repairs: in the message that confirms the job is complete.

Send the same request to every customer in that channel. Do not first ask "how was your visit?" and send the review link only to the people who answered positively; that is selective solicitation, often called review gating.

Step 3: make it easy, then get out of the way

• One tap. Link directly to the review form, not to your website or your profile's home page.
• One request, at most one reminder. Repeated nudges feel like pressure and add little.
• Plain wording. Ask for an honest review of their visit; do not suggest a star rating or words to include.
• Working devices. Google notes that customers on older phones or older versions of Google Maps can have trouble posting, and suggests they update the Maps app.

Step 4: run it across many stores

For a multi-location brand, getting reviews is an operations process, not a campaign. Three things make it work.

1. A link per store, held centrally. Keep a list of every store with its profile and review link, so receipts, messages and printed cards always use the right one.
2. The same request everywhere. Put the request in the systems that already talk to customers, such as billing, CRM and order notifications, so it does not depend on each store's enthusiasm.
3. Monthly volume per store. Track new reviews per store per month. A store whose volume drops to zero usually has a broken link or a process that stopped, not happier customers.

In India, the same principle runs through IS 19000:2022, the Bureau of Indian Standards' standard on online consumer reviews, launched by the Department of Consumer Affairs in November 2022. It sets principles of integrity, accuracy and transparency for collecting, moderating and publishing reviews. It is voluntary for now; the government has said that if it is made mandatory, violations may be treated as an unfair trade practice.

Avoid staff incentives tied to review counts. Google's policy names staff soliciting a set number of reviews as a violation, and targets push people towards exactly the selective asking the rules forbid.

Step 5: use what the new reviews say

More reviews are only half the value. Each one is a free, unprompted description of what a customer noticed. When review volume rises across your stores, you have enough text to see which issues repeat, where they cluster and whether they are getting better.

What happens if you break the rules

Google says it may remove reviews that violate its fake engagement policy and restrict the profile. Its help centre describes restrictions such as preventing new reviews or ratings for a set period, unpublishing existing reviews for a set period, and showing a warning that tells consumers fake reviews were removed. Google notifies owners by email before applying a restriction, and the decision can be appealed.

Doing this with Falcon

Falcon reads the public Google Maps reviews for each of your stores, so as volume grows you can see it per store and month, and see what the new reviews are about. Every review is classified into themes, sub-themes and issues with its sentiment, and every number opens the reviews behind it.