Field Notes

How to Get More Google Reviews — Without Breaking the FTC's Rules (or Google's)

Local Titan · Field Notes · August 2026 · 9-minute read

There are two ways to grow a review profile. The slow, boring, legal way — ask every customer, at the right moment, with a direct link — and the fast way, which since October 2024 can put you on the wrong end of a federal rule with civil penalties attached. This is the playbook for the first way. It works, it compounds, and nobody can take it away from you.

Why reviews now count twice

Reviews have always mattered for the map pack — the three local results Google shows for "plumber near me" searches. This isn't speculation: Google's own local ranking documentation says that review count and review score factor into local search ranking, alongside relevance, distance, and prominence.

What's newer is the second audience. When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, or another AI assistant to recommend a dentist or an HVAC company, those systems lean on the same public signals a human researcher would: how a business is described across the web, and what its review profile looks like — volume, recency, rating, and what reviewers actually say in the text. Nobody outside those companies knows the exact weighting — but ask any of these assistants for local recommendations and a pattern emerges: businesses with deep, recent, specific reviews tend to show up in AI answers far more consistently than businesses with a handful of stale ones. A review that says "Marcus rewired our 1960s panel in a day and left the garage cleaner than he found it" is machine-readable evidence of what you do and where you do it. Fifty of those is a moat.

So the incentive to cut corners has never been higher. Which is exactly why the rules got teeth.

The legal line: the FTC's 2024 rule

In August 2024, the FTC finalized its Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials (16 CFR Part 465), effective October 2024. Fake reviews were already illegal under general deception law; the rule made specific practices explicitly unlawful and — this is the part that changed behavior — let the FTC seek civil penalties per violation against knowing violators. Among other things, the rule prohibits:

• Buying or selling fake reviews — reviews from people who don't exist (including AI-generated reviewers), didn't use the product or service, or misrepresent their experience. Writing them, buying them, and knowingly selling or disseminating them are all covered.
• Buying reviews conditioned on sentiment — paying or otherwise compensating someone for a review that's required to be positive (or negative). Note the nuance: the FTC rule targets sentiment-conditioned incentives; Google's policy, covered below, is stricter and bans incentives for reviews entirely.
• Undisclosed insider reviews — reviews or testimonials by officers, managers, or employees (or their relatives, when solicited by the insider) that don't clearly disclose the relationship.
• Review suppression — using unfounded legal threats, physical threats, or intimidation to get negative reviews taken down or prevent them from being posted, and misrepresenting that the displayed reviews are all of the reviews when negative ones have been suppressed.
• Fake engagement signals — buying or selling fake followers, views, and similar indicators of influence.

The penalties are not theoretical. The FTC's maximum civil penalty is currently more than $50,000 per violation, adjusted annually for inflation — and a campaign of fake reviews is not one violation. If a vendor pitches you "guaranteed 5-star reviews," they are pitching you federal liability. Forward the email to the trash.

Google's lines (stricter than the law in places)

Google enforces its own contributed-content policies and its guidance for businesses asking for reviews. The penalty here isn't a fine — it's removed reviews, filtered future reviews, or a suspended Business Profile, which for a local business can be worse. The lines that trip up honest operators:

• No review gating. You can't pre-screen customers — "How was your visit?" then routing happy customers to Google and unhappy ones to a private feedback form. Google's policy prohibits selectively soliciting positive reviews or discouraging negative ones. Ask everyone, the same way.
• No incentives. No discounts, gift cards, raffle entries, or free add-ons in exchange for a review — regardless of what the review says. This is where Google is stricter than the FTC.
• No review kiosks or stations. Don't collect reviews on a tablet at your front desk. Batches of reviews from one device, one IP, or one location look like manipulation to Google's filters and tend to get removed — including the legitimate ones.
• No insiders. Employees, owners, and family members reviewing the business is a conflict of interest under Google's policy. One well-meaning review from your office manager can cast doubt on your whole profile.

The compliant playbook that actually works

1. Time the ask to peak satisfaction

The best moment to ask is when the value is most vivid: the AC just started blowing cold, the crown just got seated, the invoice came in under the estimate. Not three days later in a batch email — the gratitude has a half-life. Build the ask into the last five minutes of the job.

2. The person who did the work makes the ask

A request from the technician, hygienist, or stylist who just helped the customer is a personal favor to someone they now know by name. An automated email from "noreply@" is a task. Both are allowed; one gets acted on far more often. Train the ask like you'd train any other closing step, and put the person's first name in the follow-up text so the customer connects the two.

3. Use the exact words

Vague asks ("leave us a review sometime!") die in the parking lot. Specific, honest, low-pressure asks convert. Steal these:

Notice what's in every script: "honest" and "whatever you want to say." That's not decoration — it's what keeps the ask on the right side of both rulebooks. And notice what's absent: any mention of five stars, and any reward.

4. Send the direct link, not directions

"Search for us on Google and click reviews" loses most people. Google Business Profile gives every verified business a direct link that opens the review form in one tap. Sign in to your profile, look for "Ask for reviews" (in the profile menu, or at business.google.com), and copy the short share link. Save it as a text-message shortcut on every phone that talks to customers. This one change typically matters more than anything else in this article.

5. Make it a process, not a campaign

A review "blitz" — 30 reviews in two weeks after two years of silence — looks unnatural to both filters and humans, and it decays. A process — every completed job triggers the same ask, every week, forever — produces the steady recency that both the map pack and AI assistants appear to reward. Put it in the job-close checklist next to "collect payment." Measure asks made, not just reviews received; the reviews follow the asks.

Handling the negative ones

You will get negative reviews. A profile with nothing but perfect scores reads as curated — to shoppers and, increasingly, to the systems summarizing you. What matters is the response, because the response is written for the next thousand readers, not the reviewer.

When you can flag a review for removal: it violates Google's content policies — spam or duplicate posts, reviews of the wrong business, off-topic rants (politics, someone else's dispute), harassment or hate speech, conflicts of interest (a competitor or ex-employee), or content about an experience that plainly never happened. Flag it from the review itself in your profile, cite the specific policy, and be patient; escalation is possible but slow.

When you can't: the review is real, unflattering, and unfair-feeling. "They're exaggerating" is not a policy violation. And remember the FTC line here — pressuring a reviewer with legal threats to delete a truthful negative review is exactly the review-suppression conduct the 2024 rule targets. Respond well, fix the process, and let your volume of good reviews do the arguing.

Medical and dental practices: one more line you cannot cross

If you're covered by HIPAA, a review response can be a privacy breach. Even confirming that the reviewer is a patient — "we're sorry your visit Tuesday ran long" — discloses protected health information, because the reviewer's own post doesn't waive your obligations. Federal regulators have levied fines against dental practices for exactly this: replying to online reviews with patient details. Use a fixed, generic response for every review, positive or negative: "We take feedback seriously, but privacy laws prevent us from discussing any individual's care here. Please contact our office directly at [number]." Then handle it offline.

The do / don't table

The checklist

1. Get your direct review link from Google Business Profile ("Ask for reviews") and save it on every customer-facing phone.
2. Add the verbal ask to your job-completion routine and train it with the exact script.
3. Set up the same-day text and email follow-up, naming the person who did the work.
4. Remove anything from your funnel that filters who gets asked — everyone gets the same ask.
5. Kill any incentive, contest, or kiosk tied to reviews. Today.
6. Check that no employees or relatives have reviewed the profile; ask them to remove those.
7. Write your standard negative-review response (and the HIPAA-safe version if applicable) before you need it.
8. Review the profile weekly: respond to new reviews, flag true violations, count asks vs. reviews.

None of this is clever. That's the point. The businesses winning the map pack — and the AI recommendations — in 2026 are mostly the ones that ask everyone, every time, and never gave a regulator or a review filter a reason to look twice.