How to Get More Google Reviews
Reviews often do more work than a website. Someone searching for a supplier sees three results on a map with a star rating beside each. The one with 47 reviews at 4.8 gets the call. The one with 3 reviews doesn't, even if they're better at the job.
Most businesses have a handful of reviews and no system for getting more. Here's how to fix that.
First, claim your listing
None of this works without a Google Business Profile. Search your business name — if a panel appears on the right with a "Claim this business" link, Google has already created a listing for you and you need to take control of it.
Claiming is free. Google verifies you're the owner, usually by postcard, phone or video. Once it's yours you can add your hours, services, area, photos, and start collecting reviews.
If you have more than one location, each needs its own listing, and each collects its own reviews. Google won't pool them. A branch that's been open two years with no reviews is invisible even if head office has forty.
Get your review link
Google gives every business a direct link that opens the review box with the stars ready to click.
In your Google Business Profile, look for Ask for reviews or Get more reviews. It'll give you a short link. Copy it and keep it where anyone who needs it can find it — a shared note, your CRM, a saved text template.
That link is the whole system. Everything below is just ways of putting it in front of people.
The single most important thing
Ask when the customer is happiest.
Not a week later. Not in a quarterly newsletter. At the moment they've said "that's great, thanks a million" — the sign-off call, the handover, the day the job finished properly.
That's when they mean it, and it's when they'll actually do it. An hour later they're back at work and it's gone out of their head.
If someone says something nice, the reply is: "Would you mind putting that on Google? It really helps us."
Most people say yes. Very few follow through unless you make it easy in the next thirty seconds.
How to make it easy
Send the link while you're still talking to them. "Grand, I'll send you the link now." Then send it. Ten seconds, and by far the most effective method there is.
Put a QR code on your invoices, your vans, your counter, your receipts. Free generators are everywhere. Point it at your review link.
Add it to your email signature — every signature in the company, not just yours. One line: "Happy with the work? A Google review means a lot to us."
Put it on your website. A button on your contact page or in your footer.
Send a follow-up the same day the job completes. "Thanks again for the business. If you have a minute, a Google review would be a big help — [link]"
If you have staff, it needs to be someone's job
This is where it falls apart in most companies. Everyone agrees reviews matter, nobody actually asks, and six months later the listing still shows four reviews from 2023.
Three things fix it:
Attach it to a step that already happens. Final invoice, sign-off email, completion call. If asking for a review is a separate task somebody has to remember, it won't happen. If it's a line in the template they're already sending, it will.
Give people the words. Most staff don't ask because they feel awkward. Write the sentence for them and put it where they'll see it. Awkwardness disappears when there's a script.
Make one person responsible for watching the number. Not for asking — for checking, monthly, whether the count went up. What gets looked at gets done.
If you're B2B
Harder, and worth adjusting for.
You have fewer customers and longer projects, so volume takes longer. But each review carries more weight, because your buyers are researching more carefully than someone picking a takeaway.
Ask the person you actually dealt with, not the person who signed the contract. Your day-to-day contact has the opinion and the motivation; the finance director has neither.
Ask at completion, not at renewal. Renewal conversations are about money, and mixing the two makes both awkward.
A detailed B2B review is worth several short ones. "Fitted out our new premises in Little Island, on time, and dealt with the landlord's snag list without us having to chase" tells a prospect far more than "great job" — and it helps you appear for those searches.
What you're not allowed to do
This is where businesses get themselves in trouble, so it's worth knowing.
You cannot offer anything in return. No discount, no free coffee, no entry into a draw. Google's policies prohibit incentivised reviews and they do remove them. It also undermines the whole point.
You cannot filter who you ask. Sending the link only to customers you know are happy — review gating — is against Google's policies. Ask everyone, or ask nobody.
You cannot write them yourself, or have staff or family write them. Google detects this better than people assume, and a business caught doing it can have its reviews wiped or its listing suspended. It's also obvious to a reader: five reviews in one week, all five stars, all one sentence, all from accounts with no other activity.
You cannot pay for them. Anyone selling you reviews is selling you a problem.
The rules boil down to: ask everyone, honestly, and offer nothing. Which is also the approach that works.
If you have staff asking on your behalf, make sure they know these rules. "Leave us a five-star review and I'll knock a few quid off" said with good intentions is still a policy breach, and it's your listing that pays for it.
Dealing with a bad review
You will get one. Everyone does, and a business with nothing but five stars looks fake.
Reply to it. This matters more than the review itself. Future customers read how you respond, and a calm reply to an angry review says more about you than ten good ones.
Reply the same day if you can, and keep it short.
Don't argue the facts in public. Even when you're right. Nobody reading it will side with the business that wrote four paragraphs about what really happened.
A reply that works looks roughly like:
"Sorry to hear this, John. That's not the standard we aim for. I'd like to sort it — give me a ring on 086 xxx xxxx and we'll get it right."
Apologise for the experience, don't grovel, take it offline, leave a number. That's it.
Decide in advance who replies. A bad review at 9pm on a Friday is not the moment to work out whether it's sales or the owner who handles it. One named person, one agreed tone.
If it's fake or it's not your customer, report it to Google. Success is patchy and it takes time. Reply politely in the meantime, because the reply is what people read.
Reply to the good ones too
Two lines each. Five minutes a week, and it does two things: the customer feels acknowledged and often comes back, and anyone browsing sees a business paying attention.
Don't paste the same reply under every one. It's obvious, and it's worse than saying nothing.
What good looks like
A business that's on top of this has:
- 20 or more reviews, roughly the point where people stop treating the rating as a fluke
- A rating between 4.3 and 4.9. A perfect 5.0 across a lot of reviews reads as suspicious
- Recent reviews. A steady trickle beats a burst two years ago — Google weights recency, and so do readers
- Replies on most of them, good and bad
- Some detail. Reviews that mention what was done and where help you appear for the right searches
How long it takes
Ask every customer, every time, and you'll typically get one review for every three or four people asked.
So thirty completed jobs a month, asked properly, is somewhere around eight reviews a month. Ten a month gets you two or three. Either way you go from nothing to a credible listing inside three to six months.
There's no shortcut, but there's nothing difficult about it either. The only real obstacle is that nobody remembers to ask.
Build it into a step that already happens, give people the words, and check the number once a month.
Not sure where to start? Setting up or claiming a Google Business Profile is something I do for clients, along with the review link and a QR code you can put wherever suits.