How to Get More Google Reviews
For a local business, reviews do more work than a website. Someone searching "plumber near me" 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 small 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 no listing at all, create one. It's the single highest-value free thing a local business can do.
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 somewhere you can get at it — your phone's notes, a saved text message, wherever.
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 monthly newsletter. At the exact moment they've said "that's great, thanks a million."
That moment is 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 to your face, the reply is: "Would you mind putting that on Google? It really helps me."
Most people say yes. Very few people follow through unless you make it easy in the next thirty seconds.
How to make it easy
Text them the link while you're standing there. "Grand, I'll send you the link now." Then send it. Takes ten seconds and it's by far the most effective method.
Put a QR code on your invoice, your van, your counter or your receipt. Free QR generators are everywhere. Point it at your review link. People scan things.
Add the link to your email signature. One line: "Happy with the work? A Google review means a lot to a small business."
Put it on your website. A button on your contact page or in your footer.
Follow up by text after the job. "Thanks again for the business. If you have a minute, a Google review would be a big help — [link]". Send it the same day.
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 review link only to customers you know are happy — sometimes called 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 is better at detecting this than people assume, and a business caught doing it can have its reviews wiped or its listing suspended. It's also the single most obvious thing 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.
Dealing with a bad review
You will get one. Everyone does, and a business with nothing but five-star reviews looks fake.
Reply to it. This matters more than the review itself. Future customers read how you respond, and a calm, decent 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 I 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 your number. That's it.
If it's fake or it's not your customer, you can 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. It takes five minutes a week and it does two things: the customer feels acknowledged and often becomes a repeat, and anyone browsing sees a business that's actually 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 local business that's on top of this has:
- 20 or more reviews, which is roughly the point where people stop treating the rating as a fluke
- A rating between 4.3 and 4.9. A perfect 5.0 with 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. "Great job" is worth less than a review that mentions what was done and where. Those help you appear for the right searches
How long it takes
Ask every customer, every time, and a typical small business gets one review for every three or four people asked. So thirty jobs a month, asked properly, is somewhere around eight reviews a month.
At that rate you go from nothing to a credible listing in about three months. There's no shortcut, but there's also nothing difficult about it — the only real obstacle is remembering to ask.
Put a note on your phone. Put the QR code on the invoice. Make it something that happens automatically rather than something you have to decide to do.
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.