How to Get More Google Reviews for Your Business
Most businesses with fewer reviews than they deserve are not being let down by technique. They have simply never asked anybody. This guide covers asking properly, when to do it and why the compliant approach is also the effective one.
Ask And Ask At The Right Moment
Ask the customer, in person, at the moment the work is finished and they are pleased with it. That is the entire method. Everything else on this page makes it easier or stops you getting it wrong. None of it matters if nobody is asking.
Why so few businesses do it. Awkwardness.
Tradespeople who will happily quote four thousand pounds for a bathroom find it uncomfortable to ask for thirty seconds of typing. It feels like asking a favour rather than finishing the job properly.
Why the customer does not mind. They are pleased with you.
Somebody standing in front of work they are happy with is receptive. Most people say yes, plenty of them mean it and a decent proportion actually do it if you make it easy.
What to actually say. Short and direct.
That reviews are how people find you locally, that it takes a minute and that you would appreciate it. No script, no build up and no apology for asking.
Why timing beats everything. Feeling fades.
The same request a fortnight later reaches somebody who has moved on. Block two is about that. It is the difference between a handful of reviews a year and a steady flow.
When To Ask
Before you leave. Tools packed, work done, customer looking at it and visibly pleased. That is the moment. Every hour after it costs you conversion.
Why in person wins. It is a conversation.
A request made face to face carries an obligation that a message does not. The customer has said yes to you rather than to a notification.
Why later fails. Two reasons.
The feeling has faded and the job has become one of many things that happened that month. Nothing is wrong, there is simply no impulse left to act on.
What about work you cannot finish in front of them. Ask at the natural end.
Where you leave before the customer sees the result, ask at the point they see it or when they confirm they are happy. There is always a moment. Find it and use it consistently.
The follow up. One message, promptly.
A single message the same day or the next, containing the direct link, catches the people who meant to and forgot. Beyond that, stop. Chasing costs more goodwill than it earns reviews.
Make It One Tap
Anything requiring a customer to search for your business loses most of them. Somebody willing to spend a minute is not willing to spend a minute working out where to go. Every extra step costs you a proportion of the people who agreed.
What losing them looks like. Silent.
They said yes, they meant it and they never found the box. You conclude that people do not leave reviews, when what actually happened is that you asked them to go looking.
The fix. A direct link to the review box.
Your profile provides one. Save it somewhere you can reach in seconds, because a link you have to hunt for is a link nobody sends.
Where to keep it. Wherever you already are.
Saved in your phone as a text you can send in two taps, on your invoices and quotes, in your email signature and as a code on the van or the counter for people who prefer scanning something.
What not to build. A process with a gate in it.
The link goes to the review box for everybody. Any arrangement that sorts customers first is not a shortcut, it is the thing block five rules out.
Ask Everybody
Every customer gets the same request. Not the ones you expect to be complimentary. Everybody. That is what the rules require and it also happens to produce a better profile, which makes this the easiest compliance point in the cluster to accept.
Why the temptation exists. Fear of the average.
A business protecting a high rating wants to invite only the safe ones. That instinct is understandable and it is exactly what gating means.
Why asking everybody is better anyway. Credibility.
A profile made entirely of glowing reviews reads as curated. A realistic spread reads as a busy business. A cautious customer trusts the second.
What it protects you from. A pattern nobody spots.
Asking everybody surfaces problems you would otherwise never hear about, while asking selectively hides them until they turn up unprompted in a review nobody invited.
The one distinction that is allowed. Timing rather than selection.
Asking at the point work is complete is not filtering, since every customer reaches that point. Deciding which of them to approach once you are there is.
What You Cannot Do
Four things are prohibited rather than discouraged. They are stated in full on our guide to reviews and rankings, which is where the reasoning sits. Here is the short version, because this is the page where somebody is most likely to be tempted.
No incentives. Nothing in exchange, ever.
Not a discount, not a draw and not a free extra. This applies even where the review is entirely genuine and the customer would have written it anyway.
No writing them. Not you, not staff, not family.
Including the version where somebody who genuinely admires your work writes what they think. If they were not a customer, it is not a review.
No filtering. No sorting step before the ask.
Surveys that route the pleased customers onwards and the unhappy ones elsewhere are gating however they are described or sold to you.
No buying. From anybody, at any price.
Whatever the seller claims about the accounts being real. This is the clearest breach available and it is the one that costs businesses their listings, which our risky practices material covers.
Make It Somebody's Job
Review generation fails when it belongs to nobody in particular. This is a process problem rather than a marketing one, which is why the businesses that do it well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets.
How it stops. Quietly.
Everybody agrees it is a good idea in January. Nobody is responsible for it by March. Nobody notices it has stopped until somebody looks at the dates a year later.
What ownership looks like. A name.
One person accountable for it, whether that is the person finishing the work or whoever raises the invoice. Two people sharing it is the same as nobody having it.
Where to attach it. To something that already happens.
Make the request part of finishing a job or part of invoicing, rather than a separate task nobody has time for. Habits attached to existing routines survive. Standalone tasks do not.
What to measure. Reviews per month, not total.
The total tells you about history. The monthly rate tells you whether the process is alive, which is the number worth putting in front of whoever owns it.
Volume Is Not The Only Goal
A review saying great service tells a reader almost nothing. One naming the job, the problem and the place tells the next customer that you have done their exact job somewhere near them, which is what they were trying to find out.
Why specific reviews convert. Recognition.
Somebody with a leaking shower reads a review about a leaking shower and stops comparing. General praise does not produce that moment of recognition.
How to get them without steering. Ask a better question.
Rather than asking for a review, ask the customer to mention what you came to do. That prompts detail without telling anybody what to say or how to rate you.
What you must not do. Write it for them.
No suggested wording, no template and no example to copy. Prompting for detail is legitimate. Supplying the content is not.
What this does for the no premises trades. Geography.
Reviews mentioning towns demonstrate where you work in a way no setting can, which our optimisation guide covers for businesses without a shopfront.
Then answer them. All of them.
An unanswered profile wastes half the value of the reviews on it. Responding to reviews covers that. The full series sits on the Google Business Profile guide.
Ask everybody.
Ask before
you leave.
Make it one tap.
That is the whole system. No incentives, no filtering and nothing bought. What we add is the part businesses find hardest, which is making sure it still happens in month seven rather than fading out quietly in March.
What we put in place:
If anybody offers to arrange reviews for you rather than help you ask for them, that is the offer to decline.
Every guide.
One profile.
Getting set up, claiming and verifying, optimising the listing properly, suspensions and reinstatement, reviews, reading the performance data and appearing in the local pack and in Maps.
