How do I get more Google reviews?

You get more Google reviews by asking every customer, soon after the job, and making it as easy as tapping a link. Many satisfied customers would leave a review and simply don’t think of it. There’s no trick that replaces asking. A steady flow of reviews comes from making the request a routine part of finishing a job.

Make asking part of the job

Reviews come from a routine, and a routine needs an owner. Decide who asks, when, and how, and write it down the way you’d any other step in closing out a job. A request from the technician who did the work, in person, followed by a text with the link, is more personal than an email from an office address the customer has never seen.

Settle when to ask a customer for a review at the same time, because timing matters.

Use Google’s own review link

Every extra step loses people. In your Google Business Profile there’s an option to ask for reviews, which gives you a short link and a QR code that open the review box directly. Put the link in the follow-up text and the QR code on the invoice or a card the technician leaves behind.

The customer needs a Google account to post. Most people have one, but not all know it, so keep the request relaxed. If Google has moved the option when you look for it, search Google’s help pages for the current steps.

What you may not do

Google’s review policies rule out the shortcuts, and using them puts your reviews and your profile at risk:

• Offering anything in exchange for a review, whether a gift card, a prize drawing or a discount.
• Asking only customers you expect to be happy, or sending unhappy ones to a private form. This is called review gating.
• Reviews written by you, your staff or your family, or posted on a customer’s behalf.
• Buying reviews from anyone.

Other platforms have their own rules. Yelp, for one, tells businesses not to ask for reviews at all, so don’t copy your Google routine over to it.

Why asking everyone is the better plan anyway

The rules require it, and it also produces a profile people believe. A page of nothing but short five-star reviews reads as curated. A page with detailed reviews, the occasional complaint and a calm reply to it reads as a real company.

Asking everyone also keeps reviews arriving week after week. A burst of reviews followed by months of silence looks odd to a customer comparing two companies, and it’s commonly observed that Google’s filters are more likely to remove reviews that arrive in unnatural patterns.

How many is enough

There’s no fixed number, only how you compare with the businesses you compete against in the places you want to be found. A company in a city where the leading competitors have years of steady reviews has further to go than one where nobody has bothered.

That comparison is where I’d start: count, recency and replies, set beside the companies above you. The ongoing work, review management, is unglamorous, and it rests on your crew asking, which no outside company can do for you.