How do you get more Google reviews without breaking Google's rules?
A review request system that is compliant, repeatable, and does not feel like begging.
Ask every customer, ask at the moment the job is done, and never offer anything in exchange. Google's review policies allow you to solicit reviews. They do not allow you to buy them, filter them, or ask only the people you expect to be happy.
What Google's policy actually prohibits
- Reviews paid for, directly or in kind. Google's prohibited content policy names discounts, free goods, and free services as incentives.
- Discouraging or prohibiting negative reviews, or selectively soliciting positive ones. Review gating, where you survey first and only route happy customers to Google, is a direct violation.
- Content not based on a real experience, or posted from multiple accounts at one person's request.
- Reviews with a conflict of interest, including from employees, contractors, and other professional affiliations.
- Pressuring customers to review while on the premises, or asking them to include specific content.
A request system that works
Trigger the ask off an event in your CRM, not off a monthly campaign. A closed won deal, a completed job, a delivered order, a follow up appointment. In HubSpot that is a workflow enrolling on the deal stage or ticket closure, sending a short email or text within 24 hours with a direct link to your review form. One reminder a few days later. Then stop.
Make the link go straight to the write a review screen rather than to your profile. Every extra step loses people. Ask by text where the relationship supports it, since text response rates beat email for this by a wide margin.
What to do about the bad ones
Nothing clever. Reply publicly, fix the problem privately, and keep the volume of new reviews high enough that one bad month does not define the profile. Recency matters to the person reading, and a steady flow of honest reviews is worth more than a stack of five stars from three years ago.
Google's local ranking guidance says more reviews and positive ratings can help local ranking, and that replying helps you stand out. Both are true. Neither is a reason to cheat, because a profile with removed reviews or a suspension is worth far less than the reviews you were trying to buy.
Related: How should you respond to reviews?, HubSpot services, HubSpot implementation, Tracking local SEO.