How to get more Google reviews

Why this matters more than most marketing

Reviews do two jobs at once, and they are the only marketing asset that does both. They are a direct local ranking factor, so more and better reviews help you appear in the map pack. And separately, they are the single biggest influence on whether someone picks you once they can see you.

A business with 40 reviews at 4.8 beats one with 6 reviews at 5.0 nearly every time. Volume and recency signal that you are busy and still trading. A perfect score from four years ago signals neither.

The system that actually works

The problem is not that customers are unwilling. It is that satisfied customers forget and annoyed ones never do. Fix the process and the reviews follow:

• Ask at the point of maximum satisfaction — the job finished, the problem solved, the customer visibly pleased. Not a week later by email.
• Make it one tap. Google gives you a short review link in your Business Profile; put it in a text message, on the invoice, on a card in the van, as a QR code at the counter.
• Ask in person and follow up with the link. "Would you mind leaving us a review? I will text you the link now" converts far better than either half alone.
• Make it somebody’s job. If it is nobody’s job it does not happen.
• Reply to every review, good and bad, within a couple of days. Google notices, and so do prospective customers reading them.

Things that will get you penalised

Google is considerably better at detecting review manipulation than people assume, and the consequences land on your listing:

• Offering a discount, prize draw or freebie in exchange for a review. This breaches the policy explicitly.
• Buying reviews. Detected through patterns you cannot control, and the penalty can include losing every review you have.
• Review gating — asking how the experience was first and only sending the happy ones to Google. Against the rules.
• Reviews from staff, family, or the same IP address in a cluster.
• Twenty reviews arriving in one day after two years of nothing.

What to do about a bad review

First, do not reply immediately and do not reply angrily. Every future customer reads the reply, and it tells them more about you than the complaint does.

Reply calmly, acknowledge the specific issue, avoid excuses, and offer to sort it offline with a name and number. A measured reply to a harsh review frequently does more good than the review did harm.

You can request removal if it breaches policy — fake, defamatory, from a non-customer, or containing personal information. Genuine negative experiences will not be removed, nor should they be.

And a small consolation: a business with nothing but five-star reviews reads as suspicious. A handful of fours with sensible replies looks like a real company.