Asking customers for Google reviews: what's allowed

Picture two plumbers side by side on Google: one with forty recent reviews, one with six from 2021. Most of us ring the first. Reviews often decide who gets the call, for a dentist or a mortgage broker as much as a plumber.

So it pays to ask. Asking is allowed, and Google even gives you the tools. What gets businesses into trouble is how they ask: paying for reviews, asking only the customers they know are happy, or writing a few themselves. Clinics have one more rule on top.

Ask everyone, and make it easy

Google's help page on reviews says: "To leave reviews, you can ask customers to visit a Google link or scan a QR code." Your Business Profile gives you that link. Put it in a text after the job, on the invoice, or on a card at the counter.

There is one limit on how. Google's review guidance for businesses says merchants "should not require or pressure users to leave ratings or write reviews while on the premises." A card at reception is fine. Standing over someone until they've typed five stars is not.

Don't pay for them, even with a discount

Google's content policy lists, as not allowed: "Offer incentives – such as payment, discounts, free goods and/or services - in exchange for posting any review or revision or removal of a negative review."

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is slightly looser. Its guidance on online reviews says an incentive must be "applied regardless of whether the reviewer leaves a positive or negative review" and "clearly disclosed so consumers know the review was incentivised."

On Google, the stricter rule wins. "$10 off your next visit for a review" breaks Google's policy even if you say so openly and even if a one-star review gets the $10 too. Google says breaking its rules can end in "suspending the account privileges" or "account termination".

Don't ask only the happy ones

This one is easy to do by accident. Google's policy also rules out businesses that "Discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers." The trade name for it is review gating.

A common setup does exactly that. Software texts every customer "How did we do?", and only those who tap four or five stars get the Google link, while the rest get a private feedback form. It feels like good customer service. To Google, it is asking only the happy ones.

The ACCC has fined a business over the offline version. In 2018 Meriton was ordered to pay $3 million after it changed guests' email addresses so that unhappy guests never got TripAdvisor's request for a review (ACCC, 2018).

The fair version sends the same request to everyone. If you want to hear about problems privately, ask for that separately. Don't make it the gate to the review link.

Don't write them, and don't edit them

Google counts "Content that is based on a conflict of interest", including "current or former employment", as a policy breach. So no reviews from you, your staff or your cousin.

The ACCC says a business risks misleading people with reviews written "by family, employees, or people paid in some way by the business to write the review, without stating the personal connection or commercial relationship". It is just as wary of the other direction: a business misleads if it "suppress[es] or edit[s] negative reviews".

That last point applies to any reviews you show on your own website. In 2020 the health booking site HealthEngine was ordered to pay $2.9 million, partly because it "did not publish around 17,000 reviews and edited around 3,000 reviews" (ACCC, 20 August 2020).

You can reply to a bad review, politely, in public. You can't make it disappear.

Clinics: the rule about testimonials

Dentists, cosmetic clinics and other registered health practitioners have a law the rest of us don't. Section 133 of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law says a regulated health service must not be advertised in a way that "uses testimonials or purported testimonials about the service or business".

Ahpra, the regulator, explains what counts on its testimonial tool: positive statements "about the clinical aspects of a regulated health service", such as the symptom, the treatment or "the specific outcome". A review saying the front desk was friendly and parking was easy is not a testimonial. A review saying your implants fixed their smile is.

Ahpra also says advertisers are "not responsible for removing (or trying to have removed) testimonials published on platforms they do not control". So a patient's clinical Google review can stay where it is. On our reading, the risk starts when you use it: putting it on your website, in an ad or in a social post, because those are yours.

Cosmetic work is watched more closely. New Ahpra guidelines for non-surgical cosmetic procedures, such as anti-wrinkle injections and fillers, took effect on 2 September 2025 and are "strengthening the ban on the use of testimonials from social media influencers" (Dental Board, 3 June 2025).

Brokers: testimonials must be real

ASIC's advertising guide for financial and credit services was rewritten in June 2026 (Regulatory Guide 234). It says "Testimonials from individuals should be attributed to them and should be authentic." Its examples include a mortgage broking firm that advertised a "100% success rate" and changed its ads after ASIC stepped in. If you quote a happy client, use their real words and their name, and don't round it up to a promise.

What to do this month

1. Get your review link or QR code from your Business Profile and send it after every finished job, not only the good ones.
2. If software sends your review requests, check it doesn't ask "how did we do?" first and hide the Google link from unhappy customers. Every customer should get the same link.
3. Drop any reward for reviews: discounts, prize draws, freebies.
4. Tell staff not to review the business, and not to ask friends and family to.
5. Reply to negative reviews in public, calmly. Don't delete or trim reviews on your own website.
6. Clinics: before a review goes on your website, social media or an ad, check it says nothing about a symptom, a treatment or a result. If you're not sure, leave it off. Cosmetic clinics, read Ahpra's 2025 guidelines.
7. Brokers: quote clients by name, word for word, and never as a promise of approval.

This is general information, not legal advice.