Is review gating illegal?
Review gating is asking only the customers you expect to be happy, or routing the unhappy ones somewhere the public never sees. A vendor has probably just offered to do it for you. Here is what Google's policy and the FTC's rule say about it, in their own words, with the links.
What review gating is.
It has a friendly name in every piece of software that sells it. The shape underneath is always the same.
Review gating is deciding who gets asked for a review based on how you expect them to answer. In its most common form the customer is shown a question first, something like how did we do, and the answer routes them: a happy answer opens the link to your Google profile, an unhappy answer opens a private form that goes to you and nowhere else. The public page only ever sees the customers who passed the first screen.
The second form has no software in it at all. The office sends the review link by hand, to the jobs that went well, and quietly does not send it to the one that ran long or ended in an argument about the invoice. Nobody would call that gating out loud. It is the same sorting, done with a thumb on a phone instead of a survey step.
It gets sold because it sounds like protection. A painter who has put fifteen years into a name does not want one bad week sitting at the top of the profile, and a vendor who promises to keep the unhappy ones off the public page is promising exactly the thing he is worried about. What the feature actually does is narrower than the promise: it changes who is invited to write, not what happened on the job.
Whatever the screen is called, ask one question of it. Does anything about the customer, a score, an answer, or a judgment in the office, decide whether they are shown the Google link? If it does, that is gating. If everyone who finished a job gets the same link the same way, it is not.
What Google's policy says.
Google's user contributed content policy for Maps names this practice, on the page it titles Prohibited and restricted content.
Under the things it does not allow merchants to do, the policy lists this, word for word: "Discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers". The first half of that sentence is the private form that catches the unhappy ones. The second half is the list that only goes to the happy ones. Both forms of gating sit inside one sentence.
The same policy says what it does allow, and that sentence is worth reading as slowly as the first. A merchant may "Solicit or encourage the posting of content that does represent a genuine experience, without offering incentives to do so or attempting to influence the rating or the contents of the review." There is no filter anywhere in it. It permits asking, it permits encouraging, and it draws its lines at incentives and at influence over what gets written.
Two more lines from the same section matter to a trade that is standing in the customer's house when the job ends. The policy says: "When soliciting reviews, merchants should not require or pressure users to leave ratings or write reviews while on the premises, nor should they request that specific content be included." As examples of what that covers it lists "Merchants requesting that staff solicit a certain number of reviews" and "Merchants requesting that staff solicit reviews that include specific content, including content that identifies a staff member."
That is the whole of what this page takes from Google, quoted rather than summarised on purpose. Read the page yourself: Google's user contributed content policy for Maps.
What the FTC says.
The Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials went into effect on October 21, 2024. The FTC published its own questions and answers about it, and one of the questions is this one.
The question on the FTC's page reads: "Can my business ask for reviews only from customers whom we think are happy with our services?" The answer is two sentences long, and here is all of it: "The rule does not contain a specific prohibition against such conduct. But this practice could violate the FTC Act."
We are going to leave those two sentences exactly as they are, because they are doing two different jobs. The first says the rule itself does not name this practice. The second says the FTC thinks it could violate the broader law the FTC enforces. Anyone who tells you the rule bans gating outright is overstating the first sentence, and anyone who tells you the FTC has no view is ignoring the second. The honest reading is both, together, in the order the FTC wrote them.
What the rule does name, in the FTC's announcement of it, is the practice next door. The rule "prohibits a business from using unfounded or groundless legal threats, physical threats, intimidation, or certain false public accusations to prevent or remove a negative consumer review." And for a business that shows reviews on its own website, it "also bars a business from misrepresenting that the reviews on a review portion of its website represent all or most of the reviews submitted when reviews have been suppressed based upon their ratings or negative sentiment."
Both sources are short and public. Read them yourself at Google's user contributed content policy for Maps and at the FTC's questions and answers on the rule; the rule's announcement, quoted above, is here. We are not lawyers, and none of this is legal advice.
What that means on a Tuesday afternoon.
Take both sources at their word and the practical line draws itself. It runs through who gets asked.
The only version of asking that neither source names is the one with no sort in it: every completed job gets the same ask, in the same words, and what the customer writes is theirs. That is not a clever reading. It is the permitted sentence from Google's policy, followed literally, and it is the version of asking the FTC's question never had to be written about.
It costs something, and the cost is real. The customer whose job ran long gets the same link as the one who baked you cookies, and sometimes that customer writes what they think. The trade for that is a profile that means what it says, replies you can write with a straight face, and a system you never have to explain to anyone, including the customer who later works out how the sorting worked.
Six ways the sort shows up. The words on the screen change; the question underneath does not. Any of these decides who is shown the link based on what they are expected to write.
- The thumbs up screen. A "how did we do?" step where a happy answer opens the Google link and an unhappy one opens a private form.
- The feedback form first. Everyone is asked for feedback, and only the customers who scored well are then shown where to post it.
- The office judgment call. The link goes out by hand, to the jobs that went well, and quietly not to the one that ran two days long.
- The two template text. One message for the customers you expect to be pleased, and a different one, with no link in it, for everybody else.
- The survey that routes by score. A rating question inside the request, with the Google link shown only above a certain answer.
- The offline promise. A pitch that says unhappy customers will be "handled privately" so they never reach the public page.
The AI Office Manager, the optional service on our reviews page, asks every completed job for an honest Google review, in the same words, and never filters. There is no version of it with a filter. What your customers write is theirs.
More on reviews: What Google lets you ask for in a review · The FTC reviews rule, for contractors · How to ask for reviews honestly
Every guide on this site, the cost pages and the rules for asking for reviews, in one place: see the guides →
Questions about review gating.
So is review gating illegal, or not?
We are not going to give you a verdict, because we are not the people who get to. What we can do is show you the two sentences. Google's policy lists "Discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers" among the things it does not allow merchants to do. The FTC's own questions and answers page asks whether a business can ask for reviews only from customers it thinks are happy, and answers: "The rule does not contain a specific prohibition against such conduct. But this practice could violate the FTC Act." Both are linked above.
What is the difference between gating and just asking?
Who decides whether the link goes out. When every completed job gets the same ask, nothing about the customer is judged before they are invited to write. When a survey step, a score, or a judgment call in the office decides which customers see the link, the customers have been sorted first, and sorting them by the review you expect is what the phrase "selectively solicit positive reviews" describes. The words in the message can be identical in both cases. The list is the difference.
A vendor says it is fine because unhappy customers can still find Google on their own. Is it?
We cannot rule on that for you, and neither can the vendor. What we can point at is the wording. Google's sentence is about whom a business solicits, not about who could find the page unaided, and the FTC's question is about whom a business asks. A customer who was never sent the link was not asked. Whether that is a problem for your business is a question for the two sources and, if you want a real answer, for a lawyer.
Can I talk to an unhappy customer before they post anything?
You can talk to any customer at any time about the work, and you should. The FTC's questions and answers page says the rule does not prohibit a business from contacting customers who post negative reviews to resolve the reported issues. The line gating crosses is different: it uses that conversation, or a score, as the gate that decides whether the customer is ever shown where to write. Fix the job because it needs fixing. Send the same ask you send everyone. Those are two separate things, and keeping them separate is the whole point.
If I ask everyone, what happens when someone leaves a bad review?
It stands, and you get to answer it. The FTC's page says: "Yes, you can respond publicly to the review, and yes, you should watch what you say." It goes on to say the rule prohibits making a false accusation about the reviewer if you know it is false or make it with reckless disregard as to its truth or falsity. So the reply is short, factual and calm, and it says what you would do to make it right. A page of honest reviews with one rough one and a decent reply under it reads like a real business, because it is one.
That is review gating.
Two sources, two sentences each, and a practical line that runs through who gets asked. If you would rather the asking simply happened, the same way on every finished job, that is the job the AI Office Manager was built for, and a short call is where it starts.