What Google lets you ask for in a review
Google's policy answers this in two sentences: one for what a business may do, one for what it may not. Both are below, word for word, and then the practical line between them for a contractor who asks after every job.
What a business may do.
From Google's user contributed content policy for Maps, on the page titled Prohibited and restricted content, under the things it does allow merchants to do.
"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." That is the whole sentence. It is longer than it would need to be if the rule were simply do not ask, which is the first thing to notice about it: it opens with permission.
Read it in four pieces. "Solicit or encourage" is the asking itself, and it is allowed. "content that does represent a genuine experience" is whom you ask: a real customer, about a real job. "without offering incentives" is the first limit, and it rules out the gift card, the discount, and the entry in a draw. "or attempting to influence the rating or the contents of the review" is the second limit, and it rules out the coaching: the top rating please, the mention my name, the say it was on time.
Everything a contractor wants to know sits in those two limits. You may ask every customer. You may encourage them. You may send the link. What you may not do is pay for it or shape it. The sentence never mentions how often, which customers, or what words to use, and a plain ask sent to everyone contains nothing the sentence names.
No filter, no score, no survey step, no list of the customers worth asking. The permission is for asking people who had a genuine experience, and every customer who paid you had one.
What a business may not do.
From the same section of the same page, under the things Google does not allow merchants to do.
"Discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers". The sentence has two halves, and a trade meets both. The first half is the private feedback form that catches an unhappy customer before the public page does. The second half is the list that only goes to the happy ones. Together they describe review gating, which has a guide of its own.
Beside it in the same list sits the incentive line. Google does not allow merchants to offer incentives, and its own examples are payment, discounts, and free goods and services, "in exchange for posting any review or revision or removal of a negative review." The last clause is the one people miss. It is not only the review you may not pay for. It is the edit and the deletion too.
Then the line written for a business that is standing in the customer's kitchen when the job ends: "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." The policy adds two examples of what that covers: "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."
One more, from the same page's list of what it calls rating manipulation: content "based on a conflict of interest," which the policy says "may include current or former employment, a contractual or consultory relationship, or other professional or personal affiliations that demonstrate a conflict of interest (such as industry competitors, familial relationships, etc.)." That is your crew, your office, your brother-in-law, and the roofer across town.
Every quotation above is from one page, and the page is short. Read it yourself: Google's user contributed content policy for Maps.
Six things the two sentences add up to.
None of these is our reading of the law. Each is the plain shape of a sentence quoted above.
- Ask everyone. The permitted sentence has no filter in it, and the prohibited one names the filter.
- Ask the same way. One message, the same words, sent at the same point in every job, so no customer is asked differently from the last.
- No incentives. Not a discount, not a gift card, not a draw, and not for an edit or a removal either.
- No steering. Nothing in the ask about the rating you hope for or the things you hope they will say.
- No writing it for them. A review is the customer's genuine experience in their own words. A draft you hand them is neither.
- No insider reviews. Not your crew, not your office, not your family. The conflict of interest line names employment and family relationships.
The FTC's questions and answers page, written for the FTC's own rule, is asked the family question by a small business owner and answers: "Yes, but ask them to clearly and conspicuously disclose their relationship to your business." Google's policy treats the same relationship as a conflict of interest. The plain practice for a Google review is simpler than either sentence on its own: leave staff and family out of it entirely, and let your customers speak.
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. We are not lawyers, and none of this is legal advice.
A plain ask, with nothing attached.
Here is the shape of a message that contains none of the things the prohibited sentence names.
Thank you for having us out for the exterior repaint last week. If you have a minute, an honest review on Google would mean a lot to us. Here is the link. Then the link, and nothing else.
What is absent from it is the point. It does not ask for the top rating, because the permitted sentence rules out attempting to influence the rating. It does not ask them to mention the crew lead by name, because the policy names that as specific content. It arrives after the job, by message, not at the door, because the policy names the premises. It goes to everybody, because the prohibited sentence names the sort.
It is also the same message on the best day of the year and the worst. The customer who was thrilled and the customer who was merely fine get the identical text, sent at the identical point, and neither of them is told what to write. No warm version and cool version, no different link for different people, no survey first. A message you would be happy to have every customer compare notes on.
Sending that to every customer, by hand, at the end of every job, is possible, and it is the thing that stops happening after the first busy week. The last job of the day ends and the ask is what gets dropped. That is the gap the AI Office Manager exists for: it asks every completed job for an honest Google review, in the same words, and never filters. It is the optional service described on our reviews page, and it is built to the two sentences on this page.
More on reviews: Is review gating illegal? · 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 what you can ask for.
Can I ask for a particular rating?
Google's permitted sentence allows a merchant to solicit reviews "without offering incentives to do so or attempting to influence the rating or the contents of the review." The rating is named in the sentence, and so are the contents. The same section says merchants should not "request that specific content be included." So the ask names no stars, suggests no words, and asks for nothing but an honest review. What the customer gives it is theirs.
Can I give a discount, or put customers into a draw, for leaving a review?
The two sources answer this differently, and both are quoted on this page. Google does not allow merchants to offer incentives "in exchange for posting any review or revision or removal of a negative review," and its own examples are payment, discounts, and free goods and services. The FTC's questions and answers page says: "The rule does not prohibit giving incentives for reviews, as long as there isn't an express or implied requirement that the reviews have to express a particular sentiment." A Google review has to sit inside both, and the simplest way to sit inside both is to offer nothing.
Can my crew ask for the review at the door?
Google's 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." So the ask is a message that arrives after you have left, which the customer can answer that evening or ignore, rather than a phone held out while the van is being loaded. The crew's job at the door is the walkthrough, not the review.
Can I ask the customer to mention my technician by name?
Google lists this one specifically. Among its examples of what merchants should not do when soliciting reviews is "Merchants requesting that staff solicit reviews that include specific content, including content that identifies a staff member." If the customer names your technician on their own, that is their review. Asking them to is the thing the sentence describes. The other example in the same list is "Merchants requesting that staff solicit a certain number of reviews," so a quota for the crew is named too.
Can my employees or my family leave a review of the business?
Google's policy lists, under what it calls rating manipulation, content "based on a conflict of interest," and says that "may include current or former employment, a contractual or consultory relationship, or other professional or personal affiliations that demonstrate a conflict of interest (such as industry competitors, familial relationships, etc.)." The FTC's page, asked by a small business owner about family members, answers: "Yes, but ask them to clearly and conspicuously disclose their relationship to your business." The plain practice is to leave staff and family out of it and let customers speak.
That is what Google lets you ask for.
One sentence of permission, one of prohibition, and a plain ask that fits inside the first without touching the second. If you would rather that ask simply went out on every finished job, in the same words, a short call is where it starts.