How to get more Google reviews without breaking the rules

Reviews do two jobs at once: they influence where you rank, and they decide whether the person looking at the map pack calls you or the business next to you. Very few trade businesses have a process for collecting them, which is exactly why it's such a reliable advantage.

Trade businesses that collect reviews well do one thing consistently — they ask every customer, every job, straight after the work is finished. Not a monthly campaign. Not 'when we remember'. Every job.

The timing matters more than the wording. A request sent within a few hours of completing the work, while the customer is still pleased the problem is gone, converts several times better than one sent a week later.

• Send within 2 to 4 hours of job completion.
• SMS outperforms email substantially for trades.
• Link directly to the review form, not to your profile homepage.
• One polite follow-up after three days if there's no response.

Review gating — screening customers first and only sending the happy ones to Google — breaches Google's policies and can get your reviews removed or your profile suspended. In Australia it also risks being treated as misleading conduct under the Australian Consumer Law, because it presents a filtered picture as if it were the whole one.

Buying reviews, writing them yourself, or having staff and family post them is straightforwardly illegal in Australia. The ACCC has taken enforcement action over fake reviews, and penalties are significant.

Incentives are also restricted. Offering a discount or entry into a draw in exchange for a review breaches Google's policy regardless of whether you ask for a positive one.

A profile with only five-star reviews reads as suspicious. A handful of critical reviews, answered well, often improves conversion rather than harming it.

Reply promptly, without arguing. Acknowledge the issue, state what you did or will do, and move the detail offline. The reply is not for the reviewer — it's for the next hundred people who read it.

There is no universal target number, because it depends entirely on what your local competitors have. The practical benchmark is simple: more recent reviews than the businesses currently sitting above you in your suburb's map pack.

Recency matters as much as volume. A steady trickle every week beats a burst of thirty followed by two years of silence.