How to get more Google reviews without breaking Google’s policy
Most of the gap between businesses that get reviews and those that do not is timing and friction, not persuasion.
Review gating and the FTC rules every SMB gets wrong
What the 2024 FTC rule covers, what it does not, and the thing small businesses get wrong about gating.
What is prohibited
Fake reviews, bought reviews, undisclosed insider reviews, suppressing negative ones, and presenting a filtered set as the whole picture.
What is not
Asking your customers for reviews. Displaying a selection on your own site, provided the rating you show is the real one.
The gating confusion
Selective soliciting is not banned outright in the US. Suppression and misrepresentation are. Platform policy is the stricter constraint: Google discourages selective asking, Yelp forbids soliciting entirely.
Elsewhere
The UK regime is broader in places, and EU rules require traders to state how reviews are verified. Design around the strictest rule that applies to you.
Read the full version
The full summary is in the FTC rule on fake reviews. Not legal advice — have a lawyer read anything you rely on.
Questions
More from the blog
Review schema markup: how to get stars in Google search results
Why so many businesses add review markup and never see a star, and which schema type still works.
What the 2026 review statistics actually say
Most review statistics you will find are unsourced or a decade old. Here is what the current research says, and where it comes from.
Google Customer Reviews vs Google Reviews: which one is on your Shopify store?
Two Google products with almost the same name, and the Shopify merchants who end up with the wrong one.