Local SEO
Google bans review incentives outright and UK law bans fake and concealed ones. Here is the ask a UK trade can run on every job without breaking either.
Verithora 31 Aug 2026 Updated 15 Sept 2026 14 min read
The short answer is that you never offer anything in exchange for a Google review, and you ask every customer the same way on every job. UK law bans fake reviews and reviews that hide the fact they were incentivised, so a disclosed incentive is not automatically unlawful. Google is stricter: it bans incentives outright, disclosed or not, and it is the platform your customers are reading. So on Google the answer is no.
The law below applies wherever reviews are published, and every other platform adds its own policy. Assume no incentives anywhere.
None of these carries an incentive, a star rating, requested content, or a conditional such as “if you were happy”. That conditional is the problem.
Text message:
Thanks for having us out today. When you have a minute, a Google review helps other people find us. Here is the link: [your review link]WhatsApp, same day:
Hi [name], thanks for the work today. Our Google review page is here if you would like to leave one: [your review link] Either way, thanks for having us.Email, under the invoice:
The work is finished and your invoice is attached. We ask every customer for a Google review, whatever they want to say. The link is here: [your review link]Reply to a good review:
Thanks for taking the time to write this, it is appreciated. Glad the job worked out. If anything needs a second look, ring the office and we will come back out. [Your initials]Reply to a one-star:
Thank you for the feedback. We would like to understand what went wrong and put it right. Please call us on [number] or email [address] and we will look into it straight away. [Your initials]The law is the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, Schedule 20, paragraph 13. Google’s rules are its Maps user generated content policy. Google’s bites first, because Google can strip your reviews next week without telling anyone.
The Act bans submitting, or commissioning another person to submit or write:
(a) a fake consumer review, or
(b) a consumer review that conceals the fact it has been incentivised.
It separately bans:
(2) Publishing consumer reviews, or consumer review information, in a misleading way.
And it defines the first term:
“fake consumer review” means a consumer review that purports to be, but is not, based on a person’s genuine experience;
None of this is new. The commencement note states “Sch. 20 para. 13 in force at 6.4.2025 by S.I. 2025/272, reg. 2(1)(11)”. The rule has been live since 6 April 2025.
Google’s version is blunter. Under “We do not allow merchants to”, it says:
Offer incentives – such as payment, discounts, free of cost goods and/or services – in exchange for posting any review or revision or removal of a negative review.
Discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers
Side by side:
| What you might do | UK law, Schedule 20 paragraph 13 | Google’s policy |
|---|---|---|
| Discount for a review, disclosed | Lawful if the review is genuine | Banned |
| Discount for a review, kept quiet | Banned, concealed incentivised review | Banned |
| Invite only customers you think are pleased | Named in CMA guidance as cherry picking | Banned, selective solicitation |
| A paying customer who is your ex-employee or brother | Not a fake review if it is genuine and unincentivised | Conflict of interest, removable |
| A mate who never bought anything from you | Banned, fake review, disclosure irrelevant | Banned, fake engagement |
| Delete bad testimonials from your own site | Banned, publishing in a misleading way | Not covered by Google’s policy |
Two rows matter most. A mate who never had his drive done has no genuine experience to describe, so his review is fake however he words it. A paying customer who is also family is genuine, but Google still treats it as a conflict of interest and can remove it.
On Google, no, and the policy sentence above is unconditional. The law is narrower, which is the bit everyone gets wrong. The CMA’s fake reviews guidance, CMA208, published 4 April 2025, says at paragraph 3.7:
Traders may want to incentivise customers to leave a review for example by paying them, offering them future discounts or free products. Traders are free to do this but to comply with the law they must: (a) tell consumers that the review has been incentivised, and (b) the review must still reflect the reviewer’s genuine experience.
Paragraph 3.4 lands you back where you started: many publication media do not allow incentivised reviews, and submitting one where that is the case is likely to be misleading. A disclosed incentive can be lawful and still breach Google’s policy.
Prize draws are the exception, and the CMA goes the other way on them. Footnote 8 to CMA208 paragraph 2.10 reads:
Note that offering the chance to earn a reward which does not guarantee a direct benefit for the reviewer (for example, traders may encourage consumers to leave reviews by telling them that they will be entered into a prize draw) is unlikely to amount to commissioning in the context of the banned practice.
So a draw is unlikely to breach the Act. Google is where it fails: the policy bans incentives offered in exchange for posting a review, and our reading is that a draw entry is a thing of value. Do not run one.
If a marketer already had you running one, stop it on Google and take the offer off any page or leaflet still carrying it. Leave the existing reviews alone: the offer was the problem, not the customers.
This is where most get-more-reviews advice puts a trade in the wrong. CMA208 paragraph 4.5:
Cherry picking positive reviews for publication over negative ones might be done either through suppressing negative reviews that have been submitted or by encouraging just those who are satisfied to leave reviews.
Note the verb, “might be done”. That chapter is about misleading publication, so the risk is the overall picture, not one text message. You are not automatically in breach.
Paragraph 4.4 is the harder list. Traders should not interfere with reviewers’ willingness to leave negative reviews, and it names four ways:
The third one goes on the van. Asking when a job went well and skipping it when the customer went quiet is that pattern.
Your brother-in-law is out too. Google counts this as rating manipulation:
Content that is based on a conflict of interest. A conflict of interest 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.).
Staff, ex-staff, family and business partners sit inside that, so those reviews are removable even when the person paid you.
CMA208 paragraph 3.6 is the permission, and its middle clause is the test:
Doing so without predetermining the contents or sentiment expressed in the review, for example by merely emailing customers generally to ask if they wish to provide a review, is not prohibited under the banned practice.
Google’s matching permission says merchants 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.
So ask everyone, in words that do not steer the sentiment.
If the profile is not set up and verified, do that first.
Google’s steps, from Create a Google link or QR code to request reviews, printed on 31 August 2026. The labels are Google’s.
Two extra pointers. Google’s step 1 links through to business.google.com, and the Get more reviews control carries a share icon. If the screen does not match, sign in to the account that owns the profile and search your business name.
One constraint catches people out, verbatim from that page:
Currently, reviews QR codes can only be generated on a computer browser, not on mobile devices.
The QR is a desk job. Put it at the foot of the paper invoice, and save the link as a phone contact so the lads can paste it into a WhatsApp thread.
Google’s tips page explains most missing reviews: customers must be signed in to a Google Account.
No Google page and no CMA page says when in a job to ask. The timing below is ours, not a rule.
Ask on the day the work finishes, not when the invoice leaves the office. Send something they act on later, never something you stand and watch, because 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.
This includes:
- Merchants requesting that staff solicit a certain number of reviews
- Merchants requesting that staff solicit reviews that include specific content, including content that identifies a staff member.
That kills two habits: the tablet held out on the doorstep, and the “mention the patio, and mention Dave” script.
No source sets an interval either. Ours is one follow-up, three working days later, then stop. That is long enough for the first message to be buried and short enough that they still know who you are.
CMA208 paragraph 4.4(a)(iii) tells traders not to interfere with willingness to review “by arbitrarily stopping and starting review invitations”. Chasing a happy customer three times and an unhappy one never is that behaviour.
Google’s own advice is to keep replies short and polite, to admit mistakes without taking responsibility for things outside your control, and to sign with your name or initials. The two reply templates are at the top of this page.
Three things never to put in a public reply.
That second rule is about paying for a rating, not about fixing bad work. If the drive has streaked, go back and sort it, because the work was wrong. Our reading is that redoing bad work is not an incentive offered in exchange for a review, and nothing in Google’s policy or CMA208 says otherwise. Never mention the review while you put it right.
Google’s own position, from Report inappropriate reviews on your Business Profile:
You can report any review, but only those that violate Google policies are eligible for removal.
Do not report a review just because you disagree with it or dislike it. Google doesn’t get involved in conflict between businesses and customers.
A genuine customer’s honest bad opinion is going nowhere, and CMA208 paragraph 2.7 says a review is not fake just because the trader does not like or agree with it, as long as it reflects the reviewer’s genuine experience. Reply to it that day.
Report only what breaks a policy: reviews from someone who was never a customer, reviews about a different business, spam, and profanity. The route is Business Profile, Read reviews, the Report icon, the reason, then Send report. On timing:
Review evaluation typically takes several days.
No number, so anyone quoting you “3 to 5 working days” is not reading Google. A flagged review that does not qualify for removal gets one appeal, through the Reviews Management Tool, so do not fire it off in a temper.
Your count will also drop sometimes, and we found no Google page explaining why a genuine review vanishes. A slip of two or three is not a reason to change anything.
The ban on misleading publication is not limited to platforms, and paragraph 13(5)(i)(i) gives as an example:
failing to publish, or removing from publication, negative consumer reviews whilst publishing positive ones (or vice versa);
CMA208 paragraph 8.3 counts as publishers traders who display consumer reviews on their own media, including their website. Paragraph 8.31 deals with the “I am too small for this” defence: even a small trader publishing only its own customers’ reviews has to take reasonable and proportionate measures where its content poses a risk. Paragraph 8.32(a) says the steps required of a search platform may differ from, and be more significant than, those required of a trader publishing its own customers’ reviews, so yours may be the lighter ones. You do not need a compliance department, you need to stop hand-picking.
Three fixes, free ones first.
Nobody is fining a five-van firm over a testimonials page, but the rule genuinely applies to you. Breaching paragraph 13 is not a criminal offence, because section 237(8) excludes it, but section 158(5) caps a penalty a court can impose at £300,000, or 10% of turnover if that is higher, and section 182(6) sets the same cap on a CMA penalty.
Write two things in your notes app tonight: today’s date and your current review count. Run the ask on every job for four weeks, with the single follow-up, then count again next month.
That gives you two numbers no article can: your own conversion rate, new reviews divided by jobs asked on, and whether the enquiries moved. We looked for a UK trade figure for how many asks become reviews and found none we would trust, so anyone quoting you one has made it up.
Reviews do feed local ranking, one part of local SEO. Google’s local ranking page says “More reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking.” That is “can help”, and we will not promise you a position off it. If the reviews climb and the phone still does not ring, the problem is on the website, and we wrote a separate guide.
Everything above costs an evening. Get the link, print the QR, save the five messages into your phone, and fix the follow-up rule. That setup is then done for good, and you should do it yourself.
The half almost nobody sustains is the recurring one: asking every customer on every job for two years, then answering every review inside a day, including the week the van is in for a service. That is what Google Business Profile management is on our side. We do not offer to get you reviews and we will not quote you a number. Offering services that facilitate the practices above is itself banned by paragraph 13(4).
Send us a short email with your trade and your current review count. A reply lands inside two working days, from the person who does the work, not a sales team.
This is a plain-English summary of the rules as we read them on 31 August 2026, not legal advice. Google’s contribution policy and the CMA guidance were checked on 31 August 2026.
Questions
No, not on Google. Google's contribution policy says merchants must not offer incentives such as payment, discounts or free goods in exchange for posting a review, revising one or removing a negative one. UK law is narrower, but that does not help you, because the review still has to be posted on Google.
Not automatically. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 bans a fake consumer review, and a review that conceals the fact it has been incentivised. Concealment is what makes it unlawful. It is not a criminal offence, because section 237(8) of the Act excludes paragraph 13, but the CMA and the courts can still impose a monetary penalty. On Google it is banned either way, so the practical answer for a trade is no.
It is the practice we would tell you to drop first. The CMA guidance says cherry picking might be done by encouraging just those who are satisfied to leave reviews, and Google separately bans selectively soliciting positive reviews. The safe rule is one policy applied to everyone, on every job.
Open your Business Profile at business.google.com, select Read Reviews, then Get more reviews with the share icon. Copy the link there, and right-click the QR image to save it. Google's help article says reviews QR codes can only be generated on a computer browser, so do it at a desk.
Only if it breaks a Google policy. Google's own page says you can report any review, but only those that violate Google policies are eligible for removal. A genuine customer's honest bad opinion is not a policy breach and will not be taken down. Reply to it calmly instead.
Be careful. Publishing consumer reviews in a misleading way is banned by the same schedule of the DMCC Act 2024, and removing negative reviews while publishing positive ones is the example the Act itself gives. Deleting the whole hand-picked block is the free fix, because you are then choosing nothing.
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