How to get more Google reviews (and handle the bad ones)

When someone searches for a plumber, a dog groomer or an accountant in their town, Google shows them three businesses on a map. The one with the most recent, most numerous, best-written reviews gets the call. It is that blunt. This guide covers a system for asking that actually produces reviews, the rules UK businesses have to stay inside, and what to say when a one-star review lands on a Friday evening.

Why reviews matter more than almost anything else on your profile

Your Google Business Profile is the first thing most local customers see, and reviews are the first thing they read on it. They do three jobs at once:

• Ranking. Google’s local results weigh the number of reviews, the average rating, how recently they arrived and the words in them. A steady trickle of reviews mentioning “boiler service in Chelmsford” helps you appear for exactly that search.
• Click-through. People scan the stars before they read anything else. A 4.8 from 60 reviews beats a 5.0 from 4 every time, because it looks real.
• Conversion. By the time someone reads three reviews that describe their own problem being solved, they have decided. The website just has to not get in the way.

Most small businesses know this and still have 11 reviews, because asking feels awkward and never quite happens. The fix is not confidence. It is a process.

The rules first: what UK law and Google allow

Since 2025 the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act has made fake reviews, and reviews bought with money, discounts or gifts, a specific offence that the Competition and Markets Authority can fine directly. Google’s own policies have said the same for years. The practical rules:

• You may ask any customer for an honest review, remind them, and make it easy.
• You may not pay for reviews, run a prize draw for reviewers, offer money off the next visit in return, or ask staff, family or friends to pose as customers.
• You may not “gate” reviews: sending happy customers to Google and unhappy ones to a private form. Ask everyone the same way.
• You may not buy reviews from a service, however it describes itself. Google detects bursts of reviews from new accounts and will remove them, and sometimes suspend the profile.

Step one: get your review link

Nobody will search for your business, scroll to the reviews, and find the “write a review” button on their own. You need a link that opens the review box directly.

1. Sign in to your Google Business Profile (search your business name while logged in and the management panel appears).
2. Click Ask for reviews. Google gives you a short link of the form g.page/r/…/review.
3. Put that link somewhere you can reach it in two seconds: a note on your phone, a saved text message template, a button in your invoicing software.

Better still, make a short address on your own domain that redirects to it: yourbusiness.co.uk/review. It is easier to say out loud, fits on a card, and if Google ever changes the link you update one redirect instead of reprinting everything. We set these up for every client we host; it is a one-line change.

Step two: ask at the right moment

Timing matters more than wording. The best moment is when the customer has just experienced the result and is still feeling it:

• Trades: when the job is signed off and the invoice is paid. Not when you send the quote, not three weeks later.
• Salons, groomers, clinics: at checkout, while they are looking at the result in the mirror or the dog is bouncing around the car park.
• Shops and online stores: a few days after delivery, once they have used the thing.
• Professional services: when a matter closes or a return is filed, with the relief fresh.

Ask in person first if you can (“Would you mind leaving us a quick Google review? I’ll text you the link so it’s easy”), then send the link within the hour. The in-person ask roughly triples the response rate of a cold message, and the follow-up text does the actual work.

Step three: the message that gets replies

Short, personal, one link, no attachments. Something like:

What makes this work: it names them, it names the job, it says how long it takes, it gives one link, and it explicitly invites honesty. That last part matters for the law and for the reader: reviews that read like a real person wrote them are the ones that convince.

Send it from the person who did the work if possible. A text from “Dan who fixed the boiler” gets read; an email from “noreply@” does not. Do not send the request to the same customer more than twice. One ask, one gentle reminder a week later, then stop.

Step four: make it a habit, not a campaign

A burst of 30 reviews in a fortnight followed by nothing looks odd to Google and to customers. Aim for a steady flow:

• Add “send review link” to whatever you already do at the end of every job: the invoice template, the booking system’s completion email, the checkout process.
• If you use online booking, turn on the automatic follow-up a few hours after the appointment with the review link in it. This single setting is where most of our salon and grooming clients’ reviews now come from.
• Put a small sign or card at the counter with a QR code to the review link. People waiting to pay have their phone out already.
• Once a month, check how many arrived. If the number is zero, the link is not being sent. Fix the process, not the people.

Replying to reviews (all of them)

Reply to every review, including the five-star ones, within a day or two. It takes thirty seconds, it shows prospective customers that someone is paying attention, and Google treats an actively managed profile more favourably. For good reviews, a sentence or two that mentions the job is enough: “Thanks Sarah, glad the new boiler is behaving. See you for the service next year.” You are writing for the next reader as much as for Sarah.

What to do about a bad review

You will get one eventually. Someone was having a bad week, or the job genuinely went wrong, or occasionally it is not even your customer. The way you reply is read by every future customer, so treat it as a public demonstration of how you handle problems.

1. Wait a few hours. Never reply angry. Draft it, leave it, read it again.
2. Thank them and acknowledge the specific complaint. “Thanks for letting us know. You’re right that we arrived later than we said on Tuesday.”
3. Give the short version of what happened, without excuses. One sentence. Readers can tell the difference between context and blame.
4. Say what you have done or will do. “We’ve changed how we schedule mornings so this doesn’t happen again.”
5. Take it offline. “I’d like to put this right. Please call me directly on 01245 … and ask for Dan.”

Keep it under a hundred words. Do not argue line by line, do not reveal private details about the customer, and do not offer compensation publicly, which invites more complaints. A calm, specific reply to a one-star review often does more for your reputation than another five-star review would.

If the review is fake or not about you

Flag it from your profile (the three dots next to the review, then “Report review”), choosing the closest policy reason. Then reply publicly anyway, politely: “We have no record of working with anyone by this name and have asked Google to look into this review. If we have made a mistake, please contact us directly.” Google removes a minority of flagged reviews, usually only clear policy breaches, so the reply is your real defence.

Using the reviews you have earned

Reviews do not have to stay on Google. With permission, or simply by quoting them with attribution to Google, you can:

• Show the latest ones on your website. We put a live rating and three recent reviews on most client homepages; it is one of the highest-converting blocks on the page.
• Quote a line in your email signature or on your van.
• Note the phrases customers use (“turned up when they said”, “explained everything”) and put those words on your website. They are your real selling points, in your customers’ language.

Where to start this week

Get the review link. Make a short redirect on your domain. Save a text template. Send it to the last five customers you did good work for, and ask the next one in person. That is the whole system; everything else is keeping it going. If you want the review link, the website widget and the booking follow-up set up as part of your site, ask us, it is included in our local SEO work.