How to get more Google reviews for your business

Most happy customers never leave a review. Not because they did not mean to, but because nobody asked at the right moment and made it easy. Fix those two things and your review count climbs on its own.

Ask everyone, every time

The single biggest lift comes from asking every customer, not just the ones you are sure loved the job. Cherry-picking who gets the request is where businesses get into trouble, and it also caps your numbers. If you only ask the customers you are confident about, you are leaving most of your reviews on the table.

A simple rule: if you finished a job or made a sale, they get a request. Same message, same timing, no judgement call in the middle.

Ask at the right moment

The best time to ask is right after the customer has felt the value: the job is done and tidy, the problem is fixed, the product has arrived and works. For most trades and services that means same day or the next morning. Leave it a week and the feeling has faded and your reply rate drops.

If you invoice through software, sending the request a day after the invoice is paid works well. The transaction is fresh and the customer is not annoyed about anything.

Make it one tap

Every extra step loses people. The request should be a short message with a single link that goes straight to your Google review form, already signed in as them. No app to download, no account to make, no "search for us on Google" instructions.

If you are handing the phone over in person, or the customer is standing at the counter, a QR code or a tablet does the same job.

Give them a starting point

"Leave us a review" produces a blank box, and a blank box produces nothing. People do not know what to write. Prompt them: ask what went well, or give them a couple of tags to pick from (on time, tidy, fair price), then help them turn that into a sentence or two they can edit and post.

The review still has to be theirs. They write it, they post it, logged in as themselves. You are just removing the blank-page problem.

Handle the unhappy ones privately, but fairly

You will get customers who were not happy. The wrong move is to hide the review option from them. The right move is to give everyone the same screen with two clear choices: leave a public review, or tell you privately what went wrong. Most unhappy customers will take the private route if you offer it, which gives you a chance to fix the problem before it becomes a one-star review. But the public option is always there for everyone.

Keep it going

Reviews age. A listing with 40 reviews where the newest is two years old looks worse than one with 15 from the last few months. Once you have a system that asks every customer automatically, you stop thinking about it and the reviews keep coming.

What not to do

• Do not offer discounts, entries into a draw, or any reward for a review. Most platforms ban it and consumer regulators treat it as misleading.
• Do not write reviews yourself or ask staff and family to.
• Do not filter out customers who might rate you badly. This is illegal in New Zealand and Australia and has cost businesses six and seven-figure fines.
• Do not buy reviews. Google detects and removes them and can penalise the listing.