How to get more Google reviews without breaking the rules
Marcelo Dibá, founder of Noá Digital.
Published on 23 October 2026. 4-minute read.
There is no shortage of advice on getting more Google reviews. There is very little on what you are not allowed to do while getting them, and that is where the damage happens: several of the most widely recommended tactics are against Google's policy.
This page is about the line, and which side of it each tactic sits on.
What you are allowed to do
Asking is allowed. This is the first thing to clear up, because a lot of owners believe it is forbidden. It is not. You can ask a customer to leave a review on Google, in person, on a receipt, by message, or with a code on the table. What matters is not whether you ask, but how you choose who to ask and what you offer in return. Ask everyone, offer nothing, and take no interest in the rating, and you are inside the rules. The moment you start selecting by expected rating, or attaching anything of value to the act of reviewing, you have crossed over, and the penalty lands on the profile itself rather than on the individual review. The rule is simpler than most articles make it sound: same request, same route, to every customer, with nothing in exchange.
What Google prohibits, and most people do not know
- Review gating. Asking how it went, then sending only happy customers to Google and unhappy ones to a private form. The most recommended tactic on the internet, and the clearest violation.
- Incentives. A discount, a free coffee, a raffle entry, in exchange for a review. This includes "leave us a review and show us at the counter".
- Buying reviews, or any service that supplies them.
- Writing your own, or asking staff, family or friends who were not customers.
- Asking only the customers you know are happy. This is gating without the software.
The common thread is simple: anything that makes the set of published reviews unrepresentative of the actual set of customers.
When to ask, which matters more than how
The request works when it lands at the moment the experience ends and the feeling is still present. In practice:
- Right after the service is finished, while they are paying.
- On the day of delivery, not three days later.
- After a problem is resolved well, which is the most underused moment there is. A customer whose complaint you fixed properly is often more willing than one who simply had a normal visit.
The moment that does not work: a mass message to a list, weeks later, with no connection to anything that happened.
Scripts that work
At the counter, spoken:
"If you have a minute, a review on Google really helps us. There is a code on the card by the till."
On WhatsApp, after a delivery:
"Thanks for ordering with us. If it was good, a review on Google helps other people find us: [link]. And if something was off, tell me here first."
Notice the second half of that last one. Offering a direct line to complain is allowed, as long as the public route stays open to everyone as well. What makes it legal is that you are not withholding the Google link from anyone.
On a receipt or a card:
"Point your camera and tell us how it went."
The three things that actually move volume
- Ask every time, not when you remember. Volume comes from the habit, not from the wording.
- Remove the friction. A code that opens the review box directly beats a link in a message, which beats "search for us on Google".
- Reply to the ones you get. Profiles where reviews are answered tend to keep receiving them, because the page visibly belongs to somebody.
What to do with a sudden drop
If review volume falls off a cliff, check in this order: whether the link or code still points to the right place, whether anyone is still asking, and whether the profile itself has had a problem. Most of the time it is the second one.
Where Binno fits
Binno generates the QR codes for the counter, the table and the receipt, and the screen behind them always offers the public Google route, whatever the rating, because the alternative is the prohibited one. Someone who had a problem also gets a direct line to you, which is what lets you solve it while they are still there.
Then, when a review arrives, Binno messages you on WhatsApp with a reply already drafted, so the volume you worked for does not turn into a pile of things you never answered.