Reviews are the first thing many people read before contacting a business. They have two parts: getting more genuine reviews, and answering all of them well, especially the bad ones. They cannot be bought, invented or hand-picked, and there are no shortcuts: the platforms have rules against it, and customers notice.
Asking for reviews, step by step
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Ask right after the service, while the customer is still happy, and in person: “If you were pleased, it would help us a lot if you left your opinion”.
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| 2 |
Make the path easy. The business profile on Google has a direct link for asking for a review. Send it by message or put it on a card with a QR code. The fewer the clicks, the more the replies.
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Ask every customer, not only those who seem happy. Filtering who may review is against Google’s rules and makes the result look false.
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Do not offer anything in return. Discounts or prizes for a review are forbidden by the rules and risk losing the profile.
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Do not ask friends or employees to review. It is easy to detect and removes credibility. See also the business profile in appearing in near me searches.
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Answering the bad ones without losing your head
| What the review says |
How to answer |
| A fair complaint |
Thank them, acknowledge the problem and say what you will do. Soon, in public, calmly. |
| An unfair or confused complaint |
Reply with facts and without accusing. Readers judge your tone, not who is right. |
| No context (“awful!”, no text) |
Ask what went wrong and offer a contact to talk. Do not argue on the page. |
| It looks fake, from someone who was never a customer |
Reply politely saying you cannot find the customer and ask them to get in touch. And flag it to the platform for review. |
| Insults, personal data, illegal content |
Do not reply. Report it to the platform through the options it offers. |
Making use of reviews
Good reviews can appear on your site (a sentence from a customer, with their name and permission), on the landing page (see landing pages) and on social networks. If you plan to mark them as structured data, first read structured data: Google does not treat reviews a business writes about itself as eligible for stars in the results, and marking up what the page does not show is risky.
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Never write fake reviews, neither for yourself nor against others. The platforms have systems to detect them, the consequences range from the removal of the reviews to the suspension of the profile, and being found out destroys trust that took years to build. Whoever sells you “guaranteed reviews” is selling exactly this.
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A bad review that was answered is worth more than no bad ones at all. Readers look for signs that someone is on the other side. And use the complaints: three people saying the same is a problem to fix, not an injustice.
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