Find your review link
Everything starts with one link: the one that opens the review form for your listing directly. In your Google profile, the “Ask for reviews” button gives it to you. You can also build it from your place ID.
Without a direct link, the customer has to search for your listing and find the right button, and plenty of them give up on the way. With the link, they land on the right page in one tap.
Create your link and QR code
Our free tool turns your link or place ID into a QR code you can download and an A4 poster ready to print. It works without an account, right in your browser.
Open the free toolMake it easy
Most happy customers don’t leave a review because they forget, not because they don’t want to. The shorter the path, the more of them do it.
Put your link everywhere you talk to your customers: receipt, quote, invoice, email signature, appointment confirmation message.
On site, a printed QR code pointing to that same link, placed near the till or at the exit, saves the customer from searching for your listing. For a tradesperson, the invoice at the end of the job is a good place. For a restaurant, the bill or the tray.
Ask at the right moment
The best moment is right after the service: a finished job, a delivery received, a project handed over. The customer remembers it clearly and has their phone in hand.
For an online purchase or an appointment, a short message a few hours or a day later works better than an immediate request.
Simply ask for a review, without steering the answer: no “give us 5 stars”, no “if you liked it”.
Template: text message
“Hello [first name], thank you for visiting [business]. If you have a minute, your review on Google helps us improve and helps other people find us: [link]”
Keep the message short and send it yourself, to customers who have already dealt with you. Avoid mass messages to a bought list.
Template: email
“Subject: Your review of [business] Hello [first name], Thank you for choosing [business]. Your feedback, good or bad, helps us get better. Here is the direct link, it takes less than a minute: [link] Thank you and see you soon, [your signature]”
Send one reminder at most, a few days later. If the person doesn’t answer or says no, don’t insist.
Template: in person
“If you’d like to leave us a review on Google, good or bad, the QR code is right here. It takes a minute and it helps us a lot.”
Say it to all your customers in the same way, not only to the ones who pay you a compliment.
Ask everyone
Google forbids asking only your happy customers (“review gating”). Make the same request to all your customers, with the same link, and accept what comes in. A profile with a few average but genuine reviews inspires more trust than a perfect page.
When the reviews come in
Reply to all of them, negative ones included: future customers read your replies too. The method and templates are in our guide “Replying to Google reviews”.
Now and then, note how many reviews you get per month and what keeps coming up in the comments. It’s more useful than an average rating that moves a little.
What not to do
Offering a discount, a gift or a service in exchange for a review goes against Google’s review rules, even if you don’t ask for it to be positive.
Buying reviews, getting friends, family or employees to write them, or posting some yourself on your own listing is also forbidden. Google can remove the reviews and penalise the listing, and in many countries, France included, fake reviews can be sanctioned as a misleading commercial practice.
The rules change: the safest thing is to reread Google’s official help page on reviews from time to time.