Somewhere right now, a contractor is paying for review software that quietly asks customers "how was your experience?" first, sends the happy ones to Google, and routes the unhappy ones to a private feedback form. It feels clever. It is called review gating, and it is specifically what Google's review policies prohibit.
What the rule says
Google's policy language is short: businesses shouldn't "discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers." Two behaviors sit squarely inside that sentence:
- Filtering. Pre-screening customers by sentiment and only inviting the satisfied ones to review you.
- Incentivizing. Offering a discount, a gift card, or an entry in a drawing in exchange for a review, positive or not.
The FTC now has a rule aimed at the same territory: buying, incentivizing, or misrepresenting reviews can carry real civil penalties, not just a platform slap. This stopped being a gray area a while ago.
What a penalty looks like
Nobody gets a letter. What happens is quieter and worse: reviews start getting filtered or removed, new ones stop appearing, and in serious cases the profile's reviews are suspended entirely while your competitors' keep growing. For a contractor who lives on the map pack, that is the phone going quiet with no explanation.
And the risk usually arrives bundled inside software the owner never inspected. If your review tool has a "minimum star rating" setting or a "feedback first" step, it is gating on your behalf, under your business name.
The compliant way is also the better way
The fix is boring: ask every customer, the same way, after every real completed job. No filter, no incentive, no ghostwriting.
Asked consistently, most customers who respond leave positive reviews anyway. People who had a fine experience just need the nudge and the link. The occasional three-star review does two useful things: it makes the five-star ones believable, and it tells you something true about a crew or a process. Respond to it professionally in public and it reads better to the next homeowner than a suspiciously perfect wall of praise.
Timing beats volume
The single biggest factor in whether a customer leaves a review is how soon you ask. A request an hour or two after the technician leaves, while the house is comfortable again, converts at a completely different rate than a newsletter blast three weeks later. That is the whole argument for automating the ask off the job itself instead of depending on a busy technician remembering.
A quick self-audit
- Does your review tool ask "how did we do?" before showing the Google link? That's gating.
- Do your technicians offer anything for a review, even a sticker? That's incentivizing.
- Do requests go to every customer, or only the ones the office liked? Only some is selective solicitation.
- Are reviews written or "polished" by anyone other than the customer? That one can now involve the FTC.
If any answer made you wince, fix the process before Google fixes it for you. Our own review automation is built inside these rules on purpose: every customer gets the same message, triggered by the completed job, because a review count that survives scrutiny is the only kind worth building.
