How to get reviews without being weird about it (and what to do when a bad one lands)
Reviews are the closest thing local business has to a cheat code. They decide whether you appear in the map pack, whether a stranger picks you over the firm down the road, and increasingly whether an AI recommends you when someone asks who to call.
And most businesses are terrible at collecting them. Not because they are lazy, but because asking feels awkward, so it never quite happens.
So here is the whole thing: how to ask, how to make asking effortless, what the rules are now, and what to do when someone leaves you a stinker.
The thing nobody tells you: recency beats volume
This has changed, and it has changed recently.
It used to be a numbers game. Get more reviews than the other lot and you win. That is no longer how it works.
Every year Whitespark surveys 47 of the world’s leading local SEO experts on what actually moves local rankings. In the 2026 report, review recency jumped from ranking factor number 93 to number 11. That is the single largest positional jump in the entire study.
Review signals as a whole grew from 16% of local pack influence in 2023 to around 20% in 2026, the biggest increase of any factor category. And Whitespark’s own founder, Darren Shaw, now places review recency in his personal top five.
What that means in practice is blunt: forty reviews collected over the last three months will beat two hundred that are all from 2022.
Customers behave the same way. Research suggests around 74% of people specifically look for reviews written in the last three months, and 68% will only consider a business rated four stars or higher.
If you had a big push a few years back and stopped, you are sitting on an asset that is quietly decaying. A steady trickle beats an occasional flood, every time.
So the goal is not “get loads of reviews.” It is build a habit that produces a few every month, forever.
The rules changed in 2026, and most businesses missed it
Before the tactics, the boundaries. Google tightened its review policy in early 2026 and now enforces it with automated detection that removes offending reviews, sometimes ones you collected months ago. I broke down exactly what changed and what now gets reviews deleted here; the full rules are in Google’s own prohibited and restricted content policy, and they are worth five minutes of your time.
Plenty of advice still floating about is now actively dangerous. Here is the line.
| Practice | Allowed? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Asking a customer for a review | ✓ Yes | Google actively encourages it |
| Follow-up text or email with a link, after you have left | ✓ Yes | The single most effective compliant method |
| QR code or review link on invoices, receipts, cards, your van | ✓ Yes | Passive, available to everyone equally |
| Asking verbally in open terms (“we’d love to hear how we got on”) | ✓ Yes | No pressure, no script |
| Replying to reviews, good and bad | ✓ Yes | Boosts rankings and customer trust |
| Offering a discount, freebie or prize draw for a review | ✗ No | Incentivised reviews are prohibited |
| Asking them to mention a staff name or keyword | ✗ No | Scripting the content of a review |
| Handing over your phone or tablet to review on the spot | ✗ No | Soliciting at point of sale |
| Screening customers and only sending the link to happy ones | ✗ No | Review gating, explicitly banned |
| Setting staff targets for number of reviews collected | ✗ No | Creates pressure and inauthentic reviews |
| Buying reviews, or swapping them with another business | ✗ No | Fake reviews, account-level risk |
Source: Google’s prohibited and restricted content policy for reviews. Google now detects most of this automatically and removes offending reviews, including ones collected before you knew the rule.
The through-line: ask everyone, ask openly, ask after you have left, and never put words in their mouth.
Making it effortless, the physical way
Here is where thirty years of doing this the old way still counts for something. The best review systems are not digital or physical. They are both.
The trick is to remove every second of friction between “that went well” and the review actually being written. Every extra step loses you people.
QR codes on the things you already own
A QR code takes someone from your van to your review page in one tap. Put them where a happy customer will actually see them:
- On the van. Rear doors, at eye level, big enough to scan from a few feet. “Happy with the job? Scan here.”
- On your invoice. They are looking at it anyway, and it arrives at the exact moment the work is fresh.
- On a leave-behind card. A decent card left on the side after a job, with the code on the back.
- On the receipt or the compliment slip. Same principle.
- In the shop or reception, if people come to you. By the till, on the counter, on the back of the door.
Print is not dead for this. It is sat in the customer’s hand at exactly the right moment, which is more than an email can say.
The follow-up message
The single highest-return thing you can do, and it takes a minute.
Send it after you have left, ideally the same day or the next morning while the job is fresh. Text usually beats email for trades. Keep it short, human and low-pressure:
“Hi Dave, glad that is sorted. If you have got a minute, a quick Google review would be a big help. Here is the link. No pressure either way, and give us a shout if anything else crops up.”
That is the whole thing. No incentive, no script, no chasing. If you sent that after every job you would have more reviews than anyone in your trade within a year.
The card that does it for you
This is the bit I built a product around, because it kept coming up.
A digital business card sits on your customer’s phone rather than in a jacket pocket, and one tap takes them to your review page while the work is still fresh. There is a “something not right?” option sitting right next to it, so anyone with a problem can tell you directly instead of stewing on it. Everyone gets the same invitation, which is both the fair way round and the only way Google allows.
You can hand it over by QR code, by text, or by tapping a printed NFC phone case. Which is, when you think about it, print and digital doing the same job together.
What to do when a bad review lands
It will happen. It happens to everyone who does enough work, and it is not the disaster it feels like at eleven at night when you first read it.
First, do not fire back
Whatever you type in the first hour, do not post it. Everyone reading that review later is judging your reply more than the complaint itself.
An angry response turns one unhappy customer into a warning sign for every future customer. A calm one turns it into a demonstration that you handle problems properly.
Reply publicly, resolve privately
The pattern that works:
- Thank them for the feedback. Through gritted teeth if necessary.
- Acknowledge the specific issue without arguing the facts in public.
- Say what you are doing about it.
- Move it offline. “Could you give me a ring on [number] and I will sort it.”
Something like:
“Thanks for letting me know, and I am sorry the finish was not up to standard. That is not how we normally leave a job. I would like to put it right, so could you give me a ring on 01253 xxxxxx and we will get it sorted.”
Short, calm, no excuses, no essay. You are not writing to the complainer. You are writing to the next hundred people who read it.
Reply to the good ones too
This one is worth taking seriously, because the numbers behind it are striking. Businesses that respond to 80% or more of their reviews see a measurable ranking improvement, and roughly 88% of consumers say they would use a business that replies to all its reviews.
Google reads your responses too. A natural mention of the job and the town in your reply is a genuine relevance signal, and it costs nothing.
“Thanks Sue, glad the new bathroom is doing the job. Always happy to help out in Poulton.”
That is a ranking signal and good manners in the same sentence.
When you can get one removed
Rarely, but sometimes. Google will take down reviews that break its policies: fake ones, ones from competitors, ones with abuse or personal information, or reviews for a business the person never used. Report it through your profile and be patient.
What it will not remove is a genuine customer being critical. That one you answer well and bury under fresher, better ones. Which is the real defence: a steady flow of recent reviews means one bad one is a blip rather than the headline.
The whole strategy, in four lines
- Ask every customer, every job, after you have left.
- Make it one tap: QR on the van, on the invoice, on the card.
- Never incentivise, never script, never screen.
- Reply to all of them, especially the bad ones.
Do that and you will not need to think about reviews again. The habit does the work.
Want help getting reviews coming in the right way, without falling foul of the rules? Get your free audit and I’ll tell you straight where your profile stands, or book a call if you’d rather talk it through. Keeping a steady flow of genuine reviews coming, cleanly, month after month, is the sort of thing our local SEO work is built around, and something we handle on the monthly plans so you’re not the one remembering to ask. Either way you’re dealing with me, and I read every message myself, so drop me a line at hello@inkon.co.uk.