How to Get More Google Reviews and Make the Most of Your Business Profile

Before most people call a business for the first time, they read its reviews. Those same reviews help decide whether you appear in Google’s map results at all. Few things a service business can do online pay off twice like that.

This guide covers how reviews affect your visibility, how to earn more of them within the rules, how to answer them, and how to set up the Business Profile they live on.

Do Google reviews help SEO?

Yes. Google lists prominence as one of the three factors in local ranking, and says that more reviews and positive ratings can help a business’s local ranking. Replies count too: Google notes that positive reviews and helpful replies can help a business stand out.

Reviews also do something rankings can’t: they persuade. A steady stream of recent, detailed reviews tells customers you’re active, reliable and used to work like theirs.

Set up your Business Profile first

Reviews collect on your Google Business Profile, so make sure the profile does its job:

• Claim and verify it, and give a second trusted person in your company access.
• Choose the right primary category, then add secondary ones for real services.
• Use your real business name. Adding keywords breaks Google’s guidelines.
• Show your address, or your service area if customers don’t come to you.
• Keep your hours current, including holidays.
• List your services, with short descriptions.
• Add photos regularly: your team, your work, your vehicles and your premises.
• Link to the right page of your website, and add a booking link if you take appointments online.

How to get more Google reviews

Most satisfied customers are willing to leave a review. They need to be asked, at the right moment, in a way that takes them a minute.

1. Ask at the right moment: when the job is done and the customer is happy, such as at handover, after a good appointment or with the final invoice.
2. Make it easy. Your Business Profile gives you a short review link and a QR code under “Read Reviews”, then “Get more reviews”. You can get the QR code only in a computer’s browser, not on a phone. Put the link in your follow-up email or text, and the QR code on invoices, receipts or a card.
3. Ask in person first, then follow up once by email or text. A request from the person who did the work beats an automated message.
4. Make it part of the process. Decide who asks, and when, after every completed job.
5. Ask for their experience, not for stars. “Would you mind sharing how the project went?” invites a useful review. Don’t tell customers what to write or what rating to give.
6. Reply to every review. It shows future customers you’re listening, and reminds everyone that reviews are read.

What’s not allowed

Review rules have teeth. Google removes reviews that break its policies and can restrict profiles that collect them, and the Federal Trade Commission’s rule on fake reviews, in force since October 2024, allows penalties for businesses that buy or fake them. Don’t:

• offer discounts, gifts or prize draws in exchange for reviews;
• ask only happy customers, or decide who gets the request based on their answer to a first question (often called review gating);
• write reviews yourself, or ask employees or relatives to;
• buy reviews, or pay a service that posts them;
• post reviews on competitors’ profiles.

How to respond to reviews

Positive reviews. Thank the customer by name, mention something specific from the review and keep it short. Vary your replies: the same “Thanks for your business!” under every review reads as automatic.

Negative reviews. A calm, helpful reply can win more trust than the review costs you, because future customers read how you handle problems.

1. Wait until you’re calm, but reply within a day or two.
2. Acknowledge the experience without arguing about the details in public.
3. Don’t share private information. Never confirm details about the customer, their job or their account. This matters even more in health care, legal and financial services.
4. Offer a way to resolve it offline, with a name and a direct contact.
5. Follow up. If you fix the problem, the customer may update the review.

Fake or abusive reviews. If a review breaks Google’s policies, for example because it comes from someone who was never a customer or it’s offensive, report it from your Business Profile. Reply briefly and politely in the meantime, and don’t accuse anyone.

Use your reviews on your website

Reviews do more work when customers see them on your site: near your contact forms, on service pages and on a reviews page. Quote them accurately with the reviewer’s first name, or show them with a widget that links back to Google.

One technical note: marking up your own reviews with structured data won’t earn star ratings in Google’s results for a local business. Google stopped showing stars for reviews a business publishes about itself in 2019.

Business Profile checklist

• Profile claimed and verified, with two people who can access it.
• Correct primary and secondary categories.
• Real business name, without keywords.
• Address or service area set correctly.
• Hours current, including holidays.
• Services listed with descriptions.
• New photos added every month or two.
• Review link and QR code in follow-up emails, texts and invoices.
• Every review answered.
• Profile details matching your website and other listings.

For the bigger picture, read our local SEO guide. If you’d like help setting up your profile and a review process that fits your business, our SEO work covers both. Book a call to talk it through.