Reputation
How do you ask for reviews without annoying customers or breaking the rules?
When to ask, what to say, which platform to send them to, and why filtering out the unhappy ones is both against the rules and worse for business than the bad review would have been.
How MarketWar handles it
Review gating — asking how somebody feels first and only routing the happy ones to a public review — breaches Google's policies and can remove every review you have. This platform will not do it: 100% of requests go to the same place regardless of what the customer thinks of you.
Reviews are the cheapest marketing available to a local business and most never ask. The ones who do usually ask once, at the wrong moment, in a way that makes it easy to ignore.
The timing
Ask when the value is most visible to the customer — not when it is most convenient for you.
For a trade that is standing in the finished room. For a product, a few days after it has been used. For a service, at the point where whatever they were worried about has demonstrably not happened.
The worst moment is with the invoice, because the association is with paying.
The message
Short, specific, one link. Name the job. Say how long it takes. Do not attach a document.
"Thanks again for having us in on Tuesday — the bathroom looks great. If you have a minute, a quick review here helps other people in [town] find us: [link]. Takes about thirty seconds."
That is the whole thing. Anything longer reads as a campaign.
The rule people break
Do not gate. Asking how somebody feels first and only routing the happy ones to a public review is against Google's policies and can cost you every review you have.
It is also commercially worse. A page of nothing but five stars reads as bought. A three-star review with a calm, specific reply underneath it persuades more than a perfect record does, because it proves the reviews are real and shows how you behave when something goes wrong.
Which platform
Whichever your customers actually check. For most local businesses that is Google, because it feeds the map pack. Trade-specific platforms matter where buyers use them. Spreading thin across nine platforms produces nine sparse profiles.
Related: getting found in your own town.
What to do with a bad one
Reply within a day, in public, without arguing.
Name what happened, say what you have changed, and offer to sort it. Do not explain why the customer is mistaken, even when they are — the reply is not written for them, it is written for the next twenty people reading it.
A calm reply under a three-star review sells more work than a wall of five stars, because it is the only evidence a stranger has of how you behave when something goes wrong.
The one that quietly costs the most
Asking once. A single request converts a small fraction of customers; a request and one polite reminder converts considerably more, and after two nobody should be asked again.
Where this feeds back
Review count and recency both feed local ranking, so this is not only reputation work — it is the cheapest thing on the local visibility list, and it is the one most businesses never start.
What this does not do
Asking works and nothing makes a bad experience produce a good review. The fix for consistently poor reviews is upstream of any request system.
Common questions
When should I ask for a review?
When the value is most obvious to the customer — for a trade, as the job is finished and they can see it; for a product, a few days after it arrives and has been used. Not at invoice time, when the association is with paying.
Is it against the rules to filter out unhappy customers?
Yes. Review gating breaches Google's policies and risks removal of your reviews. It is also worse commercially: a page of nothing but five stars reads as bought, and a well-handled three-star reply persuades more than a perfect record.
Can I offer a discount for a review?
Paying for reviews breaches most platforms' policies and, in the UK, the CMA treats undisclosed incentivised reviews as misleading. Ask for the review; give the discount to everybody or to nobody.
Related
Why your business does not show up for your own town
The six causes of local invisibility in the order they matter, starting with the one that outranks your website entirely and costs nothing to fix.
Why AI assistants never mention your business
When somebody asks an assistant for a plumber in their town, something decides which names come back. What it reads, why most small business sites are invisible to it, and what you can actually change.