Guide

How to get more Google reviews without being weird about it

Almost nobody leaves a review unprompted. Almost everybody leaves one when asked properly, at the right moment, with a link that takes one tap.

Doparoot · 31 August 2026

Why this is worth an afternoon

Google names prominence as one of three factors deciding who appears in local results, and reviews are part of prominence. That is the ranking argument, and it is real.

The better argument is simpler. Somebody comparing three roofers is not reading your website. They are looking at three numbers in a row and picking one. You are being compared whether you participate or not.

In our study of 141 local service businesses, the median review count in towns under 5,000 people was 12. Not 200. Twelve. In a small town the bar is far lower than it feels, and a fortnight of asking puts you past most of the people you compete with.

Get your link first

Before you ask anybody anything, get the short link. Without it you are asking a customer to search for you, find the right listing, scroll, and tap stars, which is roughly four opportunities to give up.

Google Business Profile › Ask for reviews › copy link

Save it in your phone as a text shortcut. If typing it takes effort, it will happen for a week and then stop.

The ask

Say it out loud, at the end of the job, while you are packing up:

That is the whole script. Three things are doing the work: you asked a person rather than a phone, you said why it matters, and you told them how long it takes. The last one matters more than it should. People do not decline reviews because they are unhappy. They decline because they assume it involves an account, a password, and eight minutes.

Then send the text before you drive away. Not that evening, not Friday.

Timing is most of it

Goodwill has a half-life measured in hours. The same customer who would have raved on Tuesday afternoon will, by Thursday, have moved on to whatever else is on fire in their life.

• Ask at the end of the job, in person, not by email a week later
• Send the link within the hour, while they still remember your name
• Ask everybody, not only the ones who seemed thrilled — cherry picking is how you end up with nine reviews and no pattern
• One follow-up, three days later, then stop. Two is a reminder. Four is a reason to leave a different kind of review

What gets reviews removed

Worth knowing before you build a habit on top of a policy violation:

• No incentives. No discount, no free filter, no entry into a draw. Google prohibits incentivised reviews and they can be removed
• No review gating. Screening customers first and only sending the link to the happy ones is against the policy, and it is what most “reputation” tools quietly do
• Don't write your own, and don't have your staff or your family write them. It is obvious more often than people think
• Don't buy them. Whatever the price is, the risk is your profile

The rules are, on the whole, just “ask honestly and take what you get”, which is also the only version that keeps working.

Replying, including to the bad ones

In our study, a large share of businesses had reviews and had never replied to any of them. It is free, it takes a minute, and it is the most visible signal on the profile that somebody is actually running the place.

Good replies are short and specific. “Thanks Dave, glad the new thermostat sorted it” reads like a person. “Thank you for your valued feedback” reads like a form, eleven times in a row.

For a bad one: reply within a day or two, do not argue, say what you would do differently, and offer to sort it offline. You are not writing to the person who left it. You are writing to the next customer, who is reading it in a car park deciding whether to call you. A calm reply under a one-star review has convinced more people than the review lost you.