Getting Found Online
Google Reviews in 2026: How to Ask, When to Ask, and What the Fake-Review Law Means for You
Buying reviews, rewarding them quietly, or only asking the happy customers can now earn a fine. Here’s what’s banned, what’s still fine, and a script for asking that actually works.
8 min readBy Mavlo
Ask a Leicester barber how he gets Google reviews and you’ll usually get a shrug. "People just leave them." Sometimes that’s true. More often they arrive in a clump after a good month, then nothing for a year, and the newest one is from a customer who moved to Nottingham in 2023.
Two things have changed that make this worth fixing. The first is that reviews now do more of the work in deciding who appears on the map. The second is that, since April 2025, there is a UK law about how you’re allowed to get them, and most owners have never heard of it. Neither change is bad news if you’re honest. Both are worth ten minutes.
The law nobody mentioned at the trade counter
The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 added fake reviews to the list of practices that are automatically unfair and illegal in the UK. The CMA published its guidance on the ban on 4 April 2025, and by 7 April it was announcing the new regime was in force. Under those powers, the CMA can fine a business up to 10% of its global turnover for breaching consumer protection law. Early fines are expected to be smaller and aimed at the worst offenders, but the law applies to a two-chair salon exactly as it applies to Amazon.
The guidance runs to 29 pages, so here is the version that matters to a small business. Four things are banned:
- Buying or writing fake reviews. A fake review is one that "purports to be, but is not, based on a person’s genuine experience". That covers the cousin who has never been in and the member of staff asked to "just leave us a quick five stars".
- Hidden incentives. A discount, a voucher or a free coffee in exchange for a review is only lawful if the review makes clear it was incentivised. If the reader can’t tell, it is a "concealed incentivised review". (A prize draw that guarantees nobody anything is the one carve-out the guidance mentions.)
- Suppressing genuine negatives. Threatening a reviewer, quietly stopping review invitations whenever a customer looks unhappy, or offering a refund or gift card to get a one-star edited. That last one is a listed example of unlawful commissioning.
- Cherry-picking. The guidance names "encouraging just those who are satisfied to leave reviews" as a way of misleading people. So the widely sold trick of asking "how did we do?" first and only sending the Google link to the happy ones is out.
Google agrees on all four. Its content policy tells businesses not to offer incentives and not to "discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers", and its help page for owners calls incentivised reviews "fake & misleading content" that is strictly prohibited. The law and the platform now point the same way.
What you’re still allowed to do (which is most of it)
The relief is that asking is fine. The CMA says plainly that encouraging reviews "without predetermining the contents or sentiment", for example by emailing customers to ask if they’d like to leave one, is not prohibited. You can ask every customer, in person, by text, by email or with a QR code on the counter. Google itself suggests sharing a review link or a QR code. What you can’t do is decide in advance who gets asked based on how happy they look, or attach a reward that the review keeps quiet about.
The law does allow a reward, provided the review says so and still reflects what the customer actually thought. But Google doesn’t allow incentivised reviews at all, and the guidance notes that posting one where the platform forbids it is "likely to be misleading". So for Google the answer is: don’t. Ask nicely, ask everyone, and leave the reward out of it.
The plain test
If a stranger reading the review would feel tricked once they knew how it came about, don’t do it. If they’d shrug, you’re fine.
When to ask, and the words to use
Timing does most of the work. A plumber in Loughborough who texts the link while he’s still in the van outside the house will get a review. The same plumber emailing three weeks later, when the boiler is just a boiler again, mostly won’t. Ask at the moment the customer is most pleased: the haircut in the mirror, the invoice that came in under the quote, the dentist’s chair as they stand up. Then make it a one-tap job: your Google Business Profile has a review link built in.
A script that works for most trades:
- In person: "If you’ve got a minute later, a Google review really helps a small place like ours get found. I’ll text you the link so you don’t have to search for us."
- The text, sent within the hour: "Thanks for coming in today, Dan. If you’re happy to leave us a review, here’s the direct link. Honest feedback either way is welcome. Sam at the Cutting Room."
- One follow-up, a week later, if nothing came: "No pressure at all, but the link’s still here if you’ve got thirty seconds."
The phrase "honest feedback either way" is doing real work. It tells the customer you’re not fishing, and it is exactly the behaviour the guidance describes as allowed.
Why a steady trickle beats a burst
Reviews affect where you appear on the map, and Google says so. Its own explanation of local ranking lists prominence as one of three main factors and states that "more reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking". Our primer on how local search ranks has the full picture; reviews are the part of prominence you can influence from behind the counter.
It isn’t only the count. In Whitespark’s 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey "recency of reviews" sits at number 11 for map results and "sustained influx of reviews over time (rather than bursts)" at number 14, a few places behind the overall star rating and the number of reviews with text. Twenty reviews in a week after a Facebook plea, then silence, reads to Google like something happened. Two a week for a year reads like a business people keep going back to.
Customers read it the same way. BrightLocal’s 2025 survey found 87% of consumers use Google to read reviews, and that people weigh how old a review is. A wall of four-year-old praise doesn’t tell anyone whether you’re still good.
Replying to a bad one, and why the good ones need a reply too
A one-star review isn’t the emergency it feels like. The CMA guidance is explicit that a review isn’t fake just because the business disagrees with it, and Google removes reviews for breaking its content rules, not for being unfair. What you control is the reply, and the reply is read by everyone who comes after.
Keep it short, and write it for the next customer rather than the one who’s cross. Thank them, say what happened in one sentence if you know, say what you’ve changed or offer to sort it offline, and stop. Don’t argue the facts, don’t mention the law, and never offer money for the review to be edited. "Sorry we let you down on Tuesday, Mark. We were a stylist short and it showed. Call me on the shop number and I’ll put it right." That’s the whole thing.
Reply to the good ones too. Google’s ranking help says that replying to reviews "shows that you value their feedback" and that helpful replies can help a business stand out. BrightLocal found people want to see a business responding to all of its feedback, the complaints included, and most expect a reply within about a week. A two-line "thanks, Priya, see you in six weeks" takes twenty seconds and tells the next reader there’s a person behind the pin.
Where a directory fits in
You’ll notice Mavlo doesn’t run its own review system, and that is deliberate. Every review a customer leaves is a vote, and the votes only count towards the map when they’re cast on Google. A star rating on a directory does nothing for your position in Maps. So a Mavlo listing shows your Google rating and your latest Google reviews to locals browsing the directory, and when someone wants to leave one, it sends them to Google. Your reviews stay in the one place where they affect ranking. The same logic runs through why a directory listing and your Google Business Profile do different jobs.
One thing to check while you’re there: name, address and phone number should match your website and your listing exactly. Reviews attach to a profile, and inconsistent details are the commonest reason a business ends up with two half-empty profiles instead of one full one.
What to do this week
- Open your Google Business Profile, find the review link, and save it as a text template on your phone and on whoever’s at the front desk.
- Print the QR code and stick it where people pay.
- Pick the one moment in your day when customers are happiest and make asking part of that moment, every time, for everyone.
- Reply to every review from the last three months, good and bad, in two or three sentences each.
- If you’ve ever offered a discount for a review, or sent the link only to happy customers, stop now. The rule is: ask everyone, reward no one.
None of this needs a marketing team. It needs a link on your phone and a sentence you’re comfortable saying.
Key takeaways
- Since April 2025, fake, secretly incentivised and cherry-picked reviews are unlawful in the UK, with fines of up to 10% of turnover.
- Asking every customer for an honest review, at the right moment, is allowed. That is the whole technique.
- Recency and a steady flow of reviews are ranking signals on the map; a burst followed by silence is worse than a trickle.
- Reply to everything. The reply is for the next customer, not the last one.
Your reviews, working harder
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