How to legally solicit reviews on Facebook and Google

Yes, it is legal to solicit reviews on Google and Facebook, as long as businesses follow platform guidelines. This means asking all customers (not just happy ones), avoiding incentives or fake reviews, and ensuring transparency. When done correctly, review solicitation helps improve visibility, credibility, and customer trust.

Summary

92% of customers read at least two reviews before making a purchase, making review generation a critical part of modern marketing. Google and Facebook dominate the review ecosystem, influencing both search rankings and customer decisions.

In this blog, we explain how businesses can legally solicit reviews on these platforms using proven strategies like automated requests, QR codes, and social media prompts. We also explore how an agentic approach to reputation management helps businesses scale review generation, responses, and insights, ensuring consistent growth without increasing manual effort.

Why solicit Google reviews and Facebook Recommendations?

We know that online reviews have a long-lasting impact on purchase decisions. However, you may wonder why it is important to focus more on Google and Facebook.

According to Birdeye research, Google holds a majority share of all online reviews, with 79% of all online reviews written on the platform. Our study shows that Google captures over 90% of reviews in the retail, healthcare, legal, and home service industries. 

Being active here means you can display social proof and sway market sentiment towards you, turning a visitor into a customer. 

While 87% of businesses view Facebook as mission-critical for growth, studies also show that consumers depend on recommendations from friends, family, and social proof when selecting a business or service provider.

This underscores the value of actively soliciting recommendations on Facebook.

Things to know before you solicit reviews on Google and Facebook:
1. Ensure that your team has claimed each Google Business Profile and Facebook profile before starting a review generation campaign. You can only respond to reviews or send direct review links from claimed profiles. 
2. Request every customer to write a review, not just the happy customers. Google and the FTC are strictly against review gating. 
3. While soliciting reviews, follow the terms and conditions of each platform. Make sure that your team is not buying reviews for the business.  
4. A review management tool facilitates easy review generation, monitoring, and responding across multiple profiles, making it an essential tool for large businesses. 

9 ways to legally solicit reviews on Google and Facebook to grow your business

Businesses can employ the following proven ways to legally solicit reviews on Google and Facebook: 

1. Automate review requests via email and SMS
2. Train employees to collect in-person reviews
3. Use QR codes to collect reviews
4. Add Google review and Facebook review widgets to the website
5. Ask for customer reviews via Facebook post 
6. Include review CTA in all communications 
7. Share review links on social media 
8. Request survey participants to leave a review on Google and Facebook 
9. Periodically run review campaigns 

Let us explore these methods in detail. 

Automate review requests via email and SMS 

Timing is key to converting review requests into actual reviews. Sending a request right after a transaction increases the likelihood of customer feedback. However, manual requests often lack consistency, especially in larger organizations. 

Automating review requests through SMS and email ensures a seamless process, making it easier for customers to leave reviews. 

A Birdeye study shows that in 2023, 60% of review requests were sent via email, achieving a 20% open rate and a 7% click-through rate. SMS is also becoming popular, especially with Gen Z customers entering the market.

Utilizing both email and SMS can help you legally solicit reviews on Google and Facebook, enhancing your overall reputation.

Train employees to collect in-person reviews

The best way to get more reviews on Facebook and Google is to simply ask all your customers. While many businesses shy away from training employees to directly make the request, it is one of the best ways to generate a higher volume of reviews across any channel. 

A Birdeye study on online reviews for multi-location businesses shows that 54% of consumers leave a positive review after a happy experience. You can leverage this by encouraging employees to connect with customers. A personal touch is more likely to prompt a review than just sending an email or SMS. 

Use QR codes to collect reviews

Easy facilitation for the review writing process significantly improves the success rate of these campaigns. Your on-ground team can help you actively solicit reviews for your business with easy-to-use QR codes that can direct customers to the review page.

Point-and-use solutions are becoming increasingly popular among consumers, and businesses can capitalize on this by turning review links into QR codes. 

Add Google review and Facebook review widgets to the website

Using QR codes is one way to simplify the review writing process. Businesses should ensure review links are accessible from all major customer touchpoints, especially websites.

A simple solution is to add a Google review widget or a Facebook widget to drive traffic to your business page.

Displaying the Google review or Facebook review widget prominently helps generate a higher volume of reviews by:

• Reminding customers of your presence on these platforms 
• Making it easy for them to click and write a review 
• Allowing them to access your business pages and peruse the other reviews on these sites. Seeing an active presence may motivate them to share their experience as well 

How to link Facebook reviews to Google Business Profile? 

Like your website, your Google Business Profile is an essential customer touchpoint. Linking your Facebook reviews here helps you solicit reviews/recommendations on that platform, too. 

Here are the steps to link Facebook reviews to your Google Business Profile: 

1. Link your website to your Google Business Profile so that Google can recognize that as an external source of information
2. Add a local business schema to your website and use the SameAs property to add social media URLs. 
3. Include links to your Facebook reviews page on your website 
4. Add your Facebook page on other social media platforms 

Ask for customer reviews via Facebook post 

As we mentioned previously, customers are happy to write reviews for your business and will likely do so immediately when directly asked. Facebook provides a good opportunity to solicit reviews directly from your followers and customers by posting on your Facebook business page. 

You can tag your business page on your post directing customers to click on the link and share their experience. 

How do I ask customers for reviews on Facebook?

Here are a few foolproof ways to ask customers for reviews on Facebook:

• Respond to the comments that mention they had a good experience with your business 
• End all Messenger interactions by inviting customers to recommend your business on Facebook 
• Create a weekly post series where you highlight existing customer feedback and invite others to share their experience as well. 

Note: Do not actively discourage negative reviews, or the platform may find you guilty of review gating. Ask all customers to share their experiences and work on providing a superior customer experience to gain favorable reviews.  

Include a review CTA in all communications 

Does your business send newsletters via email marketing campaigns? Do you invest in direct marketing techniques like postcards, catalogs, or mail marketing? It is time to start soliciting reviews via these channels as well. 

As your customers constantly see the review links, they will eventually take the time to write a review. 

Just including a CTA banner that links to Google reviews or the Facebook business page can significantly boost your review generation efforts. 

Other effective places to add a review CTA banner include product pages, service pages, the Contact Us page on the website, blog posts, and multimedia messages (MMS). 

Share review links on social media 

Social media is a powerful customer engagement platform, so don’t limit your review requests to Facebook. Include a review generation message in your content marketing strategy to ensure customers can easily access the review link and remember to write a review, broadening your campaign’s reach.

Use your social media accounts to solicit reviews for Google, Facebook, and other niche review sites.

How do I ask for Google reviews on social media? 

Use the following strategies to generate Google reviews from your social media accounts:

• Create a period Instagram story linking to the appropriate Google reviews page 
• Encourage your customers on social media to review you via Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter posts 
• Add review links to your social media bios. 

Request survey participants to leave a review on Google and Facebook

Businesses that regularly conduct customer surveys can also use this opportunity to solicit Google reviews and Facebook recommendations. Customers who have already shared their experience are more likely to take an extra minute to write a review. 

This process also reminds customers of their actual experience through the survey questions, prompting them to leave a factual and detailed review.

Periodically run review generation campaigns 

Getting customers to write reviews on any channel is not a one-time process. Many customers find it hard to leave a review when they receive a request and may even forget it later. That is why businesses must invest in a review management tool like Birdeye, which helps identify gaps and send repeated requests to customers. 

Of course, ensure that you don’t spam your customers to avoid getting blocked by them. 

More reviews, higher growth – Invest in review generation across platforms 

It is time to dispel any doubt about whether asking for customer reviews is the right thing to do for your business. Customers are happy to share their experiences, especially if they had a positive experience with your business. Asking them to do so will only motivate them further. 

Businesses must develop an active review generation strategy that includes posting on social media, promoting the review links, installing QR codes in the store, and encouraging employees to ask for reviews after a transaction. 

Gathering a higher volume of reviews across social media platforms boosts your online reputation, improves local search rankings for business profiles, and helps reach a wider audience. 

FAQs on how to solicit reviews on Google and Facebook

Generate more reviews for your business with Birdeye 

Generating reviews consistently across Google, Facebook, and other platforms is an operational challenge, especially for multi-location brands managing high customer volumes and multiple profiles.

Birdeye, the #1 Agentic Marketing Platform, helps brands with 100-10,000+ locations move beyond manual review collection by deploying AI agents that automate and optimize the entire review lifecycle. Built on Local Intelligence, these agents act as a governed extension of your marketing team, ensuring every review request, response, and insight aligns with your brand and drives measurable outcomes.

Review Generation Agent: Optimize every request

Manually asking for reviews leads to inconsistent results. The Review Generation Agent identifies the right timing, channel, and messaging to convert customer interactions into high-quality reviews.

• Automates review requests via SMS and email across locations
• Continuously optimizes messaging to improve conversion rates
• Ensures every customer is asked, helping avoid review gating

The outcome: Higher review volume and stronger ratings across Google, Facebook, and key platforms.

Review Response Agent: Respond faster with consistency

Responding to reviews at scale can be time-consuming and inconsistent. The Review Response Agent drafts personalized, brand-aligned replies based on sentiment, context, and customer history.

• Generates contextual, empathetic responses for every review
• Maintains brand-safe communication with human-in-the-loop approvals
• Helps improve engagement and trust across platforms

The outcome: Faster response times and a stronger, more consistent brand reputation.

Review Reporting Agent: Turn feedback into action

Collecting reviews is only valuable if you can learn from them. The Review Reporting Agent transforms customer feedback into clear, actionable insights.

• Analyzes trends across locations and platforms
• Identifies recurring issues impacting customer experience
• Provides insights that help teams improve operations and service quality

The outcome: Better decision-making driven by real customer feedback.

By adopting an agentic approach to reputation management, businesses can scale review generation, maintain compliance with platform guidelines, and turn customer feedback into a continuous growth engine, without increasing operational complexity.

Want to generate more reviews while staying fully compliant with Google and Facebook guidelines? Watch a free demo to see how Birdeye helps you automate and scale your review strategy.