The Complete Guide to Getting More
Google Reviews in 2021

How can I get Google reviews for my business?

Want to get started collecting more reviews for your business? Follow these three tips for the best results.

Timing is everything.

Make sure that you send review requests to your customers on the same day as their purchase. The longer you wait, the more the customer’s memory fades and the less likely they are to leave a review.

Keep it simple.

Your customers are busy people who lead busy lives. If the process of leaving a review requires too many steps, they probably won’t do it. That’s why businesses that ask for reviews in-person typically don’t see results. Most customers happily agree, then forget about it as soon as they walk out the front door. Luckily, there’s an easier way: sending review requests through email and SMS. All your customers have to do is click a link and leave a review.

Empower your employees.

If your employees are spending face-to-face time with customers, allow them to send review requests via text and email. If customers have a personal relationship with the employee, they may be more inclined to leave a review.

3 things to avoid at all costs

Some businesses resort to the following tactics to collect reviews. We strongly recommend that you avoid them at all costs. Doing any of the following will lead to a penalty in your search rankings and may even cause your business to be de-indexed from Google entirely.

Do not provide incentives

Providing incentives to customers for reviews is against Google’s policies. Google believes that incentives bias your reviewers and prevent them from giving honest depictions of their experiences. If you’re discovered doing this, you will be penalized in your search rankings.

Don’t gate your reviews

Avoid review gating — the practice of selectively soliciting reviews from customers who you’re absolutely sure will leave a positive review. Not only is this against Google’s policy, but this strategy might also just end up hurting your online reputation. When you’re being this selective, you might miss out on asking customers who would be happy to leave a good review.

Don’t ask employees to leave reviews

Don’t ask for reviews from current or former employees. According to Google, these reviews are likely to be biased and do not represent the true customer experience.

How do you politely ask for a review?

Wondering how you can solicit reviews from your customers? Here’s an email template that you can use.

Here’s a template that you can use for sending review requests via text. We’ve found that keeping it short and sweet usually gets the best results.

Of course, you want to make sure that both of these review requests include a short link to your Google My Business profile. Remember, the easier the process is for customers, the more reviews you’ll get.

‘Google My Business’ explained

In order to get Google reviews, you’ll need to claim your Google My Business (GMB) profile. Your GMB profile will show up when someone searches for your business’s name on search engines. It looks something like this:

There’s one big reason why Google My Business matters: SEO. Google My Business is crucial for getting your business discovered by new customers. According to Moz, Google My Business is the single-largest factor determining your business’s local search ranking.

Corporate knowledge panel

If your business is a corporation with a number of locations, you may see a Corporate Knowledge Panel for your business. This should be claimed and managed by your corporate marketing and brand teams. This panel does not include Google Reviews. It looks something like this:

In addition to the Corporate Knowledge Panel, each of your individual business locations will be able to operate and manage a local knowledge panel tied to a Google My Business account.

At the corporate level, it’s important to ensure these multi-location GMB accounts are set up with consistency and strict guidelines for management. Local location managers should be empowered to ask for and respond to the reviews for their location, and should partner with the corporate team to ensure that their location’s Google My Business account is in tip-top shape.

Optimizing your Google My Business profile for more reviews

The more you optimize your Google My Business profile, the better your chances of ranking high in search results. This in turn, helps you get more organic reviews from customers. So let’s talk about how you can optimize your Google My Business.

Step 1: Claiming Your Business profile
If your business has been around long enough, you can find your listing with a simple company name search. Once you find it, all you need to do is claim the profile. Check out our guide on setting up/claiming your Google My Business profile for more details.

Step 2: Updating Your Business Information
Now that your Google My Business account has been claimed, you can start adding information to your profile that will help more customers discover your business. You can optimize profile to make it more appealing to prospects and customers and get more reviews. For more information on this, check out our complete guide to Google My Business.

How to shorten your Google My Business URL

Google allows businesses to create their own custom short URL for their Google My Business profile. Having a custom short URL makes it easier to share your business profile on review requests, in-person, and on marketing materials. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to get a custom short link to your Google My Business page.

Step 1 – Sign in to Google My Business.

Step 2 – If you have a multi-location business, open the location you wish to create a short name for.

Step 3 – Step 3 – From the menu on the left, click Info > Add profile short name. If this feature is available, you should see this in the box under “phone number”.

Step 4 – Enter your short name. Your short name can be anywhere between 5-32 characters.

Step 5 – Click Apply. Your short name will show as pending. It will show on your business profile when it’s approved.

Now, let’s take some time to answer a couple of common questions about collecting Google reviews.

How many Google reviews does my business need?

More than the competition. The more reviews you have, the merrier. As we said earlier, review quantity is a factor in determining your local search ranking. Businesses with 1000s of reviews have a much better chance of ranking high in Google search results than competitors with just a handful.

Can I write a review without a Google account?

It is no longer possible to write a Google review without a Google account. Before 2018, it was possible to leave an anonymous review. However, the policy led to understandable frustration among business owners. There was no way to tell if an anonymous review came from an actual customer or a competitor who was playing dirty.

Google has taken strides in the past few years to ensure that the reviews posted on its platform are representative of actual customer experiences. Judging by how much Google reviews are valued by customers, the efforts have paid off.

How to get new Google reviews manually

If you’re someone who prefers to do everything yourself, that’s great. All you need to do is find a custom short link to your business’s review page on Google, then send that to your customers via email or SMS. This makes it convenient for your customers to write a review — all they have to do is click the link.

How to automate getting Google reviews

Your team is already swamped with different projects. Sending review requests to all your customers manually at the end of every business day can be a time-consuming process. It’s a lot of work to add on for your employees.

This is why we recommend that you automate the process of getting reviews. Let review generation be part of your business just like sending invoices.

Experience Marketing software can take care of the whole process for you. Birdeye, for example, uses deep-linking to route customers directly to the Google review form in a single click. This makes the process of writing a review even easier than not writing one — especially when the customer is happy with their experience and likes your business. Birdeye takes care of this process for Google and over 150 other review sites.

Birdeye is fully integrated with Google, so every step of the review collection process is automatic. In fact, Birdeye is one of the few companies integrated directly with Google's private API, which makes the collection process easier and review load times faster.