How to Get More Google Reviews in 2026 (Without Breaking Google's or the FTC's Rules)

Getting more Google reviews in 2026 comes down to one habit: asking every customer for an honest review, every time, in a way that follows Google’s content policies and the FTC’s rule on consumer reviews.

That’s the whole method. The rest of this guide is the detail: what’s allowed, what’s banned, how to run the ask so your team actually does it, and what to do about reviews you don’t like.

I’m Fation Syla. My own shop, Enthusiast Auto Works in New Rochelle, New York, has 248 Google reviews at a 4.9 rating. Through F&K Consulting Group, we’ve run review systems for a collision shop in Pompano Beach and a restaurant in Manhattan. Everything below is what we actually do.

Why the rules matter more now

For years, review rules were loosely enforced. Businesses bought reviews, offered discounts for five stars and had staff fill in the gaps. Some still do.

Two things changed that.

First, Google has gotten more aggressive. It removes reviews it identifies as fake, and businesses caught soliciting fake reviews can face restrictions on their profile.

Second, in 2024 the FTC finalized its Trade Regulation Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, 16 CFR Part 465. The rule gives the FTC the ability to seek civil penalties against violators. The FTC’s Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule: Questions and Answers explains it in plain language and is worth reading in full.

So the question isn’t only “will Google catch this?” It’s also “is this a federal violation?”

What Google bans

Google’s prohibited and restricted content policy covers reviews on Maps and business profiles. The parts that matter most for business owners:

• No review gating. You can’t selectively ask only customers you think will leave positive reviews. Asking everyone is the rule.
• No incentives. No discounts, freebies, gift cards, contest entries or payment in exchange for a review. Positive or negative, it doesn’t matter.
• No reviews from people with a conflict of interest. Owners, employees, family, and anyone you pay, including your marketing consultant, can’t review your business. They also can’t review competitors.
• No fake engagement. No reviews from people who weren’t customers, no review swaps with other businesses, no reviews written for customers.
• No quotas or pressure on staff. Requiring employees to collect a set number of reviews pushes people toward the behavior above. Don’t do it.
• No asking for specific content. Don’t tell customers what to write, which keywords to include or which staff member to name. Ask for an honest review.

What the FTC rule bans

The FTC rule overlaps with Google’s policy but carries legal weight. Its main prohibitions:

• Fake reviews and testimonials. Writing, buying or selling reviews that misrepresent who wrote them or that the reviewer had a real experience. This includes AI-generated fake reviews.
• Incentives conditioned on sentiment. Offering anything in exchange for a review that expresses a particular sentiment, positive or negative.
• Undisclosed insider reviews. Reviews by officers, managers, employees or agents (or their relatives) without clear disclosure of the relationship, in certain circumstances, and soliciting them from employees in certain ways.
• Review suppression. Using unjustified legal threats, intimidation or false accusations to stop a review from being posted or to get one removed. Also, misrepresenting that the reviews on your own site are all of them when you’ve suppressed negative ones.
• Company-controlled review sites presented as independent.
• Fake social media indicators, such as bought followers or views used to mislead.

Notice the gap between the two. The FTC rule targets incentives tied to sentiment. Google bans incentives entirely. The practical answer is to follow the stricter rule: no incentives for Google reviews at all.

Allowed vs. banned, side by side

The call-every-customer method

Here’s the method we used at Gold Coast Collision Center in Pompano Beach. It’s simple. The discipline is the hard part.

1. Pull the customer list. Every customer from the recent past, not a hand-picked group. Every one.
2. Create a direct review link. From your Google Business Profile, get the short link that opens the review form. Fewer taps means more reviews.
3. Write a short script. Something like: “Hi, this is Maria from Gold Coast. We just finished your car and wanted to check everything’s good. If you have a minute, would you leave us an honest review on Google? I can text you the link.”
4. Call, then text the link. A phone call from a real person gets far more responses than an automated email. The text makes it one tap.
5. Log every call. Name, date, reached or not, link sent. A simple spreadsheet works.
6. Make it daily. Going forward, the front desk asks every customer at pickup and follows up by text.
7. Respond to every review. Thank the positive ones by name or detail. Handle negative ones calmly.

At Gold Coast, the front desk called every recent customer, with no incentives. We also rebuilt the shop’s Google Business Profile and flagged reviews that appeared to violate Google’s policies. The rating went from 4.4 to 4.7 in one week.

Why does asking everyone work so well? Because satisfied customers rarely think to leave a review unprompted, and frustrated ones often do. Most businesses’ Google ratings understate how most customers actually feel. Asking everyone corrects that, honestly.

Flagging reviews that violate policy

Some reviews break Google’s rules and can be reported. Common examples:

• Spam or fake reviews from people who were never customers.
• Reviews from a competitor or a former employee with a grudge.
• Off-topic reviews about politics, a different business or something unrelated to the customer experience.
• Harassment, hate speech, threats or personal information.
• Reviews that are part of a coordinated attack, such as a burst of one-stars after a social media post.

To report one, use the flag option on the review in Google Maps or your Business Profile, choose the reason that fits, and keep notes. If the first report is rejected, Google provides a way to request a review of the decision through the Business Profile tools. Document why the review breaks a specific policy.

At Lumen Dining & Rooftop in Hell’s Kitchen, we flagged spam reviews to Google and Google removed them. The profile now has 138+ reviews, all five stars. That removal was Google’s decision. Ours was to make a clear, documented case.

What you can’t remove

This is where many owners get frustrated. A real customer who had a bad experience, or thinks they did, is allowed to say so. Even if the review is unfair, exaggerated or one-sided, Google generally won’t remove it if it reflects a genuine experience and doesn’t break a specific policy.

Anyone who promises to remove reviews you simply dislike is either going to fail or going to do something that puts your business at risk. Under the FTC rule, threatening or pressuring a reviewer to take a review down can itself be a violation.

The right move with a fair-but-negative review is a good response:

• Thank them for the feedback.
• Acknowledge the problem without arguing.
• Don’t share private details.
• Offer a direct way to reach the owner or manager.
• If you fix it, they may update the review on their own. You can’t offer them anything to do so.

Future customers read your response as closely as the complaint. A calm, specific reply often does more good than the review did harm.

Common mistakes

• Running a review push once and stopping. Google and customers both notice a burst followed by silence. Steady is better.
• Asking by email only. Response rates are low. A person asking in person or by phone works much better.
• Rewarding staff per review. That’s a quota by another name, and it pushes people toward bad behavior.
• Ignoring reviews. An unanswered one-star sits there looking like you don’t care.
• Review widgets that hide the bad ones on your website while implying they’re all your reviews. That can be deceptive under the FTC rule.

Where to go from here

If you want to run this yourself, the steps above are all you need. Pick one person to own it, make the ask daily and track it.

If you want help, F&K Consulting Group sets up and runs this system as part of our reviews and reputation service, and every new website includes one review push. Book a call and we’ll look at your profile together.