Short answer: You can ask your customers for reviews, but since April 2026, Google has explicitly prohibited three practices that were common until recently: setting a review goal for your team, asking customers to mention an employee by name, and pressuring them to leave a review while they are still in your establishment. In addition, there are the usual prohibitions: no incentives, no filtering who leaves reviews, and no reviews from employees or family members.
If your business does any of those things, it's not a theoretical risk. Google is removing reviews and restricting listings.
What exactly changed?
Google changed its policy on user-generated content in Maps at two points in 2026.
February. The text regarding pressure in the premises was made stricter. What was previously a recommendation is now actually enforced.
April 16. Google published its 2025 Trust and Safety Report and announced that its moderation would be moving to Gemini. The report's figures illustrate the scale of the issue: 292 million reviews that violated policies were blocked or removed during 2025.
April 17. The next day, Google added two new clauses to the rating manipulation section. These two are the ones that catch most businesses off guard:
- Businesses are prohibited from requiring their staff to obtain a specific number of reviews.
- Businesses are prohibited from asking their staff to solicit reviews with specific content, including the name of an employee.
Both were considered normal practices. Many businesses had been running internal contests for years based on the number of reviews, or training their staff to ask customers to mention them. Now both are violations.
The employee name clause: where is the line
This is the one that generates the most confusion, so it's worth clarifying.
Google No They banned reviews that mention employees. If a customer writes on their own that Andrea provided excellent service, that review is perfectly valid and can be published and featured.
What is prohibited is for the business to manufacture it: to train the team to ask to be mentioned, or to build a campaign around nominal mentions.
The difference lies in who initiated it. A spontaneous mention is legitimate. A provoked one is not.
Complete list of prohibited items
| Practice | Is it allowed? |
|---|---|
| Offer discounts, gifts, points, or any benefit in exchange for a review. | No |
| Offering an incentive for someone to modify or remove a negative review | No |
| Filter who you ask for a review based on whether you expect it to be good (review gating) | No |
| Discourage or prevent negative reviews | No |
| Pressuring the customer to leave a review while in the store | No |
| Use shared kiosks or tablets to collect reviews | No |
| Set a review target for your team | No (since April 2026) |
| Ask the customer to mention an employee by name. | No (since April 2026) |
| Posting reviews from multiple accounts managed by the same person | No |
| Reviews from employees, suppliers, family members, or partners | No |
| Request a review via SMS or email after the service, using open language. | Yeah |
| Remind the customer that they can leave their opinion, without conditioning it. | Yeah |
| Respond to all reviews, good and bad | Yeah |
| Reward your team for customer satisfaction or NPS | Yeah |
That last point deserves clarification, because it's where many businesses can revamp their incentive system without breaking anything. Google prohibits rewarding customers for leaving reviews. It doesn't prohibit rewarding employees for providing good service. Tying team bonuses to measured satisfaction, average rating, or NPS is still valid. What's not valid is tying them to the number of reviews received.
The retroactive aspect is what hurts the most.
Here's the part that most people overlook.
Reviews obtained through now-prohibited methods can be removed even if they were published before the policy change. In other words, if you ran a giveaway campaign in 2024 for those who left reviews, those reviews can still be removed today.
If your profile grew using practices that are no longer valid, you have an outstanding debt. And automated moderation is much better at detecting outdated patterns than it was a year ago.
What you should do is conduct an audit: review unexplained spikes in volume, reviews concentrated in just a few days, and short, generic reviews from accounts with no history. Google flags unusual volume spikes as a sign of manipulation regardless of intent, so anomalous growth can harm you even if it's legitimate.
How to ask for reviews correctly
With the restrictions clearly defined, the remaining margin is still ample.
Always ask, everyone. The temptation to select only happy customers is exactly what Google calls review gating and treats it as a deceptive practice. Asking everyone for reviews isn't just the right thing to do: it creates a more credible profile, and a business with a 4.6 rating and a few three-star reviews is perceived as more trustworthy than one with a perfect 5.0.
Order right after service. The memory is fresh and the response rate is much higher. Immediate automated SMS requests work significantly better than manual or delayed ones.
Use open language. “Tell us about your experience” is fine. “Leave us five stars and mention your technician” is not.
Outside the premises. The link in the follow-up email or SMS is fine. The tablet on the counter while the customer is paying is not.
Let it be sustained, not jerky. Ten reviews a month consistently are worth more and raise less suspicion than one hundred in a week.
Direct link. Fewer clicks mean higher conversion rates. Google generates a short link from your listing.
One additional detail that almost no one is looking at.
There seems to have been a freshness signal that penalizes inactive profiles: profiles that haven't added photos or posts in 30 days are left behind.
If your strategy is limited to accumulating reviews and the listing is otherwise abandoned, you're leaving visibility on the table.
Why this matters more than it seems
Google accounts for the majority of the volume. According to Birdeye's State of Online Reviews 2026 report, it generated 79.41% of all reviews by site during 2025.
It's not just one channel among many. For a local business, it's practically the only one that makes a difference. Losing reviews for a single violation isn't just a one-off reputational issue: it's losing ground.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I offer a discount in exchange for an honest review?
No. Google prohibits any incentive for leaving a review, whether positive or negative. Asking for an "honest" review doesn't change anything: the incentive itself is the violation.
Can I have a tablet in the store for customers to leave their review?
It's not recommended. Updated guidelines penalize shared kiosks and tablets for collecting reviews, as well as pressuring customers within the establishment.
A customer mentioned my employee by name. Do I have a problem?
No. Spontaneous mentions by employees are valid. What is prohibited is for the business to systematically request mentions.
Can I ask my team to get more reviews?
You can encourage them to ask satisfied customers for feedback. What you can't do is set a specific number of reviews or make the number of reviews a performance target.
What happens if a competitor leaves me fake reviews?
You can report them from your business profile. Google evaluates the account's history before publishing, and new accounts with no prior activity that leave a five-star review are immediately flagged for review.
Can old reviews obtained through incentives be removed?
Yes. The policy is retroactive and applies to reviews published before the policy change.
Can I ask my employees to review the business?
No. Reviews from people with conflicts of interest, including employees, suppliers, and family members, are prohibited.
What to do this week
Three concrete actions, in order:
- Check if your team has review goals or scripts that require mentioning names. If so, remove them today.
- Remove any review collection tablets or kiosks from the premises.
- Audit your history looking for spikes in volume or incentive campaigns, and be prepared to lose those reviews.
All three are free. The alternative is discovering the problem after Google has already restricted the listing.
