How to Get Google Reviews: A Complete Guide

Google Reviews

Sep 13, 2022

Eric Miller

Whether you’ve just opened your business or your company is a local economy staple, learning how to get Google reviews is a crucial part of a successful marketing plan.

But what does it take to get Google reviews? Are they actually important to the conversion process? What happens if someone leaves a bad review?

This complete guide to Google reviews will cover all of this and more.

First, we’ll provide a simple to-do list for racking up reviews. Then, we’ll explore the basics of Google reviews and break down how to increase yours—we’ll even give you some advice and templates for customer requests.

How to Get Google Reviews: A Quick Overview
Google Reviews Basics
3 Steps to Increasing Google Reviews

#1 Claim Your Google Business Profile
#2 Ask Customers to Complete Reviews
#3 Manage Reviews

How to Get Google Reviews: A Quick Overview

Here’s a quick rundown of how to get more Google reviews:

Claim (and optimize) your Google Business Profile
Ask your customers to leave Google reviews after their purchase

Create easy access methods like short links and QR codes
Use simple templates for review requests

Manage and respond to your reviews (the good and the bad)

We’ll break down each of these steps below, but that’s the gist—creating a Google Business Profile, asking customers to contribute feedback and responding to reviews as they come in.

Google Reviews Basics

When they want to leave feedback about your business, clients can leave reviews on your Google Business Page. There are a few critical components of a Google review:

The reviewer’s name (Google reviews are public, and users will need a Google account)
A star rating out of five
A text description of the review (this is optional)
A response from the business (also optional)

These elements are critical—when potential clients research your business, they’re looking for reviews from real people (with real names) that offer a high star rating and explain their review using additional text.

And customers are turning to Google reviews more than ever before. In 2020, zero-click searches rose to 65% of all Google inquiries. This means nearly two-thirds of people who are looking for your business will only read the Google reviews before exiting the window.

The takeaway: Since 2020, customers are primarily looking for companies with a high star rating, short and sweet reviews and professional responses from the brand in question.

Increasing Google Reviews in 3 Simple Steps

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s dive into how to get Google reviews for your business.

#1 Claim Your Google Business Profile

Before asking your customers to leave Google reviews, make sure that you’ve claimed and optimized your Google Business Profile.

Here’s a four-step guide to that process:

Create a Google account for your business—or sign in to an existing one.

You must use a business account, not an individual or personal one.

Open Google Maps and type your business address in the search bar.
On the left side of the page, click “Add your business.”
Follow the instructions on the screen to complete your Business Profile.

After claiming the profile, make sure it’s up to snuff—search for your competition on Google to get an idea of how the rest of your industry is leveraging their Google Business Profile. But, at minimum, make sure your profile includes:

A link to your company website
A brief description of your business
Your physical address
Your hours of operation
Your phone number
A few photos of your facility or your products

Once you’ve done all the above, it’s time to turn to your customers.

#2 Ask Customers to Complete Reviews

When you’re ready to ask your customers to leave reviews, making it as simple as possible for them to access the review platform is essential.

Your first step is to find your custom review link:

Log into your Google Business Profile
Select Customers → Reviews → Get more reviews
Copy and paste the link provided

Once you have the link, examine it closely. Can customers type it into their smartphone or desktop in less than ten seconds? If not, you’ll need to use a link shortener.

You can also simplify the process for your customers by creating a QR code.

Templates for Review Requests

Once you’ve created a short link, a QR code or both, it’s time to ask your customers for reviews. Here are some short templates for Google review requests:

How did we do? Please leave us a Google review at [short link]. Thank you for choosing [Company Name]!
Use the QR code below to leave us a Google review—we love to hear from you! Thank you for your business.
[Company Name] thrives on feedback. Leave us a Google review using the [link/QR code] below. Thank you for choosing [Business Name] for your [industry] needs!
As a local business, [Company Name] depends upon customer feedback. Let us know how we did by leaving a Google review at the [link/QR code] below.

Keep your requests short and sweet.

Ideas for Review Requests

A critical part of learning how to increase Google reviews is deciding how you’ll ask your customers for feedback. When using the templates above, you can utilize:

Printed materials, like:

Business cards
A dedicated area on purchase receipts
Post-purchase paperwork provided to clients (like warranty printed information)

Verbal requests after checkout
Requests via email
Ask for reviews via text message
Social media posts

But, it’s important to incentivize your customers to leave a review. Try the following tactics to amp up your feedback request:

Offer small gift cards or other rewards to customers who leave reviews within 24 hours
Provide a discount code or offer for their next purchase
Give reviewers VIP status with advantages, like:

Double rewards points
Shorter wait times
Discounted services

Utilize your merch—offer branded materials to customers who complete a Google review at checkout or immediately after

#3 Manage Reviews

Once feedback comes in, it’s time to manage Google reviews like a pro.

There are two important tactics to use:

Responding to reviews – Dedicate time to responding to reviews regularly. Respond to both good and bad reviews. If you’re responding to bad reviews, offer incentives, refunds or other rewards for giving the business another chance. When acknowledging good reviews, keep feedback short, genuine and appreciative.
Deleting old or spam reviews – While you can’t delete reviews, you can flag reviews for removal by a Google admin.

Keep a close watch on your star rating and review quantity. If your star rating begins to dip, ask your most loyal and satisfied customers to leave reviews (if they haven’t already).

Textedly: The SMS Marketing Brand Trusted By Thousands of Businesses

Learning how to get Google reviews via SMS can seem intimidating for more traditional business owners. For new companies, the process can seem like just another item on a mile-long to-do list. But, collecting quality Google reviews should be a critical piece of your marketing plan.

And, with text message marketing from Textedly, requesting reviews is simpler than ever. Textedly provides SMS and MMS marketing services to thousands of brands around the country, helping companies leverage the power of text to communicate with existing, new and potential customers.

The Textedly platform is simple, affordable and instant—after signing up, you can start sending marketing messages right away. For service companies, restaurants, nonprofits and everything in between, Textedly can help you harness the power of text message marketing.