Frequently asked questions

No. We do not remove, dispute or suppress Google reviews, and we turn that work down when we are asked for it. Anyone promising “guaranteed removal” is either gambling or breaking platform rules — and the risk lands on your listing, not on theirs.

Reviews that genuinely break Google’s rules are a different matter: personal attacks, profanity, advertising, reviews obviously not written by a customer of yours, the same person posting again and again. Those can be reported through the official process. The success rate is not high, but it is worth doing, and How to report a fake Google review walks through the form.

Beyond that, only two things actually work. The first is replying in public. Later customers rarely judge you on the bad review itself — they judge you on the reply. A measured, specific answer that does not argue does more for you than deleting the review would. Do not start typing the moment you see it: You got a one-star note. Now what? covers the first step, and How to respond to Google reviews: ten templates you can copy gives you wording you can copy.

The second is to keep earning real reviews so the bad one carries less weight in the average. That part is arithmetic, not hope: Star rating calculator tells you how many more five-star reviews it takes to get from where you are to where you want to be. It is usually fewer than people expect.

No. Three lines, and they are not blurry: it only goes to customers who actually came in; the content comes entirely from what the customer ticked about their own visit; and the customer posts it from their own Google account. We do not ghost-write, we do not post, we do not impersonate customers, and we do not buy or trade reviews.

What does get businesses into trouble is a different list: buying reviews, staff posting from second accounts, bulk-posting text written by an agency, and trading a discount or a free item for a review. That last one feels harmless and is explicitly banned; Can you offer a discount for a Google review? sets out the rule and the compliant alternatives.

All we do is take the friction out of one step. Ten happy customers, and often not one writes a review — not because they do not want to, but because it is a chore, and typing it out is worse. We let them say in thirty seconds what they were already willing to say. We do not say it for them.

Not when it is used the way it is meant to be. What Google prohibits is fake reviews, conflict-of-interest reviews (staff, family, competitors) and bulk rating manipulation. We do none of those. Inviting real customers to leave real reviews is something Google actively encourages — it says so in its own help pages.

Two details are worth watching. Pace: a shop that normally gets two or three reviews a month and suddenly posts forty in a week has a curve that stands out on its own. Invite at the rate customers actually walk in; From 0 to 50 Google reviews in 90 days lays out a 90-day pace. And avoid having customer after customer post over the shop’s single Wi-Fi connection — a cluster from one IP is a common trigger.

One hard line: never filter customers by how happy they are. Sending four-star-and-up to Google and everyone else to a private form is called review gating, Google bans it outright, and being caught affects the whole listing. Our page treats every customer the same, and the negative options stay on it.

If your listing does run into trouble — suspended, hidden, reviews vanishing in bulk — the recovery steps are in Google Business Profile suspended? What to do and Your Google reviews disappeared — what happened.

No. The phone’s own camera opens the page from the code. Tick, copy, jump to Google — about thirty seconds. The customer does not register, does not sign in to anything of ours, and installs nothing. They close the tab and it is over.

The page is three screens: tick the things that match, glance at the draft it writes (fully editable), tap through to Google and paste. The only account they sign in to is their own Google one, which posting a review requires anyway.

Nothing to install on your side either. The code goes on a table tent, a receipt, a business card, the front door — or you text it, because underneath it is just a link. Want to try one first? Google review QR code generator makes one free, no account needed.

Yes, and we keep that door open on purpose. The top of the page holds the positive options — attentive service, short wait, easy to find. At the bottom there is a collapsed section under a deliberately neutral heading, “Something could have been better?”. Open it and there are ten negative options: long wait, parking is tight, felt rushed, a bit pricey, and so on. Each one is mutually exclusive with its positive twin — tick one and the other greys out.

Why not simply hide them: filtering customers by satisfaction — four stars and up to Google, everyone else to a private form — is review gating, and Google bans it. Hiding them would not work anyway. A customer who wants to say something says it on Google directly; one fewer page in between does not change their mind.

And what comes out is only a draft, sitting in a box they can rewrite entirely. What it says, whether to change it, whether to post it at all — every one of those is theirs. There is no step at which we could post on their behalf.

A critical review is not a disaster either. Most of them name something specific you can fix, which is worth far more than a vague bad feeling you cannot act on. You got a one-star note. Now what? covers the first step; How to respond to Google reviews: ten templates you can copy has replies you can copy.

One record per Google listing. A single account can hold as many as you like — “Joe’s Diner – Main Street” and “Joe’s Diner – Downtown” are two separate records, each with its own ID, QR code, customer page and counts. They do not interfere with each other.

The free allowance is per location, not per account: every Google listing gets its own 3 free reviews. Open a fourth branch and that branch still arrives with three of its own.

Credits, by contrast, are shared across the account. Top up once and every branch draws on the same balance — no topping up shop by shop. Each location is priced by the business category you picked for it, so a restaurant and a dental practice under one account cost different amounts per review. Full rules on You pay in credits, only for what you use.

In practice the thing that actually goes wrong with multiple branches is the wrong code on the wrong table: two codes look identical. Write the branch name on the back of the stand before you print. Each customer page also shows the branch name at the top, so a mix-up is visible the moment someone scans.

There is no magic in it. It comes down to footfall and how often you ask. Rough arithmetic: fifty customers a day, staff ask half of them, three in ten of those actually post — that is around fifty reviews in a week. The same shop with the code stuck in a corner and nobody saying anything might get one or two. The difference is not the tool. It is the sentence.

So two things set the speed. The stand goes where customers cannot miss it — the till, the counter, the corner of the table — and staff mention it while settling up. When to ask, how to phrase it so it is not awkward, what to say if they decline: How to ask customers for Google Reviews has the actual wording.

For a schedule you can work to, From 0 to 50 Google reviews in 90 days splits the first ninety days of a new listing into three phases, with what to do and roughly what to expect in each.

One expectation to set: Google does not always show a review the moment it is posted. Delays of a few hours to a few days are normal, and some get filtered. Google review not showing up? Here is what is going on explains why and what to do about it.

Absolutely not, and we will never ask for it. All we need is the link you get from tapping Share in the Google Maps app — the short maps.app.goo.gl one. We use it to work out the direct review address for your listing.

You can do that step yourself without an account: paste the share link into Google review link generator and the resulting address appears straight away, so you can open it and check it really is your shop. All we store is that public address and the shop name you type in.

So we never touch, never store and never need anything from your Google account. Any review service that asks for your Google password, or asks to be added as a manager on your Business Profile, is worth pausing over.

Yes. The page your customer lands on after scanning runs in nine languages: English, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Arabic. It picks one automatically from their phone’s language, and they can switch it themselves on the page. You configure nothing.

The draft is written natively in that language, not translated out of English, so it reads the way people actually write in it. Arabic runs right to left and the page flips with it.

In a neighbourhood where customers do not all share a language, this matters more than it sounds. A review written in someone’s own language reads like a person rather than a template — and for the next customer who speaks that language, finding a review they can actually read is a different order of persuasion.

Worth knowing: the draft follows the customer, not you. Whatever language your merchant dashboard is in has no bearing on what your customers see.

Registering, adding a location, generating the QR code and printing a table tent cost nothing. Every Google listing also gets 3 free reviews — nothing to pay up front, no card to enter. Try it, and if it does nothing for you, walk away.

After that it runs on credits: each generated review costs a number of credits set by the business category you chose for that location. Categories differ for an obvious reason — a new dental patient and a cup of coffee are not worth the same, so a review that brings one in is not worth the same either.

No monthly fee, nothing is charged when you do not use it, and credits do not expire. Your first top-up gets 20% extra credits. Your own per-review price is visible the moment you sign in, and the full table is on You pay in credits, only for what you use.

If you want the maths before you spend anything, What a good review is actually worth to you works out what one review is actually worth using star rating, click-through and conversion — put your own numbers into it.

No. The review lives on Google under the customer’s own account name. We do not record who the customer was, and we cannot trace any particular Google review back to any particular scan.

That is deliberate, not an omission. If it could be traced, the customer would have to wonder whether the owner will know who said it — and then the honest sentence never gets written, and you are left with politeness. Anonymity is what makes the feedback worth having.

What the dashboard does show is counts: how many times each location has been used, how much of the free allowance is left, and your credit balance. Not who, and not what they wrote.

If a customer tells you to your face that they posted and you cannot find it on Google, they are probably not lying — Google delays and filters reviews routinely. Google review not showing up? Here is what is going on covers why and what to do; if reviews you already had have started disappearing, see Your Google reviews disappeared — what happened.

Click “Forgot password” on the sign-in page, or go straight to reset it yourself. Enter the email you registered with and a reset link arrives within a few minutes — you set the new password yourself.

Two things to know: the link is valid for one hour, and if it expires you simply request another. Only one email goes out per address every two minutes, so if it has not arrived yet, check the spam folder rather than clicking again.

If you have lost access to the registered email as well, write to [email protected] with your shop name and Google address. We will verify it by hand and reset it for you.