How to get and answer Google reviews without breaking the rules

Google sets out the basic rule in its policy for content posted by Maps users: every contribution must be based on a real experience at a place or with a business. Reviews and ratings must reflect genuine experiences and be authentic and unbiased. Fake engagement is removed.

Google explicitly counts as fake engagement:

• content that doesn’t reflect a real experience or misrepresents the place,
• reviews that were paid for, in money or in kind,
• content from several accounts at one person’s request,
• content posted via emulators, tampered devices or a modified system.

For you as a business, the forbidden list is shorter and sharper. You don’t ask for content that isn’t a real experience. You don’t offer payment, a discount, free goods or a free service for writing a review, for changing a review or for removing a negative one. You don’t post anything on a competitor’s profile to damage their reputation.

What is allowed is the sentence Google itself puts in its rule for merchants: you may ask for content that reflects a real experience, without an incentive and without trying to steer the rating or the wording.

Google’s help on creating a link or QR code to ask for reviews repeats the ban in a box of its own: incentives such as free or discounted goods or services in exchange for reviews are fake engagement. That applies to posting, changing and removing a negative review.

Under review manipulation, the policy has a second layer that comes up more often in practice than the bought five-star review.

You don’t prevent or forbid negative reviews. You don’t ask customers selectively for positive reviews only. Asking “Was everything okay?” after the appointment and handing out the link only on a yes is pre-selection. Google names it in the policy: selectively soliciting positive reviews. An internal form that sends unhappy customers to a private email and happy ones to Google has the same effect. You may offer a direct line for complaints. Tying the path to the public review to it is the forbidden selection.

You don’t pressure anyone to write the review on the spot or with specific content. Google names two workplace patterns. First: instructing staff to collect a certain number of reviews from customers. Second: instructing staff to ask for reviews with specific content, including reviews that mention individual employees by name. A calm request at the end of an appointment, with no target number, is something else entirely from a quota on the duty roster.

A conflict of interest makes a review inadmissible, even if the experience was real. Google names current or former employment, a contractual or advisory relationship and other professional or personal connections. Competitors in the industry and family ties are listed as examples. Your own staff, your own family and your friend’s agency don’t review your business. A past job is enough; the conflict doesn’t end on the last working day.

Google also removes unusual volumes and patterns that point to an orchestrated wave. Ten reviews in one evening from accounts that never visited the business are such a pattern. That’s why “message everyone at once who hasn’t been in for years” is riskier than a calm request after every completed job.

Google’s tips for getting more reviews and its help on the QR code describe the same path. Your profile is verified. On a computer, not in the app:

1. Open your Business Profile.
2. Select Read reviews.
3. Select Get more reviews.
4. Copy the review link, or right-click the QR code and save the image.

Google notes that the QR code can currently only be generated in a computer browser, not on a mobile device. You can then put the link anywhere: thank-you email, end of a chat, receipt, a card at the counter, WhatsApp, Facebook. Sharing by email sends from the address linked to the profile.

The same help pages name the places where the link belongs, and they mention no gift next to it. Receipt, email, chat, a printout in the shop. Everyone gets the same link. Giving the link to only half your customers is pre-selection again.

mekyn stores the Place ID or the link the team takes from this dialog, and turns it into a QR code in your dashboard. Until the Place ID is stored, the code doesn’t appear; the screen then says it’s coming as soon as the link is there. The mekyn code is a picture of that link. It isn’t a second, secret channel and it isn’t a filter. The same address Google hands out under Get more reviews is inside the code.

Print the code on your invoice, put it at the register or send it after the appointment. Google gives receipt, thank-you email and chat as examples. Don’t build a landing page just for happy customers.

The policy allows the request after a real experience. The clean moment is therefore the completed job: the treatment is done, the furniture is in place, the meal is paid for, the repair is signed off. Before that, there’s no experience to write about. A review in advance is content without a real experience and falls under the first list of bans.

Keep the sentence short and don’t steer the rating. A version that fits the rule:

“If you like, tell others on Google how your appointment went. Here’s the link. It’s for any experience, including if something wasn’t right.”

What’s not in that sentence: a desired star rating, a discount, a voucher, a prize draw only for reviewers, a request to delete a critical review, the name of an employee who should be mentioned. Also not in it: “Only if you were happy.” The second sentence of the allowed version is the one that rules out pre-selection.

Send the link to everyone who had the job done, not to a hand-picked list. A reminder a few days later is a second request, not an incentive, as long as nothing is added. A third and fourth reminder becomes pressure. The policy forbids pushing people to write on the spot and with specific content. A pile of emails has the same effect.

In health professions, the request contains no diagnosis and no treatment. Google forbids publishing personal and medical information. A message like “Thanks for your filler treatment on 3 March, please rate your wrinkle treatment” discloses data that doesn’t belong in a review, and it already stores it in the email. The neutral sentence above is enough. The medical industry page sets out the frame for practices: profile, service pages, appointment requests. No patient story in the review request.

For trades, salons and restaurants the process is the same. The difference is the moment: after sign-off on site, after the appointment at the salon, after the visit to the restaurant. The link is always the one from your profile.

You can reply as soon as your profile is verified. In Google Maps on a computer, find your business, go to the reviews and select Reply. The Maps help describes exactly this path and requires verification.

A reply is public. It contains no private data about the person: no phone number, no email, no medical record, no full name unless the review already shows it. Merchants may give their own business contact details in a reply. They may not solicit customers’ personal data. “Send me your address in a reply” is soliciting.

Answer a critical review factually: what happened, what you can change, how the person can reach you directly. Delete the sentence “Remove the review and you’ll get a discount” before you type it. It’s the ban from the incentive rule, only in the reply instead of the request. An apology with no reward for deleting is a reply. An offer to redo the job belongs in the direct conversation, not as a trade for the public rating.

Reply to good reviews too, briefly, without rewriting what the customer said and without announcing a performance bonus for the team. A bonus for staff who collect reviews is an incentive, even if customers never hear about it. The policy binds the merchant, not just the person typing.

If you like, mekyn writes a reply draft. The draft is checked against the facts in your profile. The reply goes online when you accept it in the dashboard. A reply costs 1 coin. You can also type it yourself, and then it costs nothing at mekyn. The reply appears on Google because that’s where it’s sent. mekyn doesn’t mirror Google reviews onto your website via an interface. What’s imported is a single review with the platform’s proof link. It only becomes visible on your website after you accept it. Until then it sits unpublished in the reviews module.

You can report any review. It gets removed if it violates the policies. A bad experience, politely described, is not a forbidden review. Google’s help on reporting inappropriate reviews on your Business Profile puts it in two sentences: you can report any review, and only the ones that violate the policies are removed.

The path in your profile: Read reviews, then the report option next to the review, choose a reason, send the report. Reasons in the help’s examples include spam and vulgar language. On top of that, the categories from the contribution policy apply: no real experience, payment, conflict of interest, harassment, hate speech, personal information, medical misinformation.

A review that hurts your business and still describes a real experience stays up. Your reply is the public place to respond. If you only want negative ratings gone, Google won’t delete them and mekyn won’t sell you replacement reviews.

“google bewertungen löschen” (deleting Google reviews) is a common search: the Bing export from 15 October 2026 shows 343 searches a month in Germany. The honest answer to that search is the reporting path above, not a service that makes ratings disappear.

Without a verified Business Profile there’s no official review link and no public reply. Setting up the profile, verifying it and the mistakes along the way are covered in the guide How to create a Google Business Profile. At Google the profile costs €0. The name on your sign, one category, an address only where you welcome customers, and a verification that goes through: that’s the prerequisite for everything in this guide.

The same spelling of name, address and phone belongs in the directories. Otherwise customers review one profile and find a different name on Herold or in Gelbe Seiten. mekyn keeps those listings in line through Local visibility.

Your website shows the link and, if you want, individual imported reviews with their source. It shows no stars without proof and no collection that contains only the nice sentences. How a business website is structured is explained under Build your website.

In the Local visibility area, your review link sits ready as soon as the Place ID or Google link is stored, together with its QR code. You print it or send it. mekyn doesn’t send it only to a pre-selected list. Such a list would be the forbidden selection, and the product doesn’t build one.

Reply drafts come from the team or from Lyra. You accept a draft or discard it. Discarding releases the reserved coins. It’s published after you accept it, with proof that the reply is live on the platform. 1 coin per reply.

Google posts are a different field. Start includes 2 posts a month, Business 4. An additional post costs 2 coins. Posts aren’t reviews. They don’t replace a review and they don’t buy one.

The plans: Free €0, without monthly coins. Start €19.90 a month or €199 a year, 20 coins a month. Business €49.90 a month or €499 a year, 60 coins a month. Top-ups: 10 coins €9.90, 30 coins €24.90, 100 coins €69.90. Purchased coins don’t expire. Monthly coins apply to the calendar month. You see the price of a service before it runs. The four Local visibility items (listing 3, Google profile 6, post 2, reply 1) don’t yet appear as separate rows in the public coin table on Pricing. They show up in the dashboard as soon as the item is in the catalog. If it isn’t, you see no price and nothing is charged.

This page doesn’t promise any ranking effect from a certain number of stars. Other guides name targets such as a minimum number of reviews or a minimum rating. Those are their targets, not a Google rule and not a mekyn promise. What can be backed up is the path: a real job, the same link, nothing in return, and a reply to what was written.