Reviews: ask for them, answer all of them

What reviews do

Google's guidance on local ranking names review count and score as part of prominence, and the pack listing shows the rating and count beside the name. A searcher comparing three plumbers reads the stars before anything else. Recent reviews matter more than old ones, and answered reviews show a business that is present. Nothing else on the profile does as much for as little.

Ask everyone

Get the profile's direct review link from the profile dashboard. Then build the ask into the end of every job: a text or email the day after, thanking the customer and giving the link, in one sentence. Do it for every customer, not the ones you think were happiest; Google's policy prohibits selectively soliciting positive reviews, called review gating, and a business that only asks the happy ones eventually gets caught by the unhappy ones who were not asked. A printed card with a QR code at the counter does the same job for a shop.

Answer everyone

Reply to every review within a few days. To a good one, briefly and specifically; a reply that names what the customer mentioned reads as human. To a bad one, calmly, factually and without arguing: acknowledge, state what you did or will do, and offer to continue in private. Other customers read your replies to bad reviews more carefully than the reviews themselves. A business that replies to nothing looks absent; one that argues looks worse.

What gets profiles suspended

Writing reviews of your own business, or having staff or family do it. Paying for reviews, or offering discounts for them. Buying reviews from services that sell them. Asking only satisfied customers. Reviewing competitors. Google's content policy prohibits all of these, its systems detect patterns, and the consequence is removal of the reviews or suspension of the profile. A company that offers any of these as a service belongs on the direct-answer property's red flags page.

Flagging reviews that break the rules

A review that is fake, off-topic, or from someone who was never a customer can be reported through the profile. Google decides; it is slow and often declines. Reply to the review in the meantime, factually, so that readers see your side.

Illustrative example. A dental clinic adds one line to its post-appointment text with the review link, replies to every review on Monday mornings, and reports one review that names a different clinic. Over the following months its review count and its recent-review rate rise; the handbook attaches no figure to that, because it is an illustration and not a client result.

Output

A review request in the routine for every customer, a weekly slot for replies, and a written rule that nobody in the business writes, buys or filters reviews. Then posts and the questions section.