Getting more Google reviews without getting the profile banned

A Google review is not a marketing campaign. It is a three-sentence note a future patient reads while sitting in a car outside two other spas. If you have a handful of reviews from 2022, you look closed, even if the book is full.

What consumers told BrightLocal in 2026

• 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses.
• 47% will not use a business with fewer than 20 reviews.
• 74% only care about reviews written in the last three months.
• 31% will only use a business with 4.5 stars or higher.
• Google was still the place 71% looked, down from 83% the year before. It is not the only place, and it is still the first one.

The practical reading: twenty recent reviews beat two hundred old ones, and a 4.9 with three reviews does not beat a 4.7 with forty. Recency is the part spas ignore because the ask feels awkward.

The ask

• Ask at checkout, while they are still in the room, not three days later in a blast to the whole database.
• Put a QR code on the checkout card that opens your Google review link and nothing else. If the link has six steps, they will not finish.
• One sentence is enough: 'If you have thirty seconds, a Google review helps the next person find us.' Then stop talking.
• Ask people who completed a visit. Do not ask only the ones who hugged you. A profile of nothing but perfect reviews reads as fake, and selective asking is how businesses get in trouble with Google.
• Do not ask someone who just reported a complication, a bruise they are scared of, or a result they are unhappy with. Fix that first. A review request on top of a problem is how you earn a one-star essay.

What not to offer

Do not offer a discount, a free unit, a gift card, or an entry in a drawing in exchange for a review. Google's contribution policy bans incentivized reviews. A free lip flip is not clever. It is how you lose the profile you were trying to grow. Read the current policy before you let a marketer 'boost' reviews. It changes, and the penalty is the listing.

Reply to the bad ones

BrightLocal's same survey found that a slow or generic reply now reads as a red flag. Reply to every review, including the good ones, in a normal voice. On a bad review: thank them, say you want to fix it, and move the medical detail offline. Do not argue about units in public. Do not name the treatment they had if they didn't. A short, specific reply from the owner beats a paragraph from 'the team.'

If you want software for this, Weave, Podium, and Birdeye are in the directory. Several booking systems also send the ask. Software does not help if nobody owns the reply.