Buying Google reviews breaks Google's rules, can breach the Australian Consumer Law, and gives you a rating that falls apart the first time someone looks closely. The temptation usually starts when a competitor has 200 reviews and you have 9. Buying them is the wrong fix.
What Google's rules say
Google's policy on fake engagement says reviews must reflect a real experience. It prohibits paid reviews, whether you pay in cash or in kind. It also bans one person posting from multiple accounts and merchants soliciting non-genuine content.
Two more rules catch people out. Google says merchants can't offer payment, discounts or free goods or services for a review, and reviews posted because of an incentive are removed. And Google removes unusual review volumes or patterns that suggest someone is trying to manipulate a rating. Ten five-star reviews landing in two days on a profile that gets one a month looks like exactly that.
So the best case from buying is that the reviews get removed and you're out the money. The worse cases are below.
What the ACCC says
The ACCC enforces the Australian Consumer Law. Its guidance for businesses says they should not write or commission misleading reviews, and the ACCC has said that creating fake reviews to inflate a rating is a breach of the law. Outsourcing doesn't hand off the risk, because the business that benefits is the one the review is about.
The ACCC also says leaving out negative reviews can mislead as much as posting fake positive ones, and that commercial relationships and incentives behind reviews should be disclosed. It has run an internet sweep of online reviews and looked at businesses that sell fake reviews or remove negative ones.
Penalties for misleading conduct under the law can be large. Check the current maximums on the ACCC site rather than trusting a number in a blog post. This is general information, not legal advice.
What goes wrong in practice
- The reviews vanish. Nothing to show for what you paid.
- They read wrong. Customers can tell. Vague praise with no job details ("Great service, highly recommend!") from accounts that have reviewed a dentist in Perth and a cafe in Darwin looks odd next to a plumber in Geelong.
- Real reviews look worse next to them. If your genuine customers write about the burst pipe and your fake ones write nothing, the contrast is obvious.
- You can't reply honestly. Every reply has to dance around jobs that never happened.
- A competitor can report you. Google lets anyone flag a review.
"But my competitor did it"
Maybe. If you think a competitor's reviews are fake, you can flag them. Google's policy covers fake engagement, and reviews from competitors or from people with a conflict of interest are against the rules. That is more effective than copying them. We cover the process in can you delete a Google review.
What to do instead
You don't need a hundred reviews by Friday. You need a steady run of real ones.
Ask every customer
Not just the ones who seemed happy. Google bans asking only for positive reviews.
Ask within a few days of finishing
The job is fresh. A short text with a direct link gets more than a business card left on the bench.
Make the link one tap
Use the free review link generator and put the QR code on invoices and the ute.
Here is a text you can send as it is:
Review request text
Note the text asks. It doesn't promise anything back. Our guide to asking for a Google review has email and in-person versions, and the pillar guide puts the whole system together. The free review link generator makes the link and QR code with no sign-up.
Warning: A discount for a review is still an incentive
Even "10 percent off next time if you leave a review" is something Google's policy prohibits. Thank customers after, with a genuine thanks, not before with a deal.
Texting customers has its own rules in Australia. The ACMA says commercial messages under the Spam Act need consent, a clear sender and an unsubscribe option. Whether a review request is commercial is a grey area, so get consent anyway. That is why Mitch's review asks need the customer's mobile number and a consent tick. This is general information, not legal advice.
Plan: Make asking routine
With Local, the review request goes out 24 to 72 hours after the job on its own, so you are not relying on a Sunday night memory. See [pricing](/au/pricing) and the [reviews page](/au/platform/reviews).
More posts in the Google reviews cluster.
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