Rules · Sept 15, 2026 · 8 min · By Ashland
Half of what your last vendor set up now breaks them — and a few of the newly named practices are things owners do themselves, with no software involved at all.
In April 2026 Google made two changes to how it handles reviews inside a couple of days. The first was enforcement machinery: AI-assisted moderation and proactive email alerts to verified owners when something looks wrong on their profile. The second was the one that matters to you — explicit new language in the rating manipulation policy naming specific ways businesses solicit reviews.
None of it is a surprise in spirit. Google has prohibited fake engagement and selective solicitation for years. What changed is that several widespread, previously gray practices are now written down by name, and there's a moderation system actively looking for the patterns they create.
Here's the list. Go down it against your own setup.
Telling your techs to bring in five reviews a week, tracking it on a whiteboard, tying a bonus to it — that's now specifically named. The reason is mechanical: quotas produce clusters of reviews that look identical in timing and phrasing, which is exactly the fingerprint the moderation system is built to catch.
This one stings because it feels like ordinary management. It isn't a fake review and nobody's lying. But the pattern it creates is indistinguishable from the pattern manipulation creates, and the system doesn't grade on intent.
This is the one most likely to be sitting in your current messaging right now. Google's policy prohibits requesting that a customer include specific content in their review — and it names content identifying a staff member as an example.
The distinction is narrower than people think, so be precise about it:
Fine: "Marcus mentioned he got you taken care of today. Would you mind sharing how it went?"
Not fine: "If Marcus did a good job, mention him by name in your review."
You can name your technician in your message. You're giving the customer context about which visit you're talking about, which is legitimate and which is also why those messages perform. What you can't do is instruct them on what to write. The moment your message contains a request for particular content — a name, a service, a keyword, a star count — you're on the wrong side of it.
Go read your review request text right now. If the words "mention," "be sure to include," or "let them know" appear anywhere near your tech's name or your service names, rewrite that line today.
Requests made on your premises, or from devices on your business wifi, are named. The tablet at the counter, the QR code on the invoice handed over at the door, the "mind doing this real quick before I head out" — all of it now sits inside the policy language.
The logic is about pressure. A customer asked to their face, on your property, by the person who just did the work is not in a position to say no, and is definitely not in a position to say something critical. Google treats that as a form of selective solicitation, because in practice it is one.
The fix is simple and it also works better: ask later, in writing, when they're somewhere else. A couple of hours after the job closes is early enough that the experience is fresh and late enough that they're alone with their phone.
No discounts, gift cards, raffle entries, or free filters in exchange for a review. Google has prohibited this for a long time and it's still prohibited. The wrinkle now is federal, not Google's.
The FTC's rule on consumer reviews and testimonials took effect in October 2024. Incentives themselves aren't banned outright by that rule — what's banned is conditioning an incentive on a particular sentiment, whether you say so outright or just imply it. And "imply" is doing real work in that sentence. The FTC's own guidance flags phrasing like "tell us how much you loved it" as an implied requirement.
The rule authorizes courts to impose civil penalties for knowing violations. This is the part where the stakes stop being about your Google ranking.
Gating is asking everyone how it went, then only showing the Google link to the people who said something nice. It is the single most common feature in review software and it has never been allowed. Google's policy language is direct: don't discourage or prohibit negative reviews, and don't selectively solicit positive ones.
The FTC's rule doesn't address gating by name, but the agency's guidance says the practice can violate the FTC Act anyway, on the grounds that a deliberately non-representative sample of reviews is deceptive.
Worth understanding why the penalty is disproportionate here. If Google decides your review profile is manipulated, it doesn't quietly remove the twelve suspect reviews. Enforcement can take down the whole profile's review content — including years of legitimate reviews you earned honestly before you ever hired anybody.
The distinction that survives all of this
You are allowed to ask. Google's own policy says merchants may solicit and encourage content representing a genuine experience. What you're not allowed to do is decide who gets asked based on how you expect them to answer, or decide what they should say.
Everyone gets the same message. Everyone can post publicly. You can absolutely build a system that makes sure you hear about a problem before it becomes a one-star — that's not gating, that's just being reachable.
This is a plain-language summary of published platform policy and federal rules, not legal advice. If you're in the middle of an enforcement action on your profile, talk to someone who does this for a living.
How we handle it
Praise Picker doesn't gate, doesn't offer incentives, doesn't ask on your premises, and doesn't request specific content. Unhappy customers reach your phone first and can still post publicly — which is the whole design. The full stance is here.
Fifteen minutes on your Google profile and your current request messaging, whether or not you end up working with us.
