Is asking customers for Google reviews allowed?

Google's Business Profile help page for getting more reviews is explicit that businesses may ask, and names the mechanism TovTap uses.

The same page draws the line at rewards: “Offering incentives, like free or discounted goods or services, in exchange for customers to post reviews, change reviews, or remove negative reviews is considered fake & misleading content and is strictly prohibited.”[1]

Google's Maps content policy is also where the clearest prohibition on review gating lives. Under Rating Manipulation, Google states that merchants may not “Discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers,” and adds that when soliciting reviews, merchants “should not require or pressure users to leave ratings or write reviews while on the premises, nor should they request that specific content be included.”[2] That is worth reading twice if you plan to have staff push the card at people. Setting a card out is fine. Standing over someone until they tap it is not.

What Google permits is stated just as plainly:

The FTC's Trade Regulation Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, 16 CFR Part 465, took effect on October 21, 2024.[3] It targets fake and false reviews, reviews bought with incentives, undisclosed insider reviews, company-controlled review sites, review suppression, and fake indicators of social media influence.

On incentives, the rule is narrower than most summaries claim, and the distinction matters. Section 465.4 bars a business from providing “compensation or other incentives in exchange for, or conditioned expressly or by implication on, the writing or creation of consumer reviews expressing a particular sentiment, whether positive or negative.”[4] The FTC's own guidance confirms the rule “does not prohibit giving incentives for reviews, as long as there isn't an express or implied requirement that the reviews have to express a particular sentiment,” while warning that failing to disclose an incentive can violate the FTC Act separately.[6] The FTC gives a concrete example of crossing the line: “Tell us how much you loved your visit to John's Steakhouse and get a $5 coupon.”[6]

For a business collecting Google reviews, this nuance is academic. Google bans incentives outright, with no sentiment condition attached, so the safe rule is simply never to attach a reward.[1]

On suppression, section 465.7 covers two things: using unfounded legal threats, physical threats, intimidation, or knowingly false public accusations to stop or remove a review, and materially misrepresenting that the reviews displayed on a site you control represent most or all of the reviews submitted when negative ones are being withheld.[5]

A precise point, because the internet gets this wrong: as written, section 465.7 does not by itself make it unlawful to ask only your happy customers for reviews. Gating is squarely a Google policy violation,[2] and it becomes an FTC problem specifically when a business publishes a curated review feed with the negatives filtered out.[5] Not gating keeps you clear of both, which is why TovTap does not gate.

Inviting a patient to leave a review does not disclose anything about that patient to anyone. The patient chooses what to write, in their own account, on their own. The published enforcement actions in this area are not about asking. They are about what the practice wrote back.

In December 2022, the HHS Office for Civil Rights announced a settlement with New Vision Dental, which paid $23,000 and adopted a corrective action plan. OCR's investigation concerned the practice's responses to reviews on its Yelp page, including responses that used patients' full names where the reviewers had posted under pseudonyms, and that included details about visits and insurance.[7]

In October 2019, Elite Dental Associates of Dallas paid $10,000 to settle an OCR investigation into the disclosure of patient information in responses to a Yelp review.[8]

The pattern in both is the same, and it is the single most useful thing on this page: the practice tried to defend itself in public and disclosed information in the process. Note that even confirming that a named individual is or was a patient is itself a disclosure.

Nothing in the rules requires you to stay silent. The FTC's guidance states directly that if someone posts a negative review, “Yes, you can respond publicly to the review, and yes, you should watch what you say.”[6] The templates below are how you do both at once.

The American Dental Association's Principles of Ethics and Code of Professional Conduct provides that “Although any dentist may advertise, no dentist shall advertise or solicit patients in any form of communication in a manner that is false or misleading in any material respect.”[9] The Code frames promotional activity as unethical only where it is false or misleading in a material respect.

Read against that standard, the compliant path is the honest one. A review from a real patient, written in their own words, with nothing offered in exchange and no filter on who gets asked, is the version hardest to call misleading. Your state dental board may impose additional advertising requirements, and this page makes no claim about any specific state's rules.

Lawyers. Attorney advertising and solicitation rules are set state by state and vary meaningfully. We deliberately make no claim about any particular jurisdiction. Check your state bar's advertising rules and any required disclaimers before you put a card on the counter.

Investment advisers. The SEC's Marketing Rule permits testimonials and endorsements rather than banning them, but conditions them on disclosure, requiring that it be made clearly and prominently “That the testimonial was given by a current client or investor” and “That cash or non-cash compensation was provided for the testimonial or endorsement, if applicable.”[10] Note how that lands: the moment you pay for a review you inherit a disclosure obligation. Not incentivizing keeps the situation simple, and it is also what Google requires.