In a world where one negative review can destroy your reputation it can be tempting to try and get customers to only leave you positive reviews. However, the practice of encouraging only happy customers to leave reviews, also known as Review Gating, is not only prohibited by Google’s terms of service but can also land your business in legal hot water.
What is “Review Gating” anyway?
Review Gating is the practice of putting up a gate in front of unhappy customers which prevents or discourages them from leaving you a negative review. Review Gating can take many forms, but one common form of Review Gating is to ask a customer to give an initial rating of your business and then based on that rating restrict who can leave your business a public review.
This often takes the form of a feedback form where customers are asked to rate a business on a scale of one to five stars before being allowed to leave a review. If a customer selects a high rating, such as four or five stars, they are redirected to leave a public Google review. However, if the customer indicates they are dissatisfied they are instead redirected to a form where they can leave comments instead. This practice ensures that only a business’ happiest customers ever leave a review, which can skew the average rating of the business in a way that doesn’t reflect reality.
The Penalties for Review Gating
If your business is found to be Review Gating, Google may impose penalties on your business, including removing some or all of your Google reviews, deboosting your business’ listing in search results or even suspending your Google Business Profile all-together.
Furthermore, if you engage in review gating the government may impose fines against your business. The Federal Trade Commission views Review Gating as deceptive, so if you’re only allowing happy customers to leave reviews for you then there’s a chance you could run afoul of the law and face stiff penalties for your business.
How Review Tornado Helps You Get Positive Reviews While Avoiding Review Gating
At Review Tornado, our approach allows unhappy customers to leave you feedback privately without filtering or restricting them from leaving you a negative review. Our Private Feedback option gives customers who are unhappy a choice of how they want to leave feedback for your business. This might result in some customers leaving your business a negative review, but the fact that there is a choice for customers to leave you private feedback also means that some unhappy customers who would ordinarily leave you a negative review will instead to choose the private feedback option, especially if they are only mildly or moderately unhappy.
In order to stay compliant with Google and Yelp’s policies we display our Private Feedback option in a way that it is considered an equal alternative to leaving a public review. Instead of only sending unhappy reviewers to our Private Feedback form, all reviewers can choose to leave feedback privately, even happy customers.
By displaying our Private Feedback option in this way, it gives unhappy customers an alternative to leaving you a negative review without openly discouraging them from leaving you a negative review. They can choose to leave you a bad review if they wish, but they can also choose the less extreme option of leaving you feedback privately. With this implementation, we give your unhappy customers an outlet for their frustrations that may prevent a negative review but also still allows an unhappy customer to leave a review if they so desire. This helps to keep your business on the right side of Google and Yelp’s policies.
The Language You Use Can Also Lead to Review Gating Penalties
As long as your review funnel treats Private Feedback as an equal option for all users to leave a review, your business should remain on the right side of Google and Yelp’s policies. However, if you choose to only encourage unhappy customers to leave Private Feedback then you may run afoul of Google and Yelp’s policies. For instance, take the following language:
We would love to hear how your recent experience went. If you were happy with our service we would love if you left us a positive Google review. However, if you were unhappy in any way we encourage you to leave us private feedback using the button below so that we can make any issues you had right.
While that language seems innocuous, it could in fact be seen as review gating. That’s because it explicitly brands the Private Feedback option as only for unhappy customers and encourages unhappy customers to leave private feedback instead of leaving a review. This would likely violate the policies of both Google and Yelp.
You’ll want to make sure that any language you use doesn’t only encourage happy customers to do one thing and unhappy customers to do another. By making sure that both happy and unhappy customers have Private Feedback as an option it will ensure that you’re compliant with Google and Yelp’s policies while also giving unhappy customers an alternate path to leave feedback that may prevent a bad review.
Ready to Start Collecting More Google Reviews?
If you’re ready to start collecting more Google and Yelp reviews then give Review Tornado a try! You can get started with Review Tornado absolutely free! Set up your business, add your first funnel and add your customers without paying anything. Only pay when you’re ready to send your first review request email.