Review gating is banned: what it means for your software

The text arrives an hour after the furnace tune up: “How did we do? Tap a star.” Tap five and the next screen opens Google with a thank you. Tap two and you get a form that says “We’re sorry, tell us what went wrong”, and no Google link. That funnel has a name, review gating, and it is one of the few review habits that both Google and the Federal Trade Commission have written about directly.

This guide explains what counts as gating, what each rule says, and how to check whether your review software does it for you without saying so.

What review gating is

Review gating is any process that decides who gets your review link based on how happy they seem. The star screen above is the classic version. It has cousins:

• a “would you recommend us?” question, where only the yes answers see Google;
• a one to ten score, where only nines and tens get the link;
• a manual filter: the office texts the link only to customers the tech flagged as happy;
• a quiet list of “do not ask” customers that grows every time someone complains.

What these share is that the decision to ask depends on the expected rating. That is the part both rule books target.

What Google says

Google’s Maps content policy has a section called Rating Manipulation. Under “We do not allow merchants to”, it lists: “Discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers.” The same section says incentivized or biased reviews “are not allowed and will be removed from Maps” (Google).

The permission, in the same policy, is the mirror image. Merchants may “solicit or encourage the posting of content that does represent a genuine experience, without offering incentives to do so or attempting to influence the rating or the contents of the review.” In our reading, a screen that only shows the link to five star answers is exactly that: an attempt to influence the rating, by choosing who rates.

Google’s advice to business owners makes the same point from the other side: “A mix of positive and negative feedback often feels more trustworthy” (Google). For the wider list of what Google bans, from incentives to staff quotas, see our guide to Google’s review rules.

What the FTC says

The FTC’s Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials does not name gating. FTC staff answered the question directly in their published Q&A. Asked “Can my business ask for reviews only from customers whom we think are happy with our services?”, they wrote that the rule “does not contain a specific prohibition against such conduct. But this practice could violate the FTC Act” (FTC).

The reference they give is the Endorsement Guides. Example 11 there describes gating almost word for word: a marketer asks recent buyers for feedback, then “invites purchasers who give very positive feedback to post online reviews”, while unhappy ones “are simply thanked for their feedback.” That “may be an unfair or deceptive practice” if it makes posted reviews substantially more positive. The same example gives the clean alternative: inviting all recent buyers to post would not be unfair or deceptive, “even if it had expressed its hope for positive reviews” (16 CFR 255.2).

FTC staff repeat it in plain words in their guide for marketers: “Don’t ask for reviews only from customers you think will leave positive ones” (FTC). Their guide for platforms adds “Don’t prevent or discourage people from submitting negative reviews” (FTC).

The software angle is not hypothetical. When the FTC announced its first case about hiding negative reviews, against Fashion Nova, which agreed to pay $4.2 million, it also said it was sending letters to 10 companies offering review management services, “placing them on notice that avoiding the collection or publication of negative reviews violates the FTC Act” (FTC).

Two related rules worth knowing

• Reviews on your own website. If your site has a reviews section, the rule makes it illegal to suggest it shows most or all reviews while reviews are being held back “based upon their ratings or their negative sentiment” (16 CFR 465.7). A widget that only pulls in five star reviews deserves a second look. FTC staff note that the rule lets courts impose civil penalties for knowing violations (FTC).
• Your contract. The Consumer Review Fairness Act makes it illegal to use a form contract clause that bars or penalizes honest reviews (FTC). If your estimate template has a “no negative reviews” line, remove it.

What is fine and what is not

Questions to ask a vendor

1. What does a customer who gives one star see next? Ask for a screenshot, not a description.
2. Is there a setting that routes low scores away from Google? If yes, is it on by default?
3. Does every customer on my list get a request, or does the tool choose who to ask? On what basis?
4. Does your website widget show all my Google reviews, or only those above a rating I set?
5. Will you put “every customer gets the same Google link” in writing?

A vendor that sells on compliance will answer in one line. One that talks about “protecting your rating” is telling you something too. To compare how the main tools send requests, read our review tool comparison.

How to set up a clean flow

1. Send one request to every customer at the same point in the job, with your Google link in the first message. Our text templates work for this.
2. If you want private feedback, offer it alongside, never instead: “Leave us a Google review here, or reply to this text if anything was not right.”
3. Audit the software once: send yourself a test request and answer with one star.
4. Answer the bad reviews that come in. That is the honest way to protect a rating; see how to respond to a bad Google review.

More on this topic: Google rules.