To get more Google reviews, ask every customer, at the right moment, with a direct link to your listing and without offering anything in return. Buying them, writing them yourself or asking only happy customers is forbidden. Replying to every review, including negative ones, helps readers trust you.
“More reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking.”
Why they matter so much.
Reviews are among the first things people look at before choosing a local business, and Google considers them when deciding who to show on Maps. AI assistants like ChatGPT and Gemini, too, when someone asks for “the best restaurant” or “a good beauty salon”, take into account what customers say online. Quantity counts, but so does how recent and how detailed they are.
How to ask, in practice.
- Ask everyone, not just those who seem satisfied: it’s the rule that makes reviews credible, and also the one the law requires.
- Choose the right moment: right after the service, while the experience is fresh.
- Use the direct link for leaving a review: you’ll find it in your Google account, under the option to ask for reviews. Send it on WhatsApp or by email, with a simple sentence.
- Put up a QR code at the counter, at the till or on the receipt, leading straight to the review page.
- Don’t suggest the text: a review written in your words isn’t the customer’s review.
How to reply.
Reply to all of them, with your name or the business’s name. For positive ones, a personal thank-you that mentions something specific is enough. For negative ones, reply calmly: thank them, acknowledge the problem if there is one, explain what you’ll do, invite them to talk privately. Readers don’t judge the negative review, they judge how you reply.
What’s forbidden.
- Buying reviews or having relatives, friends and employees write them.
- Asking only happy customers, filtering out the others.
- Offering discounts or gifts in exchange for a review.
- Publishing made-up reviews on your website.
Under Italy’s Consumer Code, publishing fake reviews or presenting unverified reviews as genuine is an unfair commercial practice, and Google removes reviews that break its rules. The risk is never worth the gain.
Italian rules, updated for 2026.
- Italy’s Consumer Code (Legislative Decree 206/2005, as amended by Legislative Decree 26/2023): publishing or commissioning fake reviews is always misleading, and so is claiming reviews come from real customers without reasonable checks (art. 23, letters bb-ter and bb-quater).
- Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) guidelines of 13 October 2026 (resolution no. 32067): the link to leave a review must be sent to all customers, without selecting them; reviews whose content results from an incentive are always unlawful, and other incentives must be clearly disclosed; pre-written positive review templates and hiding negative reviews are forbidden. The AGCM says they apply “in principle to every other field”.
- Law no. 34 of 11 March 2026, for food service and tourism: a review is lawful only from someone who personally used the service, within 30 days; buying or selling reviews is forbidden.
And on your website?
On your website you can feature your best reviews, as long as they’re real and belong to the customer who wrote them. The Consumer Code also requires you to say whether and how you check that they come from people who actually used the service (art. 22, paragraph 5-bis): for example, that they are taken from Google. When Aleryc builds your website, we include them only under these conditions.
Sources: AGCM, Guidelines on online reviews, 13 October 2026 (in Italian); Italian Consumer Code, art. 22 (in Italian). This guide is for information only and is not legal advice.