Google's New Review Rules: Five Violations That Delete Reviews

My notes

Summary

Google has tightened review policies for local businesses, threatening review deletion for violations. Key prohibitions: incentives, selective solicitation (asking only happy customers), on-premises pressure, dictating review content, and naming staff members. Reviews remain a core local ranking factor, so compliance now matters more than volume hacks.

Key Insight

• Five concrete violations that can wipe reviews:
  • Offering payments, discounts, free goods/services for reviews
  • Selective solicitation (only asking happy customers) or discouraging negative ones
  • Asking for reviews while customer is on premises
  • Requesting specific content (e.g. “mention we did roof repair”)
  • Naming individual staff members (“Kelsey did my nails”)
• Staff-name ban is the sleeper rule, most service businesses (salons, dentists, contractors) have built whole review playbooks around personal recognition. Existing reviews mentioning staff are now at risk.
• Selective solicitation rule kills NPS-style filtering, the “would you recommend us?” pre-screen that routes happy customers to Google and unhappy ones to private feedback is now explicitly non-compliant.
• The asymmetry: enforcement is via mass deletion, not warnings. A business optimizing aggressively could lose years of reviews overnight.
• Source is a TikTok agency promo, claims should be cross-checked against Google’s official prohibited content policy before acting at scale.