The FTC's Trade Regulation Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials took effect on October 21, 2024. It does not require anything new from a business that collects reviews honestly. It makes a list of things illegal that were previously just against Google's policy, and it attaches a civil penalty to each one.
What the rule bans
- Writing or buying reviews from people who did not use the service, including AI-generated ones.
- Reviews from employees, owners or their relatives that do not say so.
- Paying or giving anything for a review on the condition that it is positive (or negative, about a competitor).
- Threatening a customer, or claiming a legal right you do not have, to get a review removed.
- Running a review site that looks independent and is not.
- Buying fake followers or views for a company's social accounts.
Penalties are per violation. Fifty bought reviews is fifty violations.
What Google bans on top
Google's own policy goes further in two places. It prohibits any incentive for a review, including ones with no rating attached, so a $10 gift card for "an honest review" is fine with the FTC and against Google's rules. And it prohibits what the industry calls review gating: sending a survey first and only inviting the happy customers to post. Both can get reviews removed, and repeat cases get the profile suspended. Since the Local Services listing now shows Business Profile reviews, a suspension takes the ads down with it.
What still works, which is most of it
Ask every customer. At the truck, before the technician leaves, with a text that arrives while the tech is still in the driveway. The text has the technician's first name in it and a direct link to the review form. Our clients that do this at the truck collect reviews from somewhere between one in five and one in three service calls. The ones that send a request from the office two days later get one in fifteen.
Reply to every review within a day. A reply to a good review is two sentences and the technician's name. A reply to a bad one says what happened and what you did, specifically: "We sent Marcus back out Thursday and replaced the capacitor at no charge" tells the next hundred readers more than "We take your feedback seriously."
Keep the bad reviews. Under the rule, a business cannot claim its displayed reviews are representative if it has removed the negative ones it had the power to remove. A profile with 200 reviews and a 4.7 rating reads as real. A profile with 200 reviews and a 5.0 reads like something was done to it, and homeowners have learned that.
When a review is fake
Competitors and ex-employees do post fake one-star reviews. Google's removal process is slow and mostly automated, and the flag from the business gets more weight when the profile's own history is clean. Flag it, reply to it publicly and calmly with the fact that you have no record of the customer, and move on. Suing the reviewer is the one response the rule specifically frowns on unless the review is actually defamatory, and it rarely helps the rating either way.