Asking for reviews after the FTC fake-review rule: what contractors can and can't do

Asking for reviews after the FTC's fake-review rule is still allowed, and still smart. What changed is that there are now three referees watching, and they don't agree. The FTC's Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule, in force since October 21, 2024, allows some things Google's review policy bans outright. Yelp goes further than both and asks you not to request reviews at all. The shops that get in trouble are usually following the most lenient referee while being judged by the strictest.

This post lines up the FTC, Google and Yelp on the review practices contractors actually use (tech contests, gift cards, happy-customer filters, employee reviews), then lays out a process that passes all three. Rule status was checked against FTC, Google and Yelp sources on October 15, 2026.

What the FTC rule actually prohibits

The rule lives at 16 CFR Part 465. It was announced in August 2024, published in the Federal Register on August 22, 2024, and took effect October 21, 2024.¹² It has seven operative sections. Here they are in contractor terms.

The FTC's own Q&A adds important nuance.³

• Incentives aren't banned by the rule as long as there's no express or implied requirement that the review be positive. But the FTC's example of an implied condition is a coupon offered for telling people "how much you loved" a visit.
• Review gating isn't in the rule, but the FTC says asking only customers you expect to be happy "could violate the FTC Act," citing its Endorsement Guides.
• Hosting reviews doesn't make you liable for them. Featuring a review in an ad does: at that point it's your testimonial.
• Responding publicly, contacting an unhappy customer to fix the problem, and asking a satisfied customer to update a review are all fine. Paying someone to remove a review isn't banned by the rule but may be an unfair practice.

The penalty figure is what makes this rule different from older FTC guidance. The FTC has said the Supreme Court's 2021 AMG Capital decision hindered its ability to get money from violators; under the rule, courts can impose civil penalties for knowing violations, up to $53,088 per violation at the 2025 inflation-adjusted level.⁴ The FTC announced in September 2026 that, following OMB guidance cancelling this year's inflation adjustments, the 2025 levels stay in place for 2026.⁵

Three referees, one table

Here is where it gets practical. This table lines up what each referee says about the review practices home service companies actually use. The rightmost column is what we'd do.

Sources: FTC rule and Q&A,³ Google's prohibited and restricted content policy for Maps,⁶ and Yelp's support article on soliciting reviews.⁷

Three rows deserve a closer look, because they're common and most owners assume they're fine.

The tech contest problem

Plenty of shops pay a spiff per five-star review that names the tech, or post a monthly leaderboard. It feels like coaching. Under Google's policy it's two violations: Google lists "merchants requesting that staff solicit a certain number of reviews" and "merchants requesting that staff solicit reviews that include specific content, including content that identifies a staff member" among the things it doesn't allow.⁶ Yelp says plainly that "your staff should never compete to collect reviews."⁷

You can still coach on reviews. Measure the request rate (did the tech make sure the request went out on every completed job) and the private rating (how the customer rated the visit). Both are under the tech's control and neither pressures the customer for a public review.

The gift card problem

A $10 card for "any honest review" passes the FTC rule. It fails Google, which says offering incentives in exchange for reviews is "strictly prohibited" and removes incentivized reviews from Maps.⁸⁶ Since Google is where most homeowners read contractor reviews (BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 U.S. consumers found 71% use Google for reviews, the top source⁹), the Google rule is the one that binds.

The consequences are concrete. Google says that when it finds fake engagement it may block a profile from receiving new reviews for a period, unpublish existing reviews for a period, or show a warning on the profile that fake reviews were removed.¹⁰ A warning banner on your Business Profile costs more than every gift card you'd ever buy.

The gating problem

The old "Were you happy? Yes goes to Google, No goes to the office" flow is the clearest example of a practice the FTC rule doesn't name but everyone else rejects. Google bans selectively soliciting positive reviews.⁶ The FTC says it can be deceptive under the FTC Act.³

The fix keeps the useful part. Ask for a private rating first, so you hear about problems quickly. Then show the public review links to everyone, whatever they rated. The unhappy customer gets a call from a manager the same day and still has the link. You lose nothing you were entitled to.

Why recency now matters more than your star average

Owners tend to obsess over the average. Consumers increasingly care about how recent the reviews are.

BrightLocal is a vendor that sells review software, and its survey is self-reported, so treat the exact numbers as directional.⁹ The Northwestern Spiegel Research Center study, built on retail data from PowerReviews, is about products rather than contractors, but its point about perfect ratings carries over: a 5.0 average with 40 reviews can read as curated.¹¹ That's another argument against gating. An honest 4.7 from 300 recent reviews outsells a suspicious 5.0.

The recency math

Here's a worked example with hypothetical numbers. Use your own job counts.

Say a shop completes 160 jobs a month. If techs remember to trigger a request on 40% of jobs and 12% of those customers post, that's 160 × 3 × 0.40 × 0.12 ≈ 23 reviews per quarter. Automate the request so it goes out on every completed job and the same 12% posting rate gives 160 × 3 × 1.0 × 0.12 ≈ 58 per quarter.

The biggest lever isn't persuasion. It's coverage. Going from "when the tech remembers" to "every completed job" more than doubles review flow without changing a word of the message, and without a single incentive.

An ask-every-customer process that passes all three referees

1. 1

   Trigger on job completion, not on mood

   The request goes out automatically when the job is marked complete, on every job, after a short delay so the customer has seen the result. No one decides who gets asked.

2. 2

   One request per job, by text or email

   One message with a short link. No reminder chain that nags. Texts need the customer's consent to receive job texts, see our texting rules.

3. 3

   Private rating first

   A 1 to 5 star rating and an optional comment. This is your early warning system, and it gives every tech on the job a fair score.

4. 4

   Public links for everyone

   Google and your other review sites appear on the page regardless of the rating. Never hide the link from a low score.

5. 5

   Low ratings become a same-day task

   A rating at or below 3 creates a task for a manager to call. Fix the problem first. If the customer later updates a public review, that's their choice; asking a satisfied customer to update is allowed.

6. 6

   No rewards, no quotas, no names

   No gift cards, no discounts, no tech contests on review counts, no asking customers to mention a tech. Coach on request rate and private rating instead.

This is close to how TradesWork reviews and referrals works out of the box: one request per completed job after a delay you choose, a private rating, public links shown to every customer before and after rating, and low ratings turned into an office task. Two honest limits: TradesWork can't confirm a customer actually posted a public review (it counts clicks on your links), and replies to Google reviews still happen in Google Business Profile.

Responding to reviews without creating a new problem

Replies are where owners accidentally create liability or bad press. Google's guidance is short: keep replies brief, personal and conversational, never promotional, and never share a reviewer's private information.⁸ Consumers reward responses; BrightLocal's 2026 survey found 80% say they're more likely to use a business that responds to all its reviews, while 50% are put off by generic, templated replies.⁹

One more rule of thumb: if a review is about the wrong company or is patently false, flag it through Google's tools rather than fighting it in a reply. The FTC Q&A confirms you may decline to display reviews that are clearly about another business or are patently false, as long as you apply that standard evenly.³

A one-page review policy for your team

The best review strategy still starts in the driveway. Our post on the last ten minutes on site covers the close-out that earns the review in the first place, and the rules for AI-written reviews and texts covers what not to automate. If you track review velocity, track it by quarter and by branch, not just the lifetime average.

General information, not legal advice. If you've received an FTC letter or a demand about reviews, talk to counsel.