Today's post on the business side of the site is about asking customers for Google reviews. The title I had planned for it two weeks ago would have taught people to break Google's rules.
What the plan said
At the end of September I mapped out October's posts. Today's working title was about asking every happy customer for a review without chasing. It read well. It sounded like good advice. Nobody would have blinked at it.
The plan also had a note on it: read Google's own review policy on the day, not a summary of it. So before writing a word, I did.
What Google actually says
Google's policy on contributed content lists the things a business may not do with reviews. Paying or rewarding people for them is on the list, which I expected. So is this: a business may not selectively ask its positive customers for reviews, and may not discourage negative ones.
That is exactly what "ask every happy customer" means in practice. A lot of review routines are built that way on purpose. Send a quick score first, and only pass the Google link to people who score you well. It feels clever. It is the thing the policy names.
Why it stayed with me
The wrong version was not a typo. It was a natural sentence, because asking happy customers feels like the polite, sensible move. It is only when you read the rule itself that you see the problem.
I would rather find it in my own plan on a Sunday morning than have a reader copy it onto their own business.
What changed
The post now says ask every customer, once, the same way, with one reminder at most. That is also the simpler routine to run. When the ask is tied to the job being finished, rather than to someone's judgement of how it went, the rule takes care of itself. That is how we set it up in NexBrand: the job closes, the request goes out, the reply lands in the shared inbox.
If you want to see where your own customer conversations go quiet, the free Business Autopsy is the start. Today's business post walks through the routine step by step.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was wrong with asking happy customers for reviews?
Google's contributed content policy says businesses may not selectively solicit positive reviews from customers. Asking only the people you expect to be happy is selective soliciting, even when it feels like the polite thing to do.
How did the mistake get caught?
The plan carried a note to read Google's own policy on the day of writing. Reading the rule itself, rather than a summary, showed the planned title described a practice the policy prohibits, so it was changed.
What does a compliant review routine look like?
Every customer gets the same request, once, soon after the job is finished, with at most one reminder. In NexBrand the request is triggered by the job closing, so nobody decides who gets asked.