If your business relies on reviews to drive visibility and conversions, this update matters more than you think.
Google quietly updated its restricted and prohibited content guidelines, and many businesses are already feeling the impact. Reviews are at risk of being removed, and processes that used to “work” are now violations.
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Why This Update Matters
Review fraud has become a serious problem.
Fake positive reviews make bad businesses look credible. Fake negative reviews hurt legitimate locations. When you scale across multiple locations, even small issues in your process get multiplied quickly.
What Actually Changed in Google’s Review Policies?
At a high level, Google is doubling down on authenticity and cracking down on manipulation.
The core rule still stands. Reviews must be based on real experiences and be unbiased. Now, the platform is much more specific about what qualifies as fake engagement or manipulation.
Here are the biggest updates you need to understand:
- Incentivized reviews are still prohibited, including discounts, freebies, or perks in exchange for feedback
- Reviews created from multiple accounts, emulators, or automated systems are more easily detected and removed
- Sudden spikes in review volume can trigger removals if patterns look unnatural
- Reviews from employees, vendors, or anyone with a professional connection are not allowed
- Review gating remains a violation and is actively enforced
- Businesses cannot pressure customers to leave reviews while on-site
- Businesses cannot ask customers to include specific content, such as employee names or keywords
This last point is where many businesses are getting into trouble.
For years, companies have trained staff to ask for specific mentions in reviews. It felt harmless and even helpful. Under the updated guidelines, it is now explicitly against the rules.
The Biggest Risk: Guided Reviews and Scripted Processes
Google has made its position much more explicit: you cannot influence what a customer says in their review. That means no prompting them to mention a specific salesperson, no nudging them to highlight a certain service, and no seeding keywords or phrases you want reflected back.
For industries like automotive, healthcare, and home services, this is a shift. Encouraging name mentions or specific callouts has been standard practice for years.
The issue is that this behavior is unnatural and against human nature. When is the last you told a friend or family member about how you had to pick up a few things from Target? When you did, did you tell them that Joe Smith at the checkout was fabulous and scanned all your items with great efficiency? Probably not.
What You Should Do Right Now
If you are responsible for marketing performance across multiple locations, this is not something to put off. You need to review your current strategy and ensure it aligns with the updated guidelines. Find all the updated guidelines here: bit.ly/google-restricted-content
Get the correct process in place, retrain your staff, and realign your strategy to meet Google's updated guidelines. This is for the long-term benefit of your online business presence.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Welcome back to another episode of Local Search Tuesdays. This week, I’m talking about Google’s recent update to the restricted and prohibited content guidelines. Thanks to this update, you might be breaking the rules and risking problems…
Just a few weeks ago, Google updated the official policies around reviews in its “Prohibited and Restricted Content” document. Here’s what it looks like now:
So make sure you follow all of those new rules so you don’t get in trouble, and we’ll see you next time… Dude, you should tell people what changed. Oh yeah, good point.
Review fraud has become a massive problem - fake reviews from businesses make it much harder for customers to know which businesses to choose. Fake reviews from bad actors can hurt businesses for the same reason.
It’s important to understand the new policies - especially because there are a ton of businesses out there who are violating the new policies and risking the removal of a significant portion of their reviews.
So today, I’m going to walk you through the updates so you understand what’s allowed… and what’s not.
Google starts by saying that “contributions to Google Maps should reflect a genuine experience at a place or business, and a review or rating should reflect an actual experience with a business, and be genuine and unbiased”
Google will remove any reviews that it determines to be “fake engagement”, including: Reviews that aren’t based on a real experience. No big change here, the policy has always said that.
Reviews that have been paid for or incentivized - either directly or in kind. You can’t buy reviews, and you can’t offer discounts or freebies for reviews. This also includes incentivizing the removal or update of a review.
Reviews posted from multiple accounts by one person - or at the request of one person.
Reviews posted using an emulator or other service or operating system. This was put in place to fight all the fake AI-generated reviews.
Reviews posted on a competitor’s business to undermine that business.
Unusual review volumes or patterns that indicate an effort to manipulate the rating of a business are also not allowed. In other words, if you get a sudden influx of positive reviews that immediately drops off, it’s likely that none of those reviews will stick.
The language is also explicit around reviews left with a conflict of interest. Reviews cannot be left by current or former employees, contractors or consultants, anyone with a professional affiliation, or family members.
Review gating is also against the rules. This happens when businesses ask a qualifying question first, and then send unhappy customers to a private form and happy customers to a link to leave a review.
Google added a new section that says that merchants cannot require or pressure customers to leave a review while on the premises AND that merchants cannot request that specific content be included. This is where a ton of businesses are now violating guidelines. Car dealers, I’m talking to you here - but a huge number of other verticals do the same thing. You can’t ask a customer to write something specific - including asking the customer to include the sales person’s name in the review.
I’ve been telling business owners for years that it’s not human nature to leave the name of the person who sold you the product or service in the review - especially when the review mentions the first and last name of the sales person. Businesses do this because they think it will help future customers know that someone is great and that hopefully, customers will ask for that sales person by name. They typically spiff employees, so that the sales person gets extra money for each review that minions their name.
Now, that’s against the rules, and Google will simply remove any reviews from the business that it determines to have broken this rule.
Be careful! If you’re doing this, you need to change your process immediately. We’ve already seen tons of reviews disappear in the wild because they violate the updated policy.
You should definitely read the updated review guidelines for yourself. Head over to bit.ly/google-restricted-content to read the entire document.
That’s all the time we have left for this week’s episode, so you know what that means. Put your hand on the screen right here: We totally just high-fived ‘cause you learned something awesome. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you again next time for another episode of Local Search Tuesdays.
