What each review site allows
Each review site's own rules on asking for reviews, review gating and incentives, quoted word for word and linked to the page each rule comes from.
Each review site sets its own rules for how a business may ask for reviews, and they are not all the same. Below, each site's rules are quoted from its own pages, with a link that opens the page at the quoted sentence.
Google welcomes review requests. Its help for business owners suggests a link or a QR code:
To leave reviews, you can ask customers to visit a Google link or scan a QR code.
Its Maps content policy allows asking, as long as nothing is offered and nobody tries to steer the rating:
Solicit or encourage the posting of content that does represent a genuine experience, without offering incentives to do so or attempting to influence the rating or the contents of the review.
What it does not allow is asking only the customers likely to be happy, or discouraging a bad review:
Discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers
Rewards for reviews are prohibited outright, whatever the review says:
Reviews and other user contributions to Google Maps must reflect a genuine experience. Offering incentives, like free or discounted goods or services, in exchange for customers to post reviews, change reviews, or remove negative reviews is considered fake & misleading content and is strictly prohibited.
And a review should not be pressed for on the spot, or written to order:
When soliciting reviews, merchants should not require or pressure users to leave ratings or write reviews while on the premises, nor should they request that specific content be included.
Yelp
Yelp is the exception among the big review sites: it asks businesses not to ask for reviews at all. Its content guidelines:
Businesses should never ask customers to write reviews.
Its support center spells it out, and explains that Yelp's software may hide reviews that look requested:
Don't ask anyone to review your business, be it customers, mailing list subscribers, friends, family, etc.
Proactively asking for reviews may hurt your Yelp rating because our automated software may not recommend reviews that seem to be prompted or encouraged by the business.
It also names asking for a review after collecting feedback, which is how a review funnel with a rating question works:
Don't ask for reviews after requesting customer feedback in other places like surveys or contact forms.
Rewards for reviews are prohibited, and Yelp may put a warning on your page when it finds them:
Don't offer freebies, discounts, or payment in exchange for reviews
When we have evidence that someone has offered cash or other incentives in exchange for a review, we display a Compensated Activity Alert on the page.
TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor encourages owners to ask guests for reviews:
Absolutely! It's a great idea to ask guests to review your property.
It forbids review gating, and sets the strictest test of any site here: if a survey or website leads to a TripAdvisor review, the path must be identical for a happy guest and an unhappy one.
We prohibit the practice of selectively soliciting positive content and/or rejecting moderate or negative content.
If any survey or external website ultimately directs users to submit a review on Tripadvisor, the user interface and experience for submitting positive and negative reviews must be identical. For example, directing a guest to one review page if they indicate a positive experience but directing them to another path (such as an internal customer support channel) if they indicate a negative experience is against our review guidelines.
Offering anything for a review is against its guidelines, whatever the rating:
It is against our guidelines to offer or promise anything in exchange for any reviews, irrespective of rating.
Meta's Community Feedback policy covers ratings and reviews, and it defines its own scope like this:
We define Community Feedback as user-generated content appearing on Ratings and Review or Question and Answers features on Marketplace or Shops.
It is meant to carry every kind of opinion, good and bad:
Community Feedback is intended to provide equal voice for all viewpoints that comply with Meta policies, including the full range of positive, negative, and neutral ratings and reviews.
And it does not allow rewarded reviews unless they are disclosed under Meta's Branded Content policies:
Community Feedback must not be directly or indirectly incentivized, unless otherwise disclosed compliant with Meta's policies on Branded Content.
We did not find a separate rule from Meta on review gating, or one written for recommendations on a Facebook Page. Treat the rules above, and the FTC's, as the floor.
Trustpilot
Trustpilot encourages invitations, on its terms:
Businesses are encouraged to invite customers to leave reviews, but invitations must be fair, neutral, and unbiased with no incentives offered.
inviting everyone in the same way, and at the same point in the customer journey, regardless of whether they've had a positive or negative experience with your business
Among its don'ts are two that matter for any review funnel and any reward:
Pre-screening people who leave a review by directing customers who have had a good experience to leave a review and those with a bad experience to contact you directly
Offer incentives in connection with writing or editing reviews. This includes, for example: discounts, promo codes, prize draw entries, refunds, freebies, or any other benefit connected with your business for leaving a review
DoorDash
DoorDash does not want stores to ask for reviews on DoorDash at all, or to offer anything for them:
At this time, DoorDash prohibits direct content solicitation from merchants. Stores should not request ratings, reviews, photos, videos, or other content directly from customers or offer incentives in exchange for content, as this constitutes a conflict of interest.
Etsy
We have not quoted Etsy's rules here, because we could not read them from Etsy's own site when this page was written, and we do not state a rule we have not read. Check the reviews rules in Etsy's House Rules before you ask a buyer for a review.
Official sources
Every quote on this page links to the official page it comes from, read on October 4, 2026. Those pages are the ones that count: if anything here disagrees with them, they are right and we are wrong. The full list is under Official sources on the section's first page.
Related
Rules for asking for reviews
What the review sites and the FTC say about asking customers for reviews, review gating and incentives, quoted from their own pages.
The FTC rules on consumer reviews
The FTC's consumer reviews rule and its Endorsement Guides on review gating, rewards for reviews and reviews by staff, quoted from the official text.