What review gating is, and why it is banned
The practice has a precise definition, a clear platform prohibition and a fuzzier legal position. All three are worth knowing before you build anything that asks customers for reviews.
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Review gating, in one sentence
Review gating is the practice of surveying customers first and showing the public review link only to the ones whose answer was positive.
The survey is usually a single screen: a face, a thumb, a row of stars. What happens next depends on which one is tapped. A high answer opens the platform review form. A low answer opens a private feedback box and nothing else. The screen looks even handed, and the branch underneath it is not.
There is a softer version with no screen at all, which is sending the review request only to the customers a business already believes were pleased. No branch, just a filtered send list. The effect on the published rating is the same, and so is the policy answer.
GetSetReply's review funnel does not gate. Every customer who taps a face is shown the same public review links. A customer who taps OK or Poor also gets a private note form, which renders above those links rather than in place of them, so the links are on the screen whatever was tapped.
What gating does to a rating, in numbers
Take a business whose month splits four ways. The left column is what every customer would have posted if every customer had been given the link.
- Delighted customers, posting 5 stars
- 40 people, 200 stars
- Satisfied customers, posting 4 stars
- 30 people, 120 stars
- Indifferent customers, posting 3 stars
- 20 people, 60 stars
- Unhappy customers, posting 1 star
- 10 people, 10 stars
Ungated, that is 390 stars across 100 reviews, an average of 3.9. Screened down to the top answer only, it is 200 stars across 40 reviews, an average of 5.0. The rating moved by 1.1 stars and not one word of anybody's feedback changed.
That gap is what a platform's enforcement team is looking for, and it is also why the number stops being useful to you. A 5.0 built that way tells you nothing about the sixty people you did not hear from.
Why this matters if you run one shop
A screened rating is a rating you cannot manage by. If the score only ever reflects the customers who were already delighted, it cannot tell you the Tuesday lunch shift is slipping, and it will not warn you before the slip reaches somebody who does post.
The exposure is real and it is one sided. Google's Maps content policy names it outright: a merchant may not discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers. Enforcement is not a fine you can budget for. Violating content is removed from Maps, and a Business Profile can itself be suspended or removed. Google's own help page on that says that when it removes a profile, the public cannot go to it and its owner and managers cannot act on it. Every legitimate review you collected is displayed on that profile, so it sits behind the same door.
The Federal Trade Commission's 2024 rule on consumer reviews and testimonials is narrower than most summaries suggest. It does not itself forbid asking only satisfied customers for a review, and the Commission's own guidance adds that such a practice could nonetheless violate the FTC Act. So the honest position is that the practice is prohibited by the platforms and legally exposed under general consumer protection law, which is a worse combination than one clear rule.
The misconception: it is just good customer service
The defence is usually some version of this: we are not stopping anybody, we are simply giving a dissatisfied customer a way to tell us first.
That describes a different design from the one being run. Talking to a dissatisfied customer first is fine, and a good funnel does exactly that. Gating is what happens when the public link is withheld from that customer, and the withholding is the part policy names.
There is a test you can run on your own funnel in about a minute. Answer the survey badly and look at the screen. If the public review links are still on it, you are not gating. If they vanished, you are, whatever the intent was.
Review gating questions we get asked
The five that come up most often when an owner is deciding how to build a review request.
Is review gating illegal?
It is prohibited by Google's Maps content policy, which forbids discouraging negative reviews or selectively soliciting positive ones. Under United States law it is not banned by name in the FTC's 2024 consumer reviews rule, and the Commission's own guidance says the practice could nonetheless violate the FTC Act. Treat it as prohibited.
Does asking for reviews at all count as gating?
No. Google's policy has a short list of what it does allow merchants to do, and soliciting content that represents a genuine experience is on it, provided you offer no incentive and make no attempt to influence the rating or the contents of the review. The same page adds two conditions that get missed: do not require or pressure a customer to review while they are still on the premises, and do not ask for particular content to be included. What it forbids outright is choosing who gets the ask based on how they feel about you.
Can I still collect private feedback?
Yes, and it is the useful half. A private note form is fine when it sits alongside the public links rather than in place of them. GetSetReply renders the same public links on every screen of its funnel and puts the private form above them.
What about a survey that sends everyone to the review page afterwards?
That is not gating, because the destination does not depend on the answer. The line is the branch, not the question.
Does GetSetReply gate?
No. Every customer sees the same public review links whatever they tap, and GetSetReply drafts your reply for you to read and post yourself rather than publishing anything on your behalf.
Terms that come up in the same conversation as gating
Compliant by design
Ask everyone, then reply to whoever answers
GetSetReply pulls every review into one inbox with a reply already drafted in your voice. You read it, change what you like, and post it yourself.