Part 5 of Marketing myths, checked
Should you only ask happy customers for reviews?
No. Ask for reviews by all means, but ask everyone. Picking only the customers you think are happy breaks Google's rules and Trustpilot's, and the UK regulator treats it as cherry-picking, which UK law has banned since April 2025. To be fair to the other side, the law itself doesn't mention who you ask: that's the regulator's reading, and no court has tested it. It's still not a risk worth taking, and there are plenty of fair ways to get more reviews.
This piece is part of our series on marketing myths, checked, in which we test what small and medium businesses are told against what the people running the systems actually publish.
How the advice usually goes
It comes in a few forms. Only send the review link after a job you know went well. Ask in person when the customer is smiling, and not otherwise. Send a short "how did we do?" message first, then pass the happy ones to your Google page and keep the unhappy ones in your inbox. Offer a small thank-you, a discount or a prize draw for leaving a review. Each is presented as normal practice. We're describing the practices, not anyone who recommends them.
What the law actually bans
Since 6 April 2025, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 has treated four things about reviews as unfair in every circumstance:
- writing or commissioning a fake review, which includes rewarding someone for one;
- hiding the fact that a review was rewarded;
- publishing reviews in a misleading way, which the Act says covers burying the bad ones while showing the good, giving one side more prominence, or leaving out something relevant about how a review came to be written;
- and publishing reviews without taking reasonable and proportionate steps to keep the fake and secretly rewarded ones out.
Selling any of it as a service to other businesses is banned too.
What the Act never does is say a word about which customers you ask.
On rewards, the law is looser than people expect and the platforms are stricter. The CMA says you may pay for a review, or offer a discount or a free product, so long as you say so and the review still reflects the reviewer's real experience. Then comes the catch: most sites don't allow rewarded reviews at all, and where a site doesn't, submitting one there is likely to be misleading. Google and Trustpilot are two of them, so the looser rule won't help you much. Every example the CMA gives of banned commissioning has the same shape: a freebie for five stars that aren't the customer's real view, or a refund offered to someone if they'll take the criticism out.
Where selective asking comes in
The idea that selective asking breaks the law comes from the regulator, not from the Act. Under a heading on suppressing and cherry-picking reviews, the Competition and Markets Authority's guidance on fake reviews says one way of cherry-picking is:
"encouraging just those who are satisfied to leave reviews."
So on the regulator's reading you don't have to delete a bad review to break the rule. Not asking for it is enough. The same guidance rules out the neighbouring tricks: switching review invitations on and off to suit yourself, making an offer to put things right conditional on no bad review, steering an unhappy customer into a private complaint instead of a public review, and filing a review meant for the public as a complaint so it never gets published. What it expressly allows is plain asking, with no attempt to shape what people say.
Enforcement has started, but it hasn't settled anything yet. In its one-year review of April 2026, the CMA says it swept review publishers, wrote advisory letters to 54 firms, and in March 2026 opened investigations into five companies over how reviews are obtained, moderated and displayed. Its notice of those five shows the shape of the risk: one-star reviews not published and not counted in the star rating, staff asked to write positive reviews, a ratings system that inflated certain restaurants' and grocers' stars, and discounts offered for five-star reviews on delivery apps without saying so. The CMA stresses that it has reached no conclusions about whether the law was broken.
If it ever finds that it was, the penalty is a fine of up to £300,000, or 10% of turnover if that's higher. Most of the practices the Act bans are crimes. The review rules aren't, so for reviews the risk is civil action by the CMA rather than a prosecution, though anything misleading in other ways can still be a crime under the rest of the Act.
What Google says
Google's policy on prohibited and restricted content for Maps is what governs reviews on a Business Profile, and under "Rating manipulation" it lists what merchants may not do. They may not offer incentives "such as payment, discounts, free of cost goods and/or services" for a review, or for changing or removing a bad one. And, in as many words, they may not "Discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers".
The same policy says you "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", and it rules out setting staff a target number of reviews. What you may do is "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."
Get it wrong and, as well as removing the reviews, Google says it may stop your profile receiving new ones for a period, unpublish the reviews you already have for a period, or show visitors "a warning to let consumers know that fake reviews were removed", as its page on Business Profile restrictions explains. You can appeal. If your profile has already been restricted or suspended, here's what to do next.
What Trustpilot says
Trustpilot's guidelines for businesses are the most specific of the lot. Invitations must be "fair, neutral, and unbiased with no incentives offered", and you should "Invite consistently and fairly", which Trustpilot spells out as "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".
What it forbids:
- Being selective, "by picking and choosing which customers you invite". That covers "Inviting only those people who you know have had a positive experience", and the quieter version: timing invitations to "a certain stage in the customer journey that will only be reached by people who have had a good experience".
- Pre-screening, "by directing customers who have had a good experience to leave a review and those with a bad experience to contact you directly".
- Incentives "in connection with writing or editing reviews", including "discounts, promo codes, prize draw entries, refunds, freebies".
- Suggesting "that reviewers only leave positive reviews".
Get caught and Trustpilot says it can suspend the account or put a consumer warning on the profile.
What Facebook says
Facebook says a good deal less than the others. Its help page on recommending a business tells reviewers a recommendation should be based "on personal experience", and that they "Shouldn't manage the Page for that business". It also admits Facebook does "not verify that users purchased the product or used the service" being reviewed. We found no Meta policy at all on businesses asking for or rewarding reviews. A Page owner can switch Recommendations off, which removes the rating and every review with it, good and bad. The law applies to reviews on Facebook exactly as it does anywhere else.
Does it matter who is asking?
The same Act applies to everyone, but what it asks of you depends on your role.
If you ask your own customers, you're covered by the ban on commissioning fake or secretly rewarded reviews, whoever ends up publishing them. And if you show reviews yourself, on your site, in a widget or on a leaflet, you're a publisher too, so the rules on misleading publication apply to what you choose to display. The CMA's examples include "selecting only favourable reviews to be presented".
If you host other people's reviews, you carry the heavier duty to prevent and remove the fake and misleading ones. The CMA's guidance says the steps expected of a site that collects and verifies reviews itself "may differ from, and be more significant than", those expected of a business showing ratings it pulled from that site. Being small is no exemption: "Even a small trader publishing only reviews from their own customers" must take "reasonable and proportionate measures where their content poses a risk".
The platforms' rules sit on top of all of it. Breaking Google's or Trustpilot's policy isn't in itself breaking the law, but it gets your reviews removed and your profile restricted. And where a platform doesn't allow incentivised reviews, the CMA says submitting one there is likely to be misleading.
How to get more reviews fairly
You should ask for reviews, and there's a lot you can do to get more of them, fairly:
- Ask everyone, the same way, at the same point. When the job's finished or the order has arrived, not just after the ones that went well.
- Make it easy. Google's tips page suggests asking customers "to visit a Google link or scan a QR code", and adds: "Value all reviews: Honest and balanced reviews can help potential customers decide. A mix of positive and negative feedback often feels more trustworthy."
- Give people time to use what they bought before you ask. Trustpilot's guidelines say "Give your customers time to experience the product or service before asking them to provide feedback".
- Use neutral words. "Would you leave us a review?" rather than "If you're happy, please leave five stars".
- Reply to reviews, including the ones that sting. Google's tips put it simply: "Show customers that their feedback matters."
- Fix the problem, separately. You can always offer to put things right for an unhappy customer. What you can't do is make that offer depend on them not leaving, or removing, a review.
The one thing you can't do is let the customer's mood decide who gets asked. Reviews are one part of local search, and our local SEO checklist shows where they fit. And if anyone offers to create reviews or mentions for you, our piece on paying to be recommended by ChatGPT explains why that should worry you.
A quick check
The ticks are saved in this browser.
- Every customer is asked for a review at the same point, in the same way.
What good looks like
Every customer gets the same review request at the same point, such as a day after the job is finished, whether or not the job went smoothly.
- We never ask "how did we do?" first and send only the happy ones to review us.
What good looks like
No survey, star rating or feedback form sits between the customer and the review request, deciding who gets sent to the review site.
- Our request does not mention stars or a positive review.
What good looks like
The wording asks for an honest review and says nothing about stars, ratings or hoping for a good one.
- We offer nothing in return for a review.
What good looks like
No discount, prize draw, gift or other benefit is linked to leaving a review.
- Staff have no targets for numbers of reviews.
What good looks like
No member of staff is set a target or rewarded for the number of reviews collected or for reviews with particular content.
- Any reviews on our own website include the negative ones, not just the best.
What good looks like
Reviews shown on your site come from a source you don't filter, or include the critical ones alongside the good.
- Any offer to put things right does not depend on a review being changed or removed.
What good looks like
When you offer to fix a problem, the offer stands whether or not the customer changes or removes their review, and you never ask them to.
What nobody has settled yet
- The Act and selective asking. The Act bans publishing reviews in a misleading way, and says nothing about how reviews are asked for. That selective asking counts as cherry-picking is the CMA's reading, in guidance. We found no court decision testing it, so treat it as the regulator's view of the law rather than settled law.
- Enforcement outcomes. The CMA opened five review investigations in March 2026. As of 27 September 2026 its case pages still showed them open, with no published outcome, so no decided case yet shows where the line falls for a small or medium business. None of the five is about selective asking.
- Facebook. We found no Meta policy on businesses asking for or rewarding reviews. Facebook's help pages talk to reviewers, not to businesses.
- How common it is. We found no reliable UK figures on how many businesses ask only happy customers, so we make no claim about whether it's "normal practice".
So, who should you ask?
Everyone, so the claim is false. Asking for reviews is allowed and worth doing. Asking only the customers you think are happy breaks Google's and Trustpilot's rules outright, and the regulator treats it as cherry-picking, which the Act bans, even though the Act doesn't name it and no court has tested that reading. That gap in the wording is no reason to risk it. Ask everyone, the same way, at the same point, and offer nothing in return.
If you'd like a hand with your Google Business Profile and local search, including a review process that stays inside the rules, our SEO audit and first fixes is the place to start, at a fixed £2,500.
Questions people ask
Is it illegal to ask only happy customers for reviews?
The Act does not say. It bans publishing consumer reviews in a misleading way, but says nothing about which customers a business asks. The CMA's guidance says cherry-picking positive reviews might be done by encouraging just those who are satisfied to leave reviews, so the regulator treats selective asking as a way of breaking that rule. That is guidance, and no court has tested it. Google and Trustpilot forbid selective asking outright in their own policies.
Can I offer a discount or prize draw for a review?
Not on Google or Trustpilot: both prohibit incentives for reviews, and Google says offering them is considered fake engagement. UK law allows an incentivised review only if the incentive is disclosed and the review still reflects the customer's genuine experience, but the CMA says that where a site does not allow incentivised reviews, submitting one is likely to be misleading.
Can I ask an unhappy customer to contact me instead of leaving a review?
You can offer to put things right, but not as a filter. Trustpilot forbids directing customers who had a good experience to leave a review and those with a bad one to contact you directly. The CMA's guidance says businesses should not make dispute resolution contingent on a customer not leaving a negative review.
What happens if Google finds I have broken its review rules?
Google says it removes the reviews and may restrict the Business Profile: stopping new reviews for a period, unpublishing existing reviews for a period, or showing a warning that fake reviews were removed. Businesses can appeal.
What is the penalty under UK law?
Fake and misleading reviews are a banned practice under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. The CMA can impose a penalty of up to £300,000 or 10% of turnover, whichever is higher. The Act's criminal offence for banned practices does not apply to the review practices, so the main route is civil enforcement by the CMA.
I founded oXo Creatives, an independent marketing agency and consultancy, in 2013 and run it full-time. Until 2026 I ran it alongside senior in-house marketing roles at Google, PlayStation and King, partner management at Meta, and digital product at NatWest.
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