It is not about how big the discount is or how the review turns out. The whole trade is
You give a customer ten percent off, or a free coffee, or an entry into a raffle for leaving a Google review. It feels like a small trade that helps both sides: the customer gets something, you get a review. The star rating is part of the review, not a separate thing, so the same question covers a discount tied to a good rating too.
The answer is no, from two directions at once, not just one. Google bans it in its own content policy. Federal law has a separate rule about paying for reviews, with its own penalties, and the two rarely get explained together.
Yes. Google's content policy bans offering an incentive, payment, a discount, or free goods or services, in exchange for posting a review or for editing or removing a negative one. A discount sits right next to cash and free merchandise in that rule. The ban targets the exchange itself, a review for a reward, not how large the reward is or how the review turns out.
No, separately from Google's own policy. The FTC's rule on consumer reviews and testimonials bans buying a review outright, and a discount conditioned on leaving one is a purchase in substance, paid in a discount instead of cash. The rule does not care where the review ends up; it targets the arrangement itself, so posting the review to Google instead of your own website does not put it outside the rule.
Yes. A prize in a raffle is still goods or services without additional payment, the exact category both the Google rule and the federal rule name. It does not matter that only one entrant actually wins; the incentive exists the moment a review is the ticket to enter, not once someone collects the prize.
Yes, the same way. A loyalty punch redeemed after ten visits is a smaller reward than a raffle prize, but it is still a good given in exchange for something, and the rule does not set a minimum value below which an incentive stops being an incentive. A stamp that only gets punched for customers who leave a review is exactly the same trade as a straight discount, spread across ten visits instead of one.
No. The banned condition is writing a review at all, not what the review says. A discount offered to anyone who leaves any review, good or bad, still fails the rule, because the reward is still tied to the act of reviewing rather than being unconditional. The only version of a discount that avoids the rule entirely is one with no review attached to it at all.
No. The rule is about the arrangement, not who administers it. A marketing agency running a "leave a review, get a reward" campaign on your behalf is still your business offering the incentive, and the FTC's rule on reviews reaches whoever is behind the arrangement, not just whoever physically hands out the reward.
No. Google bans this under a related rule naming businesses that require staff to obtain a specific number of reviews. The rule names a quantity, not a reward, and that distinction matters less than it sounds: the practical difference between ordering "bring me five reviews" and paying a bonus for whoever brings in the most is only in how it is phrased to staff, not in what is being asked of them. This rule targets the volume of reviews requested, not their content, which is why it sits beside the incentive ban as a separate reason enforcement can act.
Yes, anyone, anytime, including a customer who just paid and is walking out the door. Google's policy directly permits requesting or encouraging the posting of content that reflects a genuine experience, without offering an incentive in connection with it. Asking is not the problem this page describes; attaching a reward to the answer is.
A sign at the counter, a card, a follow-up email, a line on the receipt: all of it is an offer, not a condition, as long as nothing is attached to it. The difference between an allowed request and everything above is not when you ask. It is whether you are asking with something in your hand or without. A business that asks constantly, but never offers anything for the answer, is inside the rule no matter how often it asks.
A review obtained through an incentive breaks Google's content policy, so anyone can report it as a policy-violating review, and the FTC's rule on reviews carries its own civil penalties, described in the FTC's own announcement as running into the tens of thousands of dollars per violation. Each incentivized review can count as its own violation, which is how a small punch-card promotion turns into a large exposure once it has run for a season. What works instead is asking every guest the same way, with nothing on the table.
Valtela runs $599 a year and offers a review or a private message side by side to every guest, with nothing attached to either option; the full breakdown is on pricing.
The full rundown of what Google bans and allows about reviews, with a source for each answer, is on Google's review policy. The federal side, including who is actually liable for a review someone else wrote, is on reviews and the law. And the related question of only inviting your happiest customers to leave a review is covered in full on review gating.
Every citation on this page comes from one of these pages. The link goes to the original source, not to our summary of it.
$599a year, plus $79 for each extra card. See the full price.