No QR code, just a link you paste into an email, a receipt, or your own site.
You want a link, not a QR code. For an email signature, a receipt, a text message after a job, or a button on your own site next to your contact details. Google hands it out free to any business with a Business Profile, no waiting and no form.
Getting to it is not one single path, though, and not every address tied to your listing goes exactly where you want, straight to the stars and the text box, instead of to your business page where a guest still has to hunt for the review link themselves. The address you copy from a browser after searching your own name is not necessarily the one Google built specifically for asking.
The steps are below, along with how to check a link actually works, where it belongs, and what to do when it stops working or never appears. Printing and the QR code have their own page, linked once at the end.
Google builds it free, inside your own Business Profile, in three steps:
Google Business Profile Help, read September 14, 2026
Step three hands you both, the link and the QR code beneath it. The code has its own page with printing instructions; this one stays with the link itself, the address you copy and paste anywhere else.
Only an owner or manager of the listing can reach step three. Running more than one location means repeating it separately for each, since every location carries its own profile and its own link. One link pasted into a signature for a business with two branches will always point at only one of them.
Nothing in this process opens a third-party account or charges a fee. Anybody offering to sell you the same link is charging for the three clicks above, not for access to something you would not otherwise have.
Open the link yourself, ideally in a browser where you are not signed into your own account, exactly the way a guest will open it. Watch whether it drops you straight at the stars and the text box, or only at your business page, where a guest still has to find the review option themselves.
Not every address tied to a profile behaves the same way. The one from step three above is the one Google built specifically for asking. If you are tempted to use an address from somewhere else, check it the same way rather than assuming.
The test takes thirty seconds. Run it once on a phone and once on a computer, since a guest will almost always open the link on a phone, not the browser you tested it in.
In a business email signature. At the bottom of a printed receipt. In a text or a chat message after a job wraps up. As a button next to the contact details on your own website.
Anywhere a guest reaches it after they have already left, with the kind of patience a checkout counter never gives them. That is exactly what a QR code cannot do: a guest needs a phone and the code in front of them at the same moment, while a link finds someone wherever they happen to be.
Anyone who wants to hand a review request to a guest right there, at the register or the table, should read the step-by-step printing guide on the free QR code page instead. This page does not cover printing.
A review link is tied to a specific listing, not to your business as a concept. Listings occasionally change underneath one: two get merged, a duplicate becomes the visible one instead of yours, or verification lapses and has to be redone. A link that worked yesterday can behave differently today.
The fix matches how you got it the first time: go back to step three above and grab a fresh one, since an old link cannot be manually redirected to a new listing. Anyone with the old link printed on a thousand receipts has more at stake than someone who only kept it in an email signature, which is a one-click fix. Note the date you grabbed the link and that it came from step three, so you know exactly what to check the next time your listing changes.
Step three can also offer nothing but an invite-a-verifier option instead of a link. Google's own help center does not state directly what causes that for this specific tool, so this is a reasonable inference from how profile management generally behaves, not a quotation: the most common reason is a listing that is not yet verified or whose verification has lapsed. The full verification process is covered on verifying a business on Google.
Whatever text goes with the link, in an email, on a receipt, or in a text message, follows the same rules as a card sitting on a counter. A discount, a gift, or any other reward for a review is banned:
"Offering incentives, like payment, a discount, or free goods or services, in exchange for a review, or in exchange for the removal or alteration of an existing review."
Maps User-Generated Content Policy, read September 14, 2026
Asking plainly, and mentioning it takes a minute, is enough. Telling someone what to write is also off limits. The full set of rules, with citations, lives on Google's review policy.
A link does not count how many people clicked it, or how many of those actually finished writing a review. It will not catch an unhappy guest before they post publicly, since it only leads one direction, to Google. And if anything changes on your listing, your name, phone number, or hours, the link itself stays silent about it.
Valtela answers all three of these, whether a guest reaches Google through a link, a QR code, or a card on the counter. Scans and clicks are counted, so you can tell whether anyone is actually paying attention. Every guest gets an equal option to send a private message instead of posting publicly, so a problem reaches you before a stranger reads it on Google. And your listing is compared every night against how it looked the day before, so a change reaches your inbox the same day.
A licence year runs $599, and an extra card for a second counter is $79 a year, on the pricing page.
If a bare link is all you need, the steps above are the whole process. Anyone who wants the same thing on the counter itself, in person, with its own scan count, will find a finished card described on the review card page.
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.