Is It Legal to Ask for Reviews? A Plain-English Rulebook for the FTC, Google, Yelp and More

78% of US consumers were asked to leave a review in the past year, and 83% of those who were asked wrote one, according to BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey. Asking works. The question owners keep searching is the next one: is it legal to ask for reviews at all?

Short answer: yes. In the US, asking real customers for an honest review is legal, and most review sites welcome it. What gets a business fined, flagged or filtered is how it asks: paying for stars, asking only the happy customers, or burying the bad reviews. Below is the federal rule, then each platform's own policy, with a link to every official source.

Not legal advice. This is a plain-English summary of public policies as of October 2026. Platforms change rules often, so check each linked policy and ask a lawyer about your own situation.

Is it legal to ask for reviews under the FTC fake review rule?

The FTC's Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials (16 CFR Part 465) was announced in August 2024 and took effect on October 21, 2024. It does not ban asking for reviews. It bans faking, buying and hiding them. A plain request sent to every customer is fine; the rule targets manipulation, not the ask itself.

The rule covers six practices:

• Fake reviews and testimonials, including AI-written ones and reviews from people who never used the product or service.
• Incentives tied to sentiment: paying or rewarding someone on the condition that the review is positive (or negative, about a competitor).
• Undisclosed insider reviews from owners, managers, employees or their relatives.
• Company-controlled "independent" review sites that rate your own products alongside rivals.
• Review suppression: groundless legal threats, intimidation or false accusations used to remove a negative review, or implying the reviews you display are all or most of them when negative ones were held back.
• Fake social influence, such as bought followers or views.

The stakes are real. The rule lets the FTC seek civil penalties for knowing violations, now up to $53,088 per violation after the 2025 inflation adjustment. And it is being used: in December 2025 the FTC sent warning letters to 10 companies over possible violations.

One nuance trips people up. The FTC's own Q&A on the rule says the rule has no specific clause against asking only the customers you think are happy, then warns that doing so could still violate the FTC Act. Read that as a warning, not a loophole.

Asking is legal; controlling who reviews you, what they say, or which reviews people see is where the trouble starts.

Is it legal to ask for reviews on each platform? The comparison table

Each review site adds its own review solicitation rules on top of the law, and they don't all agree. Google, Tripadvisor, Trustpilot and Amazon let you ask, Yelp asks you not to, and all of them reject incentives and cherry-picking.

Platform	Can you ask?	Incentives	Asking only happy customers	Watch out for	Official policy
Google	Yes	Banned	Banned	On-site pressure, staff quotas, asking customers to name staff	Prohibited and restricted content
Yelp	No, Yelp asks businesses not to	Banned	Banned	Say "Find us on Yelp", never "review us"	Don't Ask for Reviews
Tripadvisor	Yes, it even offers a request tool	Banned	Banned	Routing unhappy guests to support instead of the review page	How Tripadvisor spots biased reviews
Facebook	Yes (Recommendations, not star ratings)	Treat as banned (no written Meta rule)	Treat as banned (FTC warns against it)	Recommendations from people who manage the Page	Recommend a business
Trustpilot	Yes	Banned, including prize draws and refunds	Banned	Non-neutral wording, more than one invite per experience	Guidelines for businesses
Amazon	Yes, via the Request a Review button	Banned	Banned	Package inserts, asking buyers to change a review	Customer product reviews policies

Google

Google's Maps content policy lets businesses encourage reviews that reflect a genuine experience, as long as they don't offer incentives or try to steer the rating or wording. It names payment, discounts and free goods as banned incentives, and it bans discouraging negative reviews or selectively soliciting positive ones. In April 2026 Google added lines against pressuring customers to review while still on the premises, giving staff review quotas, and asking for reviews that mention a staff member, as PPC Land reported. So a staff bonus based on review counts now breaks Google's rules even if every review is honest.

Yelp

Yelp is the outlier. Its Don't Ask for Reviews article tells businesses not to request reviews from customers, mailing lists, friends or family, and its recommendation software tends to move reviews that look prompted into the "not recommended" section, where they don't count toward the rating. Yelp also acts publicly: its 2025 Trust & Safety Report lists 128 Compensated Activity Alerts placed on business pages. The safe move is to show customers where to find you, for example with a "Find us on Yelp" QR sign, and let them decide.

Tripadvisor

Tripadvisor wants you to ask, and runs a free email tool, Review Express, for it. It bans incentives of any kind, from discounts to upgrades and vouchers, and treats selective solicitation as bias. In its explainer on biased reviews, sending unhappy guests to a support channel instead of the review page counts as gating.

Facebook

Facebook replaced star ratings with Recommendations: a yes or no plus a comment. Meta doesn't publish a standalone solicitation policy. Its help center says a recommendation should be based on personal experience and not come from someone who manages the Page. With rules this thin, treat the FTC rule as your floor: no paid or sentiment-conditioned recommendations and no undisclosed staff posts.

Trustpilot

Trustpilot has the most detailed written rules. Its Guidelines for Businesses require you to invite consistently, meaning everyone in the same way, whatever their experience. Invitations must use neutral language (no "give us 5 stars"), go only to people with a genuine experience, one invite per experience, and carry no reward. Discounts, promo codes, prize draw entries and refunds are all named.

Amazon (briefly)

Sellers can use the Request a Review button in Seller Central, which sends Amazon's own standard message. Amazon's customer product reviews policies forbid compensation for reviews, refunds after a review, asking buyers to change or remove a review, and package inserts asking for a positive review.

No single policy fits every site, so follow the strictest rule of the platform you're pointing customers to.

Review gating: the one thing the rulebooks agree on

Review gating means asking "How did we do?" first, then sending happy customers to the review site and routing unhappy ones to a private form. It feels clever. The FTC and the major review sites treat it as manipulation, because the public rating ends up reflecting only the customers you picked.

Google bans selectively soliciting positive reviews, Trustpilot names cherry-picking, Tripadvisor counts diverting unhappy guests as gating, and the FTC warns it could violate the FTC Act.

Private feedback is not the problem; hiding the review option from some customers is. The compliant pattern: ask every customer, show every customer the review link, and give an unhappy customer an extra, faster way to reach you. That's how Feedback Flows is built: after a one-tap rating, everyone gets your review link, and low scores also reach the owner privately so the problem can be fixed.

A private feedback channel is fine as an addition; it becomes gating the moment it replaces the review link for anyone.

How to ask for reviews legally: a 7-point checklist

If every box below is ticked, your review requests line up with the FTC rule and the major platforms' policies.

1. Ask everyone. Send the request to every customer, never a list filtered by satisfaction.
2. Use neutral wording. "Tell others about your visit" works. "Leave us 5 stars" doesn't.
3. Offer nothing in return. No discounts, freebies, raffle entries or refunds, even "for any review".
4. Don't pressure on site. A table card or counter sign can invite, like the ones from our free Google review link generator; staff shouldn't stand over a customer's phone.
5. No staff quotas or name requests. Don't reward employees by review count or ask customers to mention them.
6. Never ask anyone to change or remove a review. Reply publicly and fix the issue instead.
7. Respect Yelp's exception. For Yelp, show "Find us on Yelp" and leave the ask out.

Honest asking already delivers. BrightLocal found that 28% of consumers now say they always leave a review when asked, up from 16% a year earlier (more in our online review statistics). You get the volume without the risk.

The legal way to ask is also the simplest: one neutral request, sent to everyone, with nothing attached.

Want the honest ask on autopilot? Set up a Feedback Flow: every customer gets a one-tap rating after their visit and your review link, and low scores also land in your inbox so you can follow up.

FAQ

Is review gating illegal?

The FTC's 2024 rule has no clause that names gating, but the FTC says asking only customers you expect to be happy could violate the FTC Act. Google, Trustpilot and Tripadvisor ban it outright, so in practice it isn't worth the risk.

Can I offer a discount in exchange for a review?

No. The FTC rule bans incentives tied to positive sentiment, and Google, Yelp, Tripadvisor, Trustpilot and Amazon ban review incentives of any kind, including discounts, freebies and prize draw entries.

Can I ask customers to leave a Google review?

Yes. Google allows requests for honest reviews as long as you ask without incentives, don't pressure people on the premises, and don't ask only happy customers or request specific wording.

Is it illegal to ask for a 5-star review?

Asking for a specific rating breaks Google's and Trustpilot's policies, which require neutral requests. If a reward is attached, it can also fall under the FTC's ban on sentiment-conditioned incentives.

Can I hide or delete negative reviews on my own website?

Not because they're negative. The FTC rule bans suppressing reviews by sentiment. Its Q&A says you can leave out reviews that are off-topic or clearly about another business, as long as the same standard applies to positive ones.

Is it legal to ask for reviews in the UK?

Yes. Since April 6, 2025, the UK's DMCC Act bans fake reviews and concealed incentivized reviews, with fines of up to 10% of global turnover, according to CMS's summary. Honest, unrewarded requests remain allowed.