How do I ask my customers for a Google review?

Ask at the moment the customer is satisfied, in person or over WhatsApp, with the direct link from your Google profile or a QR code. Ask every customer, with a short message and without offering anything in return.

Can I give a discount to customers who leave a review?

No. Google's policies prohibit offering incentives in exchange for reviews, even if you don't ask for them to be positive. Google can remove those reviews or restrict your listing. The right approach is to ask with no strings attached.

Should I respond to negative reviews?

Yes. Respond calmly, thank the reviewer, acknowledge what's valid, explain without blaming and offer to resolve it through a private channel. A good response to a complaint shows future customers how you handle problems and usually builds more trust than silence.

How do I remove a fake review on Google?

Report it from your Google Business Profile as content that violates the policies, for example because it's fake or there's a conflict of interest, and follow up on the report. In the meantime, reply calmly, noting that you have no record of that visit.

Guide · Local marketing

How to get Google reviews without breaking the rules

Reviews are the internet's word of mouth, and in La Laguna people read them before almost any purchase. This guide shows you how to get them consistently, how to respond to them and which practices could cost you your listing.

By the Mercado Monkey team · July 2, 2026 · Updated October 6, 2026 · 9 min read

Short answer

To get Google reviews, ask every customer at the moment they're satisfied, with a direct link or a QR code that takes them to your listing, and make the process easy over WhatsApp. Respond to every review, positive and negative, calmly and in detail. Google prohibits offering incentives, asking only happy customers for reviews and posting fake reviews.

Key points

Ask for the review at the moment of peak satisfaction, not days later.
Use your listing's direct link or a QR code; every extra step loses reviews.
No discounts in exchange, and no filtering to ask only happy customers.
Reply to all of them: a good response to a complaint builds more trust than silence.
Steady month-to-month reviews carry more weight than a sudden burst.

Why reviews carry so much weight

Reviews do two jobs at once. First, they help Google decide whom to show: the number, rating and frequency of reviews are part of what Google calls prominence, one of the local ranking factors alongside relevance and distance. Second, they win over the customer who has already found you: between two businesses that are equally close, most people choose the one with more and better recent reviews.

In Torreón you can see this in almost every industry. Before taking the car to a mechanic, choosing a pediatrician, booking a venue for a party or ordering food, people open Maps and read. And they don't just look at the stars: they read the negative reviews to see how the business responded.

There's a third, more recent effect: AI assistants and Google's summaries use the content of reviews to describe businesses. If your customers mention "fast service," "fair prices" or the name of a dish, those phrases can come up when someone asks about your type of business.

If your listing isn't complete yet, start with the Google Business Profile guide for Torreón: reviews pay off much more on a well-configured listing.

What Google prohibits (and what can happen)

Google's content policies for reviews are clear, and breaking them can cost you the reviews you already have or lead to restrictions on your listing. Avoid:

Offering incentives. Discounts, desserts, gifts, raffles or any benefit in exchange for a review, even if you don't require it to be positive.
Asking for reviews selectively. Asking "How did we do?" first and sending the link only to people who answered positively. This is known as review gating, and it's prohibited.
Reviews from employees or relatives about their own business.
Buying reviews or using services that post them from fake accounts.
Writing negative reviews about competitors.
Collecting reviews on a single device, for example a tablet on the counter where customers sign in; it can look like suspicious activity.

Google detects unusual patterns, like lots of reviews in a few days from new accounts, and can remove them in bulk. What works long term is boring but effective: ask everyone, every time, in a simple way.

When and how to ask

Timing is everything. Ask for the review when the customer has just expressed satisfaction, not a week later when they've already forgotten:

Type of business	Best moment	How
Restaurant or coffee shop	When you bring the check	QR code on the receipt or the table
Auto shop or repair service	When you hand back the working vehicle or equipment	A WhatsApp message with the link that same day
Medical office or clinic	As the patient leaves the appointment or the next day	A card with a QR code at the front desk or a follow-up message
Online store	A few days after delivery	Email or WhatsApp with a direct link
Event services	The Monday after the event	A personal thank-you message with the link

Use the direct "ask for reviews" link shown in your Google profile; it takes the customer straight to the rating window. Turn it into a QR code with the QR code generator for your receipts, counter and business cards.

And ask in person. A friendly "It would really help us if you left your feedback on Google," said by the person who served them, works better than any sign.

Ready-to-send WhatsApp messages

Adapt these messages to your business. They're short on purpose; nobody reads a long paragraph to do you a favor:

Hi Mariana. Thanks for trusting us with your truck's service. If you were happy with it, could you help us out with a Google review? It takes a minute and it helps us a lot: [link]

Thanks for your order. We hope your family enjoyed it. If you have a minute, your feedback on Google helps more people in Torreón find us: [link]

Thank you for having us at your event on Saturday. It was a pleasure working with you. If you'd like to share your feedback, here's the link: [link]

Notice that none of these messages asks for "five stars" or offers anything in return. They also don't ask first whether the customer was happy; they go to every customer. To avoid typing the link by hand each time, save it as a quick reply in WhatsApp Business or create a link with a pre-filled message using the WhatsApp link generator.

How to respond to reviews, good and bad

Responding is half the job. Anyone reading your reviews is judging how you treat people.

Positive reviews. Say thanks with something specific, not a "thank you" pasted twenty times. Mention the product or service naturally: "So glad you loved the discada tacos, see you next Sunday."

Negative reviews. Follow this order:

Take a breath and wait a few hours if it made you angry. A defensive reply does more damage than the review.
Thank them and acknowledge whatever is valid.
Explain briefly, without blaming the customer.
Offer to resolve it through a private channel: phone or WhatsApp.
If you resolve it, the customer may update their review on their own.

Thanks for taking the time to write to us, Jorge. You're right that your order took longer than promised on Friday; we got more orders than we expected. We'd like to make it up to you: send us a message on our WhatsApp and we'll sort it out.

In healthcare and other sensitive services, never confirm that the person was your client or mention any details. We explain why in our guide to digital marketing for clinics.

Common mistakes when asking for reviews

Even businesses that do ask for reviews tend to make mistakes that cost them a lot of them:

Making the customer search for the business. "Look us up on Google and leave us a review" loses half of them along the way, especially if there are businesses with similar names in Torreón. Always send the direct link.
Asking weeks later. Enthusiasm cools fast. Ideally ask the same day, or the next day at the latest.
Running a review push and then forgetting about it. A burst of reviews in one week followed by months of nothing looks unnatural and loses its effect.
Long or formal messages. Five lines starting with "Dear valued customer" read like advertising. Write the way you'd talk to them at the counter.
Not saying thank you. Replying to every new review closes the loop and encourages other customers to write theirs.

Fix these details and you'll see your monthly review count go up without changing anything else in your business.

Fake or unfair reviews

Sometimes you'll get reviews from someone who was never a customer, from an angry former employee or from a competitor. What to do:

Report it from your profile. Google lets you flag reviews that violate its policies: fake content, conflicts of interest, offensive language or personal information. There's a tool to track the status of your report.
Reply anyway, calmly: "We couldn't find a record of your visit; if this was a mistake, we'd love to hear more over WhatsApp." Readers get it.
Don't fight back or ask friends to post reviews to compensate; that really does break the rules.
Document it if there's a coordinated attack, with screenshots and dates, so you can escalate it to Google support.

Not every negative review is fake. If a complaint keeps coming up, like long waits on weekends, it's valuable information for your operation.

Turn reviews into a system

Businesses with lots of reviews don't have nicer customers; they have a system. A simple one:

An owner. One person checks and replies to reviews twice a week.
A monthly goal. A realistic number of new reviews, reviewed at the team meeting.
Materials. QR codes on the counter, receipts and business cards; a saved message in WhatsApp.
Automation. An automatic message after every sale, appointment or delivery, sent to every customer.
Team recognition. When a review mentions someone by name, share it with everyone.

MonkeyReseñas automates review requests over WhatsApp and helps you reply from one place. For restaurants specifically, read our guide to local SEO for restaurants in Torreón.

Reviews beyond Google and on your own website

Google is the most important platform for local businesses, but it isn't the only one. Depending on your industry, recommendations on Facebook also count, as do ratings on Doctoralia for doctors, TripAdvisor for restaurants and hotels, and ratings on Mercado Libre or delivery apps.

On your website you can display real reviews with the customer's permission, including their name and the date. Two warnings: don't make up testimonials, and don't expect Google to show stars in search results for reviews your business publishes about itself, because it hasn't shown them for local businesses in that situation for years.

If you'd like us to review your review strategy along with your listing and website, take a look at our local SEO service in Torreón.