If You Send Review Requests, You Need to Know the Rules

If you run a platform that sends review requests, you need to know the rules.

They're constantly changing, and your customers are depending on you to keep them compliant.

Most platforms scope solicitation as a growth feature. Pick a template, set a cadence, turn it on for every location. But the rules around how businesses ask for reviews now come from three directions at once: the review sites themselves, US regulators and UK regulators.

It's a good thing they're cracking down. Fake and manipulated reviews hurt the businesses that earn theirs honestly. But when you're sending requests on behalf of thousands of businesses, you're making compliance decisions for every one of them.

Google is now pausing reviews on spam spikes

In September, Google started emailing Business Profile owners when its systems detect a spike in spam reviews. Google removes the flagged reviews, then temporarily pauses new ratings, reviews and other contributions on the profile, typically for a few days, as reported by Search Engine Roundtable.

Local search practitioners are already seeing the filter catch legitimate businesses. One example shared publicly: a business that opened a new location and kept up its usual steady stream of reviews, and got paused anyway.

The detail that matters for platforms is who gets notified. The email goes to the business owner. Your platform doesn't hear about it. From inside your product, it just looks like reviews stopped coming in.

This sits on top of Google's existing content rules. Google prohibits incentives for reviews and selectively soliciting positive ones, and in 2026 it made asking customers to include specific content, like a staff member's name, a policy violation.

The FTC's Consumer Review Rule

In the US, the FTC's Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials has been in effect since October 2024. It prohibits practices including fake reviews, buying reviews, offering incentives conditioned on a review being positive or negative, undisclosed reviews from insiders, and misrepresenting that the reviews you display are all or most of the reviews you received.

Violations can carry civil penalties of more than $50,000 each. The FTC sent warning letters to ten companies in December 2025, and its guidance to businesses is clear that the grace period is over.

The UK's DMCC Act

In the UK, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act made several review practices automatically unlawful from April 2025. They include fake reviews, incentivised reviews that aren't clearly disclosed, hiding negative reviews, and misleading star ratings. Businesses that publish reviews also have a duty to take reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent and remove fake or misleading ones.

The Competition and Markets Authority can now fine businesses up to 10% of global turnover without going to court. In March 2026 it opened five investigations covering the exclusion of one-star reviews, the design of rating systems, staff-written reviews and undisclosed incentives, per Fieldfisher's summary.

Where platforms get exposed

None of these rules are written for platforms specifically. But the practices they target are often set inside a platform's solicitation logic, not by the business owner. A few examples:

• Who gets asked. Filtering out unhappy customers before sending the review link conflicts with Google's policy against selective solicitation.
• What the message says. A template that asks customers to mention a team member, a product or a phrase now violates Google's content policy.
• What's offered. Google prohibits incentives for reviews. The FTC prohibits incentives tied to sentiment. The UK requires incentivised reviews to be clearly disclosed.
• How much, how fast. A campaign blast or a new location's first month can produce the kind of sudden volume Google's spam systems watch for.
• Which site you're asking for. Yelp doesn't allow businesses to ask for reviews at all. A single request flow pointed at every site will break at least one site's rules.

Filtering out unhappy customers, suggesting what someone should write, or attaching a discount can create problems depending on the practice, the review site and the applicable law.

These are product decisions with consequences for your customers. And once you automate them, the same mistake can affect every business using the feature at the same time.

Questions to ask your team or your provider

Whether solicitation is built in-house or powered by a partner, someone needs to be able to answer these:

1. Who tracks policy changes? Google changed its review rules more than once this year, often without a formal announcement. Who notices, and how fast does the product change?
2. Are rules applied per site? Can the workflow behave differently for Google, Yelp, Facebook and vertical sites, or does one template go everywhere?
3. Does every customer get the same ask? Is there anything in the flow that screens sentiment before the review link is sent?
4. Is volume paced? What happens when a new location onboards or a large list is uploaded at once?
5. Will you know when a profile is paused? Is review velocity monitored, so a sudden drop gets flagged instead of looking like a slow month?
6. Is there a record? If a regulator or a review site asks what was sent, to whom and when, can you show it?

Someone needs to own keeping those workflows compliant as the rules change. Your customers are assuming you already do.

Building or reviewing a solicitation workflow?

Shout About Us powers review data, response and solicitation for platforms through APIs. If you're scoping solicitation or auditing what you already have, bring your sources, markets and expected volume and we can walk through how the rules apply to your setup.

Explore the API documentation or book a conversation.

This article is general information about review platform policies and consumer protection rules, not legal advice.