Google Business Profile checklist: the fields most businesses leave half done
Google ranks local results on relevance, distance and prominence. Most of the relevance work sits in profile fields businesses fill in once and never revisit.
Reviews decide who gets the call. That's why so many businesses have been tempted to help them along. Since 2024, that help can be expensive. The Federal Trade Commission's rule on consumer reviews and testimonials (16 CFR Part 465) was announced in August 2024 and took effect on 21 October 2024.
This article explains the rule in plain terms. It isn't legal advice. If you're unsure about a specific practice, ask a lawyer.
What the rule bans
- Fake reviews and testimonials, including reviews that misrepresent who wrote them or what they experienced, and reviews generated by AI for people who don't exist.
- Buying reviews on condition of sentiment. Offering a discount, gift or payment in exchange for a positive (or negative) review.
- Undisclosed insider reviews. Reviews from employees, managers or their relatives without a clear disclosure. Testimonials from officers and managers written as if from customers are prohibited.
- Company-controlled "independent" review sites that present themselves as neutral.
- Suppressing reviews through legal threats, intimidation or false accusations, or presenting filtered reviews as the full picture.
- Fake social influence: buying or selling followers, likes or views generated by bots or hacked accounts.
Enforcement has started
On 22 December 2025 the FTC sent warning letters to ten companies it believed were breaking the rule, asking for written confirmation of corrective steps within days. The letters pointed to civil penalties of up to $53,088 per violation. Per violation is the key phrase: forty fake reviews can be treated as forty violations.
Google's own policy is stricter still
Google removes reviews that break its rules and can restrict profiles that collect them. Its policy also says businesses shouldn't discourage negative reviews or selectively ask only happy customers. So the old trick of sending unhappy customers to a private feedback form and happy ones to Google is a policy problem too.
A review strategy that works and stays compliant
- Ask everyone. Every completed job or sale gets the same request, whatever you expect them to say.
- Ask at the right moment. Right after a job is finished or a problem is solved, when the experience is fresh.
- Make it one tap. Send the direct review link by text or email. Don't make people search for you.
- Reply to every review. Thank positive reviewers by name. Answer negative ones calmly, with facts and an offer to fix it.
- Don't pay for it. No discounts, entries or gifts tied to a review.
Done consistently, this produces a steady stream of genuine reviews, which is exactly what Google's prominence signal rewards.