Yelp won't let you ask for reviews. Google will. Here's the line.
Ask ten owners how they get reviews and most say some version of "I ask the happy ones." That's the one thing the rules specifically forbid. Here's what's actually allowed, platform by platform, and the federal rule that sits over all of it.
Google: ask everyone, reward no one
Google lets you ask customers for reviews. What it prohibits is review gating: asking only the customers you expect to be positive, or routing unhappy ones to a private form while sending happy ones to Google. It also prohibits offering anything, a discount, a raffle entry, a free coffee, in exchange for a review. If you ask, you ask everyone who had the service, the same way.
Yelp: don't ask at all
Yelp's position is stricter than most owners realize. Its guidelines say businesses should not ask customers for reviews, full stop, on any channel. Yelp's own filter is built to suppress reviews it thinks were solicited. Separately, Yelp's partner rules say only the business itself, never an agent or a software provider, may reply to Yelp reviews. So any tool that offers to "manage your Yelp reviews" is either read-only or breaking the rules.
The federal rule over all of it
Since late 2024 the FTC's rule on consumer reviews makes several things illegal outright: fake or AI-generated reviews, buying reviews, offering incentives conditioned on a review being positive, and suppressing negative reviews through threats. Penalties run to tens of thousands of dollars per violation, and the first enforcement cases have already been brought.
What to do instead
- Ask every customer after every completed job, by email or a consented text, with the same wording. Timing matters more than wording: the next morning works.
- Reply to every review, especially the bad ones, in public and calmly. Consumers overwhelmingly say they favor businesses that reply, and they can tell a template from a real answer.
- Never offer anything for a review. A thank-you afterward is fine. A promise beforehand is not.
- Treat Yelp as a place to listen and, if needed, to reply yourself.
Rooster's review playbook is built this way because the rules leave no other way to build it. Every customer gets asked. No one gets paid. Yelp is watched, not worked.