Online Reviews and Your Search Reputation: More Genuine Reviews, Better Responses

11 min read
Online Reviews and Your Search Reputation: More Genuine Reviews, Better Responses
11 min read

Search for most companies by name and reviews appear on the first page: the star rating on the Google Business Profile, a Trustpilot page, an employer review site, a platform specific to the industry. The rating sits right next to your name, and for many searchers it is the first judgement they see.

Reviews are also the part of your search reputation you can most directly improve. You cannot write them, buy them or delete the ones you dislike, and since April 2025 UK law has banned the first two outright. You can ask more genuine customers to leave them, and you can respond to the ones you get in a way that helps the next reader. Reviews are one strand of our online reputation management work, alongside the other positive content that ranks for your name.

This article covers where reviews appear when people search your name, the rules in UK law and on Google and Trustpilot, how to ask for reviews properly, how to respond and the mistakes that do the most damage. For the wider picture of what a search for your name shows, start with What do Google and AI say when someone searches our name?

Where reviews show up when someone searches your name

Reviews carry weight because so many people use them. When the government announced the fake reviews ban on 6 April 2025, it said reviews are used by 90% of consumers. They reach people searching your name in three main ways.

  • Your Google Business Profile. Google says in its Business Profile help on getting more reviews that reviews show next to your profile in Maps and Search. On a branded search, the average rating is often the first number a searcher sees.
  • Third-party review platforms. Trustpilot, employer review sites and industry platforms often rank on page one for a brand name, and more so for the name plus words like reviews or complaints. Each is a separate site, so a strong profile on each one also fills a page-one place that a negative result could otherwise hold.
  • AI answers. OpenAI's help page on shopping with ChatGPT search says ChatGPT may show review summaries it generates from reviews on public websites, and that OpenAI does not verify those reviews or ratings. Google made Gemini-generated review summaries generally available in its Places API in September 2025, including in the UK. In both cases the summary is only as good as the reviews underneath it.

Reviews on your own website count for less in search. Since September 2019, Google has not shown star ratings in results for reviews that a business or organisation hosts about itself, even through a third-party widget. Testimonials still help visitors who reach your site, but the reviews that shape a branded search sit on other people's platforms. How assistants choose which of those pages to trust is covered in How AI assistants decide what to say about your brand.

The rules: UK law and platform policies

The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 added consumer reviews to the list of commercial practices that are unfair in all circumstances, with effect from 6 April 2025. Under paragraph 13 of Schedule 20, a business must not do any of the following.

  • Submit or commission fake reviews. A fake review is one that claims to be based on a genuine experience but is not. It can be positive or negative.
  • Hide an incentive. If someone was commissioned to write a review, for money, a discount, a free product or anything similar, that has to be made clear.
  • Publish reviews in a misleading way. Suppressing negative reviews, giving positive ones more prominence or leaving out relevant context all count.
  • Publish reviews without reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent and remove fake or misleading ones. This applies to any business that shows reviews, including on its own site.
  • Offer services that help other businesses do any of the above.

The CMA's fake reviews guidance (CMA208), published on 4 April 2025, gives practical examples. Asking a member of staff to review your product can count as commissioning a review. Offering a refund to a customer who changes a negative review is banned. Encouraging only satisfied customers to leave reviews may mislead, and threatening legal action to deter negative reviews is a form of interference. The guidance gives an SEO service that promises better ratings through fake reviews as an example of a banned service. The CMA can now fine businesses up to 10% of global turnover for breaking consumer law.

The law allows one thing the big platforms do not. Under CMA208, a business may incentivise reviews if it discloses the incentive, does not make it conditional on positive content and the review still reflects a genuine experience. Google's prohibited and restricted content policy bans incentives for reviews outright. It also bans discouraging negative reviews, selectively asking for positive ones, setting staff quotas for reviews and reviews based on a conflict of interest, which can include current or former employment. Trustpilot's guidelines for businesses (version 7, May 2025) ban incentivised reviews too, and require businesses to invite customers in the same way whatever their experience.

Breaking platform rules has visible consequences. Google can block new reviews, unpublish existing ones and show a warning that fake reviews were removed. In undertakings to the CMA published in January 2025, Google agreed that repeat offenders would have all their reviews removed for at least six months. Trustpilot can place a consumer warning on a profile and hide its TrustScore. For a business trying to improve its search reputation, a warning on a page that ranks for its name does more harm than the reviews it was meant to bury.

How to get more genuine reviews

Most businesses have far more satisfied customers than reviews. The gap is usually a process problem: nobody asks, or the asking is patchy. Closing it within the rules comes down to a few habits.

  • Ask everyone, the same way. Build the request into a fixed point in the customer journey, such as delivery, project sign-off or renewal, and send it to every customer. That is what Trustpilot requires, and it keeps you clear of the CMA's warning about encouraging only satisfied customers.
  • Give people time. Trustpilot asks businesses to let customers experience the product or service before asking for feedback. For a B2B service that may mean after the first results, not the day the contract is signed.
  • Make it easy. Google suggests giving customers a direct link or a QR code for your review form. A single link in a follow-up email removes most of the effort.
  • Ask neutrally. Do not suggest a star rating, ask for particular wording or set staff a quota of reviews to collect. Google prohibits all three.
  • Spread across the platforms that rank. Check which review sites appear on page one for your name, and for your name plus reviews, and invite customers to those, rather than piling everything onto one profile.
  • Keep incentives out. Even where the law would allow a disclosed incentive, Google and Trustpilot do not. The simplest policy is none at all.

A steady flow of recent reviews matters as much as the average. A profile with a handful of reviews from three years ago gives one angry review a lot of weight. Regular, genuine reviews put it in proportion, and give AI summaries a fairer and more current picture to draw on.

Employer reviews follow the same logic. Staff should not review the business on Google, because Google treats reviews from current or former employees as a conflict of interest. On employer review sites, where staff are the intended reviewers, the same principles hold: ask everyone, ask neutrally and never apply pressure.

How to respond, including to the bad reviews

Replies are public, and they are written for the next reader as much as for the reviewer. Google's help on managing reviews explains that replies appear under the review, that the reviewer is notified, and that the reviewer can then update their review. A good reply gives the reviewer a reason to look again, and shows a prospective customer how you handle problems.

Google's own tips on replying are sound, and they match Trustpilot's guidance:

  • Keep it short and specific. Long replies lose readers. Address what the reviewer actually said.
  • Do not send the same thank-you to everyone. Google advises replying where you can add something useful, such as an update or an answer, and keeping replies conversational rather than promotional.
  • Be honest about mistakes. Acknowledge what went wrong and apologise where it is due, but do not accept blame for things outside your control.
  • Take the detail offline. Never share a customer's personal information or attack the reviewer. Invite them to call or email so you can resolve it.
  • Sign it and be prompt. Google suggests signing with a name or initials and replying quickly.

Where you disagree with a review that breaks no rules, say so calmly and set out the facts. Trustpilot suggests exactly that, so readers can weigh both sides. Flagging is for reviews that breach policy, such as those not based on a genuine experience, containing personal information or about a different business. Google's help on removing reviews says it does not get involved in disputes between businesses and customers, and offers a one-time appeal through its Reviews Management Tool. Trustpilot says it does not remove reviews because a business finds them unfair or critical.

Threatening the reviewer is never the answer. Beyond the risk of turning one complaint into a story, the CMA guidance gives threats of legal action as an example of interfering with negative reviews, which the law prohibits. The wider removal routes, and their limits, are covered in Removing negative content from Google.

Mistakes, and when reviews are not the answer

Most damage to review profiles comes from a few avoidable habits.

  • Review gating. Tools that ask customers how they feel and send only the happy ones to Google break Google's rule against selectively asking for positive reviews, and fit the CMA's description of misleading review practices.
  • Buying reviews, or a reputation package that includes them. CMA208 names services like this as banned, and commissioning fake reviews is a banned practice for the business that pays for them too.
  • Asking staff, friends or suppliers to post. Google treats these as conflicts of interest, and the CMA guidance says a review requested from a member of staff can count as commissioning.
  • Mass flagging negative reviews. Google and Trustpilot both say they do not remove reviews for being critical, and Trustpilot says it does not tolerate misuse of its flagging tool.
  • Generic or defensive replies. A pasted thank-you under every review, or an argument with an unhappy customer, tells the next reader more than the review did.

Reviews are not the answer to every problem on page one. If the negative result is a news article, a forum thread or a complaints site, more reviews will not move it. That needs other positive pages to outrank it, which is covered in How to push negative search results down and Building positive content that ranks for your brand name.

And if reviews keep raising the same complaint, the problem is operational. Fix it first. A better review programme will not outrun a service that keeps letting customers down.

Questions to ask your team or agency

  • Which review platforms appear on page one for our name, and for our name plus reviews, and what rating and volume does each one show?
  • Do we ask every customer for a review in the same way and at the same point, or only the ones we think are happy?
  • Does any tool, supplier or agency we use filter out unhappy customers, offer incentives or post reviews on our behalf?
  • Who replies to reviews, how quickly, and is there agreed guidance on tone and what not to say?
  • What do AI assistants say when asked whether we are any good, and which review sources do they draw on?

How we help

Our online reputation management service treats genuine reviews as one of the strongest positive assets a business has. We audit which review platforms rank for your name and what they show, set up review requests that reach every customer and stay within UK law and platform rules, help your team respond well, and build those profiles alongside the other positive content that pushes negative results down. We check the effect in Google and in AI answers, drawing on our AI search optimisation work. We never write, buy or filter reviews. If you want to know how your reviews look to someone searching your name, talk to us.

Frequently asked questions

Is it legal to offer customers an incentive for a review in the UK?

Under UK law an incentive is allowed only if it is clearly disclosed, is not conditional on a positive review and the review still reflects a genuine experience. Hiding an incentive is a banned practice under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. Google and Trustpilot go further and ban incentivised reviews outright, so for reviews on those platforms the safest policy is to offer no incentive at all.

Can we ask only happy customers to leave reviews?

No. Asking only satisfied customers, often called review gating, breaks Google's policy against selectively soliciting positive reviews. Trustpilot requires businesses to invite all customers in the same way, and the CMA's fake reviews guidance says encouraging only satisfied customers to leave reviews may mislead consumers. The approach that is both legal and effective is to ask every customer, at the same point in the customer journey, in neutral words.

Can Google remove a negative review of my business?

Only if the review breaks Google's content policies, for example because it is fake, contains personal information or comes from a conflict of interest. Google says it does not get involved in disputes between businesses and customers, so a genuine negative review stays up. You can report a review through your Business Profile or the Reviews Management Tool, and appeal once if Google finds no violation. A calm, factual reply is usually a better use of time.

Should a business reply to every review?

Not necessarily. Google advises against sending the same generic thank-you to every reviewer and suggests replying where you can add something useful. Negative reviews should almost always get a reply: short, honest, free of personal information, acknowledging real mistakes and inviting the customer to continue the conversation privately. Replies are public, so write them for the next prospective customer as much as for the person who left the review.

Do online reviews affect what AI assistants say about a company?

They can. AI assistants that search the web draw on public pages, and review platforms are among them. OpenAI says ChatGPT may generate review summaries from reviews on public websites and does not verify those reviews, and Google offers Gemini-generated review summaries through its Places API. A steady flow of genuine, recent reviews gives these summaries a fairer and more current picture of the business to work from.

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