Most tradies know they should ask for reviews. Plenty still don't.
The hesitation makes sense. You've finished the job, been paid, packed the ute and said goodbye. Asking the customer for one more thing can feel like pushing your luck. So it gets left for later, and later is when the moment has passed and the customer has moved on.
The fix isn't a clever script. It's a small process: ask after you've left, send the right link, and ask everybody.
Something changed in April 2026 that most of the advice online hasn't caught up with. Google tightened its Maps review policy and three common habits went out at once: pressuring for the review while you're still standing there, telling the customer what to mention, and choosing who gets asked based on how pleased they seemed. An earlier version of this page taught two of the three. What follows is the version that survives the new rules.
Ask after you've left
Send it once the job is done and you're off site. Same day is best, the next morning is fine, and by text either way.
Two reasons, and only one of them is the rules. The rules half is that Google's April 2026 policy bans pressuring customers into a review on the spot, and a face-to-face ask while you're packing up reads exactly like one. Asking after you've gone keeps you clearly inside it. The other reason is that it works better. A customer standing in front of you with a phone in their hand is doing you a favour under supervision. The same customer on the couch that evening writes what they actually think, and that's the review the next homeowner reads.
So finish the job, deal with anything they raise, pack up and go. Then send the message.
Send the direct review link
Don't ask someone to search for your business, pick the right listing out of the results and hunt for the review button. Every extra step loses people.
Your Google Business Profile has a direct review link. Tap it and the review box opens against your listing. Save it in your phone, your quoting software or your job management system so it's ready to send without thinking.
Then keep the message short: "Hi Sarah, Dan here from Dan's Plumbing. Thanks again for having us out yesterday. If you have a minute, we'd appreciate a Google review: [link]."
That works because the customer knows who sent it and exactly what's being asked. No long explanation, no guilt trip, and nothing in it about what to write. Send it while you're still fresh in their mind: the same afternoon beats the following week.
Ask everyone
The old advice was to pick your moments: ask the happy ones, quietly skip the rest. That's gating, and Google banned it outright. It's also a bad idea on its own merits.
A profile carrying nothing but five stars stops reading as evidence and starts reading as a filter. Buyers worked that out years ago. A 4.7 with a couple of ordinary reviews and an owner who answered them reads as a real business. A 5.0 across forty reviews reads as a business that only asked its friends.
If a job went badly, that's a job to fix, not a customer to hide from. Sort the problem out, then send the same message you send everyone else.
What you still can't do is write the review for them, or tell them what to mention. Twenty reviews sharing the same polished sentence look wrong because they are wrong.
Follow up once
People forget. One reminder is reasonable.
If nothing has appeared after four or five days: "Hi Sarah, just a quick reminder about the review link from last week. No stress if you haven't had a chance: [link]. Thanks again."
Then leave it. Repeated reminders turn a favour into a chore.
Put it on the checklist
Memory is a poor system. Put the review request on the same checklist as the photos, the invoice and the pack-up:
- Finish the job and walk the customer through the result.
- Deal with anything they raise before you pack up.
- Leave.
- Text the direct link that afternoon or the next morning. Every customer, no exceptions.
- Follow up once after four or five days.
- Reply when the review arrives.
The advantage comes from doing that every week, not from one big push in December. A handful of genuine reviews arriving steadily says more about a business than fifty that all landed on the same weekend two years ago.
Reply like a person
Answer every genuine review, the short ones included. Your reply is visible to the next customer reading the profile, and it's read as closely as the review itself.
Avoid pasting "Thank you for your valued feedback" under all of them. Mention the work: "Thanks, Sarah. Glad we could get the shower leak sorted before it caused more damage. We appreciate you calling us out to Wanniassa."
Keep their privacy in mind. Don't reveal costs, personal circumstances or details they didn't mention publicly.
If the review is a bad one, stay calm. Acknowledge the concern, don't argue the private details in public, and offer a direct way to sort it out. The response is partly for the reviewer and mostly for everyone reading it later.
Reviews aren't decoration. They're most of what prominence means in the map pack, they're what a homeowner uses to decide whether to trust you, and they're evidence from people who have actually hired you rather than a claim you made about yourself. They're also the one page about your business an AI assistant treats as first-hand, because that page belongs to your customer, not to you.
The hard part is earning the praise, and you've already done that on site. Asking for it should take less than a minute.