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A review from this month beats a pile from 2021.
Reviews are the part of local search that has been climbing. What matters is that new ones keep arriving, that you answer them, and that they describe a real job. A large total that stopped two years ago reads as a business that used to be busy.
You still need the listing and the page. Reviews do not rescue a category that says contractor when you are a roofer, or a page with no phone number. They do decide which of two similar businesses gets the tap.
Ask the day the job is done
The person who was in the house sends a text the same day, or the next morning. Two sentences. The link to leave a Google review. Not a speech, and not an email from an address the customer has never seen.
Something like: “Glad we could sort the leak today. If you have a minute, a Google review helps the next person in the neighbourhood find us.” Then the link. Google explains how to make that link and reply to what comes in.
A few asks a week, from real jobs, beat a campaign that goes out once and then stops. Recency is the point. Ten quiet months and then forty reviews in a weekend looks like a stunt.
Reply within a few days
Thank a good review in one sentence. Name the job if they did. On a bad review, say what you will do, in public, without an argument. People read the reply more carefully than the star. A listing where the owner never answers looks unattended, the same way a listing with last year’s hours does.
You have to be verified before you can reply. If you are locked out of the listing, that is the first problem, not the wording of the thank-you.
Do not buy them, and do not discount for them
Google’s content policies forbid an incentive in exchange for a review. A gift card, a discount, or a draw entry is an incentive. Reviews from people who were never customers, or from a service that sells them, get removed and can put the listing at risk. They also read as fake to the neighbour who is deciding who to call.
Ask customers. That is allowed. Pay strangers. That is not.
You will not pass 200 reviews in a month
If a competitor has a long, recent run of reviews, month one will not put you above them. Say so. The useful goal is a steady new review from work you actually did, and a reply on each one. Over a season that becomes the record people trust.
Local Presence includes the reply and a short text you can send after a job. It is not a promise of first place. If you only need the page kept current while you ask for reviews yourself, site care is the smaller job. The order of the whole thing is in what to fix first.
Questions
Ask the day the job is done, or the next morning. Two sentences and the link to leave a Google review. A few asks a week from real jobs beat a campaign that goes out once and then stops.
Reply within a few days. Thank a good review in one sentence. On a bad review, say what you will do in public without an argument. People read the reply more carefully than the star.
No. Google’s content policies forbid an incentive in exchange for a review. A gift card, a discount, or a draw entry is an incentive. Ask customers; that is allowed. Pay strangers; that is not.
Not in month one. The useful goal is a steady new review from work you actually did, and a reply on each one. Over a season that becomes the record people trust.