Review request rules on Google, Trustpilot, Tripadvisor and Yelp (2026)

• Three of the four platforms (Google, Trustpilot, Tripadvisor) allow businesses to ask customers for reviews. Yelp asks businesses not to ask anyone, and its software tries to identify reviews that appear to have been requested and not recommend them.
• All four forbid asking only the customers you expect to be positive.
• All four forbid incentives for reviews. Tripadvisor adds that this applies irrespective of rating.
• Trustpilot and Tripadvisor explicitly name the pattern of sending happy customers to the review site and unhappy ones to a private channel as a violation. Tripadvisor requires the path for positive and negative reviews to be identical.
• Yelp also says not to ask for reviews after collecting feedback through surveys or contact forms.

• Google does not allow merchants to “discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers”.
• Not allowed: “offer incentives – such as payment, discounts, free goods and/or services” in exchange for reviews.

Source: Google Maps user-generated content policy (checked 2026-10-25).

• Do: “Invite consistently and fairly”, meaning “inviting everyone in the same way”, “regardless of whether they’ve had a positive or negative experience with your business”.
• Don't: “Pre-screening people who leave a review by directing customers who have had a good experience to leave a review and those with a bad experience to contact you directly”.
• “We don’t allow incentivized reviews on Trustpilot.”

Source: Trustpilot guidelines for businesses (checked 2026-10-25).

• “We prohibit the practice of selectively soliciting positive content and/or rejecting moderate or negative content.”
• “…the user interface and experience for submitting positive and negative reviews must be identical.”
• “It is against our guidelines to offer or promise anything in exchange for any reviews, irrespective of rating.”

Source: Tripadvisor review posting guidelines (checked 2026-10-25).

• “Don’t ask anyone to review your business, be it customers, mailing list subscribers, friends, family, etc.”
• “Yelp’s software tries to identify any reviews that appear to have been requested, and not recommend them.”
• “Don’t ask for reviews after requesting customer feedback in other places like surveys or contact forms.”

Source: Yelp: Don't Ask for Reviews, Yelp content guidelines (checked 2026-10-25).

• Ask every customer at the same moment, for example with the QR code on every receipt. Do not hand the code only to customers who seem happy.
• For Trustpilot and Tripadvisor, use A/B mode, which picks the review site at random by the percentages you set whatever rating the customer taps, or Links mode, which shows every customer the same review links without asking for a rating first. Do not send only high star levels to those sites.
• Do not add Yelp as a review destination in GetRating. Yelp asks businesses not to request reviews at all and does not recommend reviews that look requested.
• Never offer a discount, gift or prize in exchange for a review on any of these platforms.

How the review modes work: review modes guide.

• We read each platform's own published policy page for businesses on 25 October 2026 and quoted the relevant sentences. No third-party summaries were used.
• For each platform we answered four questions: may a business ask for reviews at all, may it ask selectively, may it offer incentives, and may it send unhappy customers to a private channel instead of the review site.
• Facebook (Meta) was left out because we could not load an official policy page with the relevant wording on the day of the check.

• Platform policies change. Each row shows the date it was checked; re-read the linked page before relying on it.
• This is a summary of platform rules, not legal advice. National consumer-protection law (for example the EU rules on fake reviews) can add obligations.
• Platforms enforce their rules with their own systems; this page does not measure how strictly.