Can you offer discounts for Google reviews?
The FTC rule and Google’s policy say different things, and the stricter one is the one that will actually cost you a profile.
- Google bans review incentives outright. The FTC rule is narrower.
- 16 CFR 465 reaches incentives conditioned on a required sentiment, not all incentives.
- Google is the binding rule, because Google holds your reviews.
- Ask every completed customer, the same way, and answer the complaints.
The short answer
Under Google’s policy, no. Under the FTC rule, sometimes. Google is the one that matters for a business collecting reviews on its own profile, and Google bans incentives outright.
That difference is worth understanding rather than memorising, because a lot of published advice collapses the two into one rule and gets the FTC part wrong.
What the FTC rule actually says
The FTC’s trade regulation rule on consumer reviews and testimonials, 16 CFR Part 465, took effect on 21 October 2024. It is in force, and in December 2025 the Commission sent warning letters to ten companies, so enforcement is live.
On incentives the rule is narrower than most summaries suggest. The FTC’s own guidance says the rule “does not prohibit giving incentives for reviews, as long as there isn’t an express or implied requirement that the reviews have to express a particular sentiment”. It also says you cannot suggest that a review must be positive to earn the incentive, “even if you don’t say so explicitly”.
So an unconditional incentive is outside the rule’s incentive provision. Failing to disclose an incentive can still be a problem under the FTC Act separately, and civil penalties under the underlying statute currently run to $53,088 per violation for penalties assessed after 17 January 2025.
What Google says, which is stricter
Google’s contributed-content policy is unconditional. Merchants must not “offer incentives, such as payment, discounts, free goods and/or services, in exchange for posting any review”.
No sentiment condition, no disclosure carve-out, no threshold. A discount for a review breaks it whether the review is glowing or scathing.
The practical consequence is the part owners care about. Google can remove reviews and can restrict a profile. A profile that loses a block of reviews at once is visibly damaged in a way an FTC question is not, and it happens faster.
What is actually safe
Ask every completed customer, at the same point in the job, in the same way. No filter on who gets asked.
Do not survey first and route only the happy ones to a public review page. That is review gating, prohibited by Google, and squarely the kind of sentiment-conditioned practice the FTC rule was written for.
Answer the complaints. A profile with some low ratings and visible responses reads as real, which is the thing a perfect average cannot buy.
Where this leaves the common advice
“Enter everyone who reviews us into a prize draw” is the case most often defended as compliant. It may well sit outside the FTC incentive provision if no sentiment is required and the incentive is disclosed. It still breaks Google’s policy, and Google is the platform holding your reviews.
We do not run incentive programmes for clients, and this is why.
“A profile that loses a block of reviews at once is visibly damaged in a way an FTC question is not.”
Questions owners ask
Youssef runs visibility work for established local businesses: Google Maps, organic search and AI answers, measured monthly against a published protocol. Where a number cannot be checked, it does not go in the report.
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