For a long time, a popular "reputation" tactic worked like this: after a job, ask the customer "How did we do?" If they answered positively, send them to Google to leave a review. If they answered negatively, route them to a private feedback form that never reaches the public. It felt clever. It kept the star rating high. And it is exactly the kind of practice the Federal Trade Commission's rule on fake and deceptive reviews is designed to stop.
The FTC rule (16 CFR Part 465), which took effect in October 2024, targets deceptive review practices — and review-gating sits squarely in its crosshairs. For home-service businesses running Local Services Ads (LSA), where reviews now flow through Google Business Profile and directly influence the listing at the top of search, understanding this rule is not optional. This article explains what gating is, why it is risky, and how to run a review program that is both compliant and effective.
What "review-gating" means
Review-gating is any process that selectively solicits public reviews based on how happy a customer is likely to be. The classic version uses a pre-screen: a "were you satisfied?" question that sends happy customers to a public review site and unhappy customers somewhere private. The public rating you present to the world is then artificially inflated, because negative experiences were filtered out before they could ever be posted.
Gating does not require bad intent to be a problem. Even a well-meaning "let's only ask the customers who loved us" habit produces the same distortion: a rating that does not represent the true distribution of customer experiences. That distortion is what regulators and platforms object to.
Why the FTC rule changed the calculus
The FTC's rule addresses fake reviews, testimonials, and manipulation of review outcomes. Suppressing or diverting negative reviews to make a public rating look better than reality is the kind of deceptive practice it is meant to curb. The exact enforcement details are for legal counsel to interpret, but the direction is unambiguous: engineering your public rating by screening out unhappy customers is a practice to abandon, not refine.
For LSA specifically, the stakes are higher than a generic web review. Your rating is displayed on a paid unit at the very top of Google, above the map pack and organic results. That prominence means the integrity of the rating matters more, not less. A reputation built on gated reviews is both a legal exposure and a fragile competitive position.
Compliant design: ask everyone, the same way
The compliant alternative is simple to state: request reviews from all customers through a neutral process that does not depend on predicted sentiment. Everyone who completes a job gets the same request, with the same path to leaving a public review, regardless of whether you expect them to be thrilled or frustrated.
| Practice | Gated (risky) | Compliant |
|---|---|---|
| Who gets asked | Only likely-happy customers | Every customer |
| Pre-screen | "Were you satisfied?" filter | None — direct request |
| Negative feedback | Diverted to private form | Can post publicly like anyone |
| Resulting rating | Artificially inflated | Represents real experience |
Two things are still allowed and encouraged. First, you can absolutely make it easy to leave a review — a clear, direct link to your Business Profile is fine, because ease is neutral; it does not filter by sentiment. Second, you can and should offer a private support channel for problems. The rule is not that you cannot help unhappy customers privately; it is that you cannot use a satisfaction pre-screen to decide who is allowed to review you publicly.
The counterintuitive upside
Owners often fear that asking everyone will tank their rating. In practice, the opposite tends to happen, for a few reasons:
- Volume dilutes the occasional negative. When you ask every customer, the steady flow of genuine positive reviews outweighs the rare bad one.
- A perfect record looks fake. A handful of critical reviews, handled well, makes the positive ones more credible. Flawless ratings can read as engineered.
- Negative reviews are recoverable. A calm, professional public reply to a critical review often impresses future readers more than the complaint itself.
Asking everyone also drives review velocity — the steady cadence of recent reviews that is a widely understood LSA performance factor. Gating, by contrast, throttles your own volume by design, because you are deliberately not asking a chunk of your customers.
Putting it into practice
Standardize the request
Build one review request that goes out after every completed job — same message, same timing logic, same direct link to your Google Business Profile. Remove any human judgment call about "who to ask."
Separate support from reviews
Keep a genuine channel for resolving complaints, but never position it as an alternative to a public review. Help the customer and let them review — do not trade one for the other.
Respond publicly to everything
Compliance and quality both improve when you reply to reviews across the board. It shows an engaged business and turns even critical reviews into evidence of how you handle problems.
The bottom line
Review-gating is a legacy tactic whose time has passed. Under the FTC's 16 CFR 465, filtering public reviews by predicted sentiment is a practice to retire, and for LSA — where your rating headlines a paid listing at the top of search — the integrity of that rating is a competitive asset, not just a compliance box. Ask every customer, make it easy, handle problems privately without blocking public reviews, and respond to what comes in. Honest and effective are, in this case, the same strategy.
Frequently asked questions
What is review-gating?
Review-gating is any process that selectively solicits public reviews based on how happy a customer is likely to be, such as a were-you-satisfied pre-screen that routes happy customers to Google and unhappy ones to a private form.
Why is review-gating risky under the FTC rule?
The FTC's rule on fake and deceptive reviews, 16 CFR Part 465, took effect in October 2024 and targets deceptive review practices; suppressing or diverting negative reviews to inflate a public rating is exactly the kind of practice it is meant to curb.
How do I request LSA reviews compliantly?
Ask all customers through the same neutral process with no satisfaction pre-screen. You may make reviewing easy and offer a private support channel for problems, but you may not use predicted sentiment to decide who is asked for a public review.