Sending someone to “just search us on Google and leave a review” loses most of them. They have to search, find you among the competitors, scroll, find the review button, then write. Four chances to give up.
The direct link opens the star box on top of your profile with the keyboard already up. One tap. It's free and it roughly doubles what you get back.
Getting the link
From the dashboard
Search your own business while signed in as the owner. In the profile management panel there's an Ask for reviews button. It gives you a short link you can copy. This is the easiest way and it's the one to use.
From the profile itself
Open your business profile on Google, scroll to reviews, hit Write a review, and copy the URL out of the address bar. Longer and uglier, works identically.
From your Place ID
Find your Place ID using Google's Place ID Finder, then build the link as a placeid review URL. Useful if you're wiring it into software and need it to be deterministic rather than copied by hand.
Where it should live
The point is that asking should take you no effort at all. If finding the link is a task, you'll stop doing it by week three.
- A text shortcut on your phone. Set up a keyboard shortcut so typing something like “revlink” expands into the full URL. This is the highest-value two minutes in this whole article.
- Your invoice. Bottom of every one, with a line asking.
- Your email signature. Passive, costs nothing, picks up a few.
- A QR code on the van or a card. Works well for anyone you see face to face.
- Your website. A Leave a review button on the contact page.
- Your job management software. Most will fire a message on job completion. That's the ask at the right moment with no human involved.
What not to do with it
- Don't put it behind a page that asks people how their experience was first and only shows the link to the happy ones. That's review gating and Google bans it explicitly.
- Don't attach an incentive to it. Discounts or entries into a draw get the reviews wiped.
- Don't send it to the same person twice.
The link is the easy part. The thing that actually builds a profile is sending it after every job and following up twice when nobody replies. Everything else is detail.
Don't want to chase reviews yourself? Our review management asks every customer at the right moment, with your direct link, and replies to what comes in.