Peter LohmannAll Things Residential Property Management | CEO of RL Property Management | Co-Founder of Crane

Google Just Banned the Review Games Everyone's Been Playing

7 Jun 2026 · 0 min

Watch on YouTube

0:09

In this short recorded conversation, Peter Lohmann and a co‑host discuss Google’s recent changes to its review policy that aim to curb review‑gaming practices. Google now bans soliciting reviews, using in‑store kiosks to request reviews, and asking customers to mention specific employees by name. It also restricts “gated” review flows that only direct highly satisfied customers (ratings of 8‑10) to leave a Google review while routing lower scores to a private feedback form. The speakers note that these rules threaten the business model of review‑aggregation services like BirdEye, which rely on such gated funnels. They also touch on the difficulty of enforcing the new terms, referencing the lack of a thorough read of Google’s terms of service and questioning how Google will monitor compliance.

Google just made a couple changes to their review policy, which you and I have, have debated in the past on how to handle Google reviews.
Yeah. So basically they came out and said, you can't ask for reviews. You can't have a kiosk in your business asking for reviews. You can't tell people to mention someone in your office by name. Like they, they came up with this whole bunch of changes, basically anti-gaming rules, which we have all been playing. Well, most of us except for you have been playing these games. Where, oh, they specifically also mentioned gated reviews where it's like, how happy are you with our company? 0 through 10. And if you click 8, 9, or 10, you get sent to leave a Google review. And if you click 1 through 7, you go to, we're sorry to hear that, fill, fill out this form, right? Oh, the demise of BirdEye.
We're gonna see it right in front of our face. This is like, this is the first time that you and I spoke on, on camera. You gave me crap about like that I read the terms of service of Yelp. So this, this is like hearkening back to that conversation. Mm-hmm. Now you're quoting me terms of service of Google reviews. Well, it, I didn't read the terms of service. How are they going to—
this was a press release. I mean, how are they going to enforce this? Well, that's the question. I mean, if somebody mentions an employee name in a review, that doesn't necessarily mean you asked them to do that. They may have just seen the name on the, you know, on the shirt, or they just, the guy introduced himself when he came to fix the sink and the person says, oh, Jose did a great job for me, blah, blah, blah. So I don't see how they're going to enforce that.