What is a review request?
A review request is the message a business sends a customer after a visit or a job, asking them to leave a review and linking straight to the page where they can. It is normally sent by SMS, WhatsApp or email, within a day or two, and it is the single largest determinant of how many reviews a business collects.
Timing does most of the work. A request sent while the haircut, the meal or the repair is still fresh gets a far better response than one sent a fortnight later, and the message that lands on a phone is opened at a rate email cannot match.
The rules are not optional. Every major platform requires that requests go to all customers rather than a filtered subset, and selectively asking only the people expected to be positive is against Google's policy and is treated as review gating. It is also the practice that most reliably gets a business's reviews removed in bulk.
The other half is friction. A request that asks someone to search for the business, find the right listing and locate the review button will lose most of them. A request that opens the review form in one tap will not.
Common questions
What is review gating?
Review gating is surveying customers first and only inviting the satisfied ones to post publicly. Google prohibits it, and enforcement can mean losing reviews already collected. The compliant approach is to ask everyone the same way and handle unhappy replies privately as they come.
How many review requests is too many?
One per visit, with at most one reminder. Beyond that the response rate falls and the complaints start. A business that sees the same customer monthly should not ask monthly.