# What is review gating?

Review gating is the practice of screening customers before inviting them to review publicly, so that only the happy ones are sent to Google or another public platform. Google prohibits it explicitly. Businesses caught doing it can have their reviews removed, and the removal is not selective.

The practice spread because it works in the short term and the wording sounds harmless: a quick satisfaction question, then a public link for the fives and a private feedback form for everyone else. The result is a rating that describes a filtered sample rather than the business.

The compliant version is simpler than the gated one. Ask every customer, in the same way, with the same link. Handle a bad reply privately when it arrives, publicly when it lands as a review. A business confident enough to ask everybody usually ends up with a more believable page than one averaging 4.9 with no dissent anywhere.

## Related terms

- [Review request](https://www.rumore.ai/glossary/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.
- [Review management](https://www.rumore.ai/glossary/review-management): Review management is the routine of collecting reviews, reading them, and replying to them across every site where a business is listed. It covers the request that produces a review, the alert when one lands, the reply that answers it, and the reporting that shows whether rating and volume are moving.

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