How to reply to Google reviews, including the bad ones.

Who a reply is for

The reviewer reads your reply once. Everyone who looks at your profile afterwards reads it too, often while deciding whether to call. Write for them: someone who wants to know what happens here when something goes wrong.

Google's own tips for replies, in short:

• Be professional and polite, and keep it short and simple.
• Skip the same thank-you for everyone. Reply where you can add something useful.
• Keep it conversational, with no deals or offers.
• Never share a reviewer's private information or attack them personally.
• Admit real mistakes, apologise where it fits, and do not take the blame for what was outside your control.
• Answer the points they raised, and reply promptly.

A few practical points. You can reply only from a verified Business Profile. Google checks each reply against its policies before it shows, which usually takes minutes and can take much longer. The reviewer is told when you reply, and you can edit or delete your reply later from Read reviews.

Replies also count with people choosing between you and the next business: our prices page quotes a 2024 BrightLocal survey of US consumers on businesses that reply to all their reviews.

Replies to good reviews

Short and specific beats long and grateful. Pick up one detail from the review and answer it as a person would:

• A restaurant: "Thanks, Priya. Glad the lamb worked for your dad's birthday. I have passed your note to Marco in the kitchen."
• A plumber: "Thanks, Dan. A boiler that stops in January is no fun, so we were glad to get to you the same afternoon."
• A five-star rating with no text: "Thank you, it is good to hear." Or nothing at all. A rating with no words does not need a paragraph back.

Do not stuff the reply with keywords, as in "thanks for choosing the best emergency plumber in Leeds". It reads as if a machine wrote it, and the next customer notices.

Replies to bad reviews: a structure that works

Wait until you are calm, then write four short parts:

• Thank them, and use their name if they gave it.
• Own the real mistake in plain words. If you see it differently, say so once, calmly, without going through the details.
• Say what you have changed, if anything, so the next reader knows it will not happen to them.
• Move it offline: a named person and how to reach them, such as the number on your profile.

A salon example. The review: "Waited 40 minutes past my appointment and nobody told me why." The reply: "Jo, you are right, and I am sorry. We ran over with an earlier client and nobody told you, which is the part we got wrong. We now text clients if we are running more than 15 minutes late. I would like to put it right, so please call and ask for Sam."

What to leave out:

• Arguing the facts in public. A public argument makes the business look worse than the review did.
• "We are sorry you feel that way." It apologises for their feelings and for nothing you did.
• Details from your records: dates, prices, what they bought, what they said on the phone.
• Refunds or discounts. Google's tips say to keep offers out of replies, and an offer tied to changing the review breaks its policy. Sort out compensation in private.
• Threats of legal action. In the US, the FTC's rule on reviews bans unfounded legal threats used to get a review removed.

Replies by situation

• A wrong fact. Correct it once, for the readers: "For anyone reading: we do not charge a call-out fee inside the city. Dan, if your invoice shows one, call me and I will look at it."
• A complaint about a policy, such as a deposit or a late cancellation fee. Explain the rule and why it exists, without scolding: "We take a deposit because a missed appointment leaves a chair empty that another client could have had. The policy is on our booking page, and I am sorry it came as a surprise." If the same policy keeps causing complaints, how to write a cancellation policy customers accept may help.
• Someone you cannot find in your records. Do not call them a liar: "We cannot find a visit under this name. If you came in, please get in touch so we can look into it." Then report the review if it breaks Google's policy. Clinics and law firms should not use this one, for the reasons below.
• A complaint about price. Do not apologise for your prices or defend them at length: "Thanks, Lee. Our quotes include parts and labour, and I am happy to go through yours line by line if you call."
• A review that is really a question, such as "Good work, but do they do evenings?" Answer it in the reply. Other people reading have the same question.
• A review from someone who used to work for you. Report it as a conflict of interest, and do not reply about their employment in public.
• A review meant for another business. Say so politely, then report it: "We think this may be meant for another company, as we do not fit windows."
• Abuse, or a review that names a member of staff. Report it. If you reply, do not name the staff member and do not match the tone.
• A review in another language. Reply in that language if someone on the team can, or keep it short in English.

Fake reviews, rivals and extortion

Google removes only reviews that break its policies. A genuine bad review stays, however unfair it feels, and Google does not settle disputes between businesses and customers. To report one, use the flag next to the review in your profile or Google's Reviews Management Tool, and pick the reason, such as spam or a conflict of interest. The tool shows the status of each report. If Google finds no violation, you get one appeal, which can cover up to ten reviews.

Review extortion is different. A sudden run of one and two-star reviews is followed by a message demanding money, goods or services to remove them. Google's advice is not to engage and not to pay. Gather the evidence at once, with screenshots of the demand and its date, links to the reviews and any usernames, and report it through Google's form for extortion.

Wait for Google's decision before you reply to a review you think is fake. If you do reply, keep it to one calm line. A calm line next to a fake review does more for you than an angry one.

Clinics: never confirm someone is a patient

In the US, HHS, which enforces HIPAA, has settled with healthcare providers whose replies to online reviews disclosed patient information. Two were dental practices: Elite Dental Associates in Dallas in 2019, and New Vision Dental in California in 2022, whose replies included patients' names, treatment and insurance details. Manasa Health Center, a psychiatric practice in New Jersey, settled in 2023 after replying to a review with details of the patient's diagnosis and treatment. HHS's message to providers: patient information must not be disclosed when responding to reviews.

The trap is that a friendly reply does it too. "Thanks for coming in, Sarah, glad the new crown feels right" tells the world that Sarah is a patient and what she had done. Use replies that neither confirm nor deny:

• To a good review: "Thank you for the kind words. We will share them with the team."
• To a bad review: "Thank you for your feedback. We take every comment seriously, but privacy rules mean we cannot discuss anyone's care here. Please call the practice and ask for the practice manager."

In a clinic, never confirm or deny that the reviewer is a patient, never mention a visit, a treatment or a date, and never reply with anything from the patient record, even when the reviewer has posted it all themselves.

In Europe, health details are special category data under the GDPR, so the same approach is the safe one there. This is how careful practices handle it, and it is not legal advice: your HIPAA or data protection adviser has the final word. See what else changes for dental clinics.

Law firms: the ABA's view

Lawyers owe their clients confidentiality, and the American Bar Association's Formal Opinion 496, issued in January 2021, deals with online criticism directly. Its view is that a negative online review, on its own, does not allow a lawyer to reveal information about the client's matter in reply. It urges lawyers to think seriously about not responding at all, since a reply can bring more posts, and notes that a lawyer may ask the website to take a review down, as long as nothing confidential is revealed in the request.

If you do reply, the opinion offers wording along these lines:

• To a client or former client: "Professional obligations do not allow me to respond as I would wish."
• To someone who was never a client: an invitation to talk privately, such as asking them to call so you can discuss their concerns.

State rules and state bar opinions decide what applies to your firm, so check yours. Outside the US, your profession's own rules on confidentiality set the limits, and the same caution suits accountants and any trade with a duty of confidentiality. Our page for law firms covers how a firm's website and chatbot handle new enquiries.

When an AI draft is fine, and when the owner writes it

Review tools can now draft replies for you. A draft is fine where little can go wrong:

• Thank-you replies to good reviews, edited so they do not all read alike.
• Short replies to neutral reviews.

The owner or manager writes the reply, from scratch or with heavy edits, when:

• The review is bad and specific.
• It involves money, safety, an injury, discrimination or a named member of staff.
• The business is a clinic, a law firm or any trade with a duty of confidentiality.
• You are not sure what happened. Find out first, then reply.

Two rules for any draft. Give the tool the review text and nothing else, because a tool fed your customer records can put details from them into a public reply. And a person reads every reply before it is posted. That is how we build drafting into our AI assistants: the assistant prepares a draft and a person checks it before anything is sent.

A routine that keeps up

• Look at new reviews twice a week, or set your Business Profile to tell you when one arrives.
• Reply to good reviews in a batch. Reply to bad ones the same day if you can, once you know what happened.
• Keep a short note of phrases that suit your business, so replies sound like you without repeating word for word.
• Pass every complaint that arrives as a review into the same process as any other complaint, with a person responsible for it.
• Once a month, read the month's reviews together. The same complaint three times means a process needs fixing.

On our Growth plan, the monthly report lists the reviews still waiting for an answer, so none gets forgotten.

When the customer comes back

Your reply sits under the review, and you can edit it. If you fix the problem and the customer updates the review, update your reply to match, so the exchange reads as finished.

You can ask a customer whose problem you solved whether they would update the review, once, with nothing offered for it. Google bans incentives for changing a review, and how to ask for Google reviews without breaking the rules covers the rest.

If the customer never comes back, leave it there. One calm reply under one bad review is all a reader needs to see.