How to Get Your Google Review Link and QR Code
Most customers who mean to leave you a review never do. It isn’t because they didn’t enjoy the job — it’s because leaving one means opening Google, typing your business name, scrolling past three competitors and a map, tapping the right listing, scrolling again, finding “Write a review” and then remembering what they wanted to say. Somewhere in that chain, the kettle boils and the moment’s gone.
Your review link fixes that. It’s a short web address that drops someone straight into the review box for your business, star rating ready and waiting. Turn it into a QR code and it’s a camera-point away. This guide covers where to find yours, how to make the QR code for nothing, and — the bit most people skip — where to actually put them.
What the review link actually is
Google generates a short link for every verified Business Profile. It usually looks something like g.page/r/ followed by a string of letters and numbers, and it opens the review panel for your listing directly. Nothing to install, nothing to sign up for, no third-party service in the middle. It’s yours, it’s free, and it already exists — you just have to go and fetch it.
One thing worth knowing up front: the person leaving the review still needs to be signed in to a Google account. Almost everyone with an Android phone or a Gmail address already is. The handful who aren’t will be prompted, and some of those will drop out. That’s normal and it’s not something you can engineer around.
Where to find your link
Google moves its buttons around more often than anyone would like, so treat these as three routes to the same place rather than a fixed set of steps. Whichever you use, you’re looking for a button labelled “Ask for reviews” or “Get more reviews”.
On a computer. Sign in to the Google account that manages your business and search for your business name in Google. Your profile management panel appears in the results. Look for the “Ask for reviews” option — clicking it gives you the short link and a copy button.
On your phone. Open the Google Maps app while signed in as the business, go to your Business Profile, and find the same “Ask for reviews” option. This is the easiest route if you want the link on the device you’ll be texting from anyway.
If you can’t find the button. It sometimes hides on newly verified profiles or when you’re signed into the wrong account. Double-check you’re using the account that owns the listing, not a personal one. If your profile isn’t set up or verified yet, that’s the real blocker — our step-by-step guide to setting up a Google Business Profile walks through it, and the review link appears once verification is done.
Test it before you share it. Open the link on your own phone in a private browsing window. You should land on the review box for your business with the star rating showing — not on a general Maps page, and definitely not on somebody else’s listing. Businesses with common names, or those that have moved, occasionally find a stale duplicate listing lurking. Better you find it than a customer does.
Turning it into a QR code
A QR code is just a picture of your link. Any free generator will make one — paste in your review link, download the image, done. A few things save grief later:
- Use a static QR code, not a “dynamic” one. Dynamic codes route through the generator’s own servers so they can track scans and let you change the destination. That sounds handy until the free trial ends and every sticker you printed stops working. A static code has your link baked into the pattern; it works forever, offline, with nobody in the middle.
- Download the highest quality version offered — an SVG or a large PNG. A small image that looks fine on screen turns into porridge when a printer scales it up for a poster.
- Leave white space around it. QR codes need a clear quiet margin to scan reliably. Don’t crop it tight or lay it over a busy photo.
- Don’t shrink it too far. As a rough rule, something around 2–3cm square works for a card someone holds; anything meant to be scanned from across a room — a van, a window — needs to be far bigger.
- Test it with two different phones, an iPhone and an Android, before you print 500 of anything.
Add a line of text next to the code telling people what it does. “Scan to leave us a Google review” gets scanned. A naked black square doesn’t.
Where to put them
The link and the QR code do different jobs. The link belongs anywhere digital, where someone is already holding their phone. The QR code belongs anywhere physical, where they aren’t.
| Where | Use | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| Follow-up text message | Link | They’re on their phone, job just finished, one tap away |
| Email signature | Link | Free, permanent, no effort after setup |
| Invoice footer | Both | They’re already looking at it, and they’re paying you because you did the work |
| Counter or till card | QR code | Catches people while they’re waiting |
| Van or shop window | QR code | Only if it’s big enough to scan from a sensible distance |
| Receipt or job sheet | QR code | Goes home in a pocket and gets found later |
| Booking confirmation | Link | Add it to the “thanks, see you soon” message you already send |
| Your website | Link | A “leave us a review” link near your existing reviews |
Save the link as a text shortcut on your phone so sending it takes five seconds rather than five minutes of hunting. That single bit of setup is the difference between asking every customer and asking the ones you happen to remember.
The rules, briefly
Google’s review policies are short and worth respecting, because the penalty for breaking them is losing reviews you legitimately earned — or, at the extreme end, your profile.
- No incentives. Don’t offer a discount, a prize draw, a free coffee or anything else in exchange for a review. This includes “leave a review and get 10% off”.
- No review gating. You can’t screen customers first — asking how happy they are and only sending the link to the ones who say “very” is against the rules. Ask everyone you served well.
- No bulk blasts. A sudden pile of reviews from a mass email looks exactly like what Google’s filters are built to catch. A steady trickle is safer and, frankly, more convincing to human readers too.
- Don’t leave them yourself, and don’t ask friends who were never customers.
Ask honestly, one customer at a time, and none of this is a problem. If you want the wider system — when to ask, how to phrase it, why replying matters — we’ve covered that in how to get more Google reviews. And if a rough one lands, how to deal with a bad Google review has the calm approach.
Give the reviews somewhere to land
Here’s where we declare our interest: this is our trade. A review link works hardest when the person who scans it — or the next person who reads the result — has somewhere proper to land afterwards. Reviews on their own build trust; a website turns that trust into a phone call. If you haven’t got one yet, we build a professional site straight from your Google Business Profile, on a free .co.uk domain, live within 48 hours of the domain being registered. Claim your free website if that sounds useful.
The short version
Fetch your review link from the “Ask for reviews” button in your Business Profile. Test it in a private window. Paste it into a free QR generator, choose static, download it big, test it on two phones. Then put the link in every message you send and the code on every surface a customer touches. Ten minutes of setup, and asking for reviews stops being a chore you keep meaning to get round to.