Can a Bakery Offer a Discount for Google Reviews on Its Holiday Pre-Order Cards?
The situations described here are composites drawn from the types of jobs and decisions we encounter regularly. Names and specific figures are illustrative.
A neighborhood bakery with 41 Google reviews and a 4.6 rating had 600 holiday pre-order cards proofed and ready to print. Each card had pickup times, the pie list, and one extra line at the bottom: “Leave us a Google review, show it at pickup, and take 10% off your order.” The owner sent us the proof in late October and asked one question before paying the printer: is a discount for Google reviews allowed if you never ask for five stars? On Google, the answer is no. Google’s Maps content policy lists “discounts, free goods and/or services” offered in exchange for posting any review as something merchants are not allowed to do.[1]
The card was about $180 to reprint. The review offer would have run on every pie, every pickup, and every bag that left the shop from early November to New Year’s. That made it worth slowing down for one afternoon.
What the bakery had and what it wanted
The shop does most of its year in about eight weeks. Thanksgiving pies, holiday cookie trays, and December bread orders carry the slow months. The owner had noticed that a competitor across town had more than 200 reviews and showed up above them in Maps for “bakery near me.” Forty-one reviews felt thin, and the holiday rush was the one stretch of the year when hundreds of customers would be standing at the counter.
The thinking behind the discount was reasonable. Customers who are happy will leave a review if you give them a small reason to. Ten percent off a pie is a small reason. The owner was not trying to buy praise. The card did not mention stars, and the plan was to honor the discount for any review, good or bad.
That last detail is where most owners get stuck, because it is legal in one place and still banned in another.
Where the rules split
There are two sets of rules in play for a small business asking for reviews. One is Google’s, which applies to anything posted on a Business Profile. The other is federal. The FTC’s rule on consumer reviews and testimonials, which went into effect on October 21, 2024, lets courts impose civil penalties for knowing violations.[5]
The FTC rule is narrower than many people assume. Section 465.4 makes it a violation to give compensation or other incentives in exchange for reviews that express a particular sentiment, whether positive or negative.[4] The FTC’s own question-and-answer guidance says the rule does not prohibit incentives for reviews as long as there is no express or implied requirement that the review be positive or negative, though failing to disclose incentives could still violate the FTC Act.[5]
Google does not make that distinction. Its Business Profile help page says that offering incentives, “like free or discounted goods or services,” in exchange for customers to post reviews, change reviews, or remove negative reviews is considered fake and misleading content and is strictly prohibited.[2] So the bakery’s card would have been on the right side of the federal rule and on the wrong side of the platform where the reviews were going to live.
Here is how the options lined up when we laid them out for the owner:
| What the business does | Google review policy | FTC rule (16 CFR Part 465) |
|---|---|---|
| 10% off for any review, good or bad | Not allowed[1] | Not banned by the rule; undisclosed incentives could still violate the FTC Act[5] |
| 10% off for a 5-star review | Not allowed[1] | Violation of Section 465.4[4] |
| Asking only customers who seem happy | Not allowed[1] | Not a specific rule violation, but could violate the FTC Act[5] |
| Paying a customer to remove a bad review | Not allowed[1] | Not covered by the rule, but may violate the FTC Act[5] |
| Same plain ask and review link to every customer | Allowed[2] | Allowed as a general request to purchasers[5] |
The last row is the only one that is clean on both sides. Everything else is either banned outright on Google or sits in a gray area under federal law that a bakery has no reason to test.
What getting caught would have cost
The owner’s next question was practical: how would Google even know? Customers write things like “they gave me 10% off for this review” more often than you would think, and the card itself would be sitting on the counter. Google’s policy says content posted because of an incentive offered by a business is not allowed and will be removed from Maps.[1]
Removal is not the only risk. Google says a business that violates its fake engagement policy may have restrictions placed on its profile, including being unable to receive new reviews for a set period, having existing reviews unpublished for a set period, or showing a warning to consumers that fake reviews were removed.[3] For a bakery whose year depends on eight weeks of foot traffic, a warning label on the profile in mid-December would cost more than every review the card could have produced.
That settled it. The owner did not want to argue the FTC nuance with Google. The card was going to be reprinted.
“Google’s help page calls free or discounted goods in exchange for a review fake and misleading content, and it doesn’t carve out an exception for honest reviews.[2] So the coupon comes off the card and the ask stays on it.”
Vlad Bogza, Founder, Powerful Media Solutions
What went on the new card
The reprinted card kept the pie list and pickup times. The bottom line now read: “If you enjoyed your order, we would appreciate a Google review,” with a QR code next to it. Google’s own tips page suggests exactly this, asking customers to visit a Google review link or scan a QR code.[2] The card does not promise anything in return, and it does not ask for stars.
The counter staff got one sentence to use at pickup, the same sentence for every customer: “There’s a link on your card if you want to leave us a review.” No follow-up, no asking whether they liked it first. Google’s policy says merchants should not pressure people to write reviews while on the premises, should not ask for specific content, and should not set staff quotas for a number of reviews.[1] The owner had been thinking about a small bonus for whichever employee collected the most reviews in December. That idea went away with the coupon.
Rewards did not disappear from the shop. The bakery kept its paper punch card, where the tenth coffee is free. That reward is tied to purchases, not reviews, and it never mentions Google. If you want the longer version of how to build a steady review habit, we wrote about getting more Google reviews without breaking the rules.
How the season played out
This is roughly how the eight weeks went:
| When | What the bakery did |
|---|---|
| Early November | Reprinted 600 cards with the QR code and no offer |
| Thanksgiving pickup week | Staff used the same one-line ask with every pickup |
| December | Owner replied to every new review within a few days, including a 3-star review about a long pickup line |
| Early January | Counted reviews and checked the profile for any warnings |
By early January the profile had gone from 41 reviews to 63. That is fewer than a discount might have pulled in, and the owner said so. But none of the 22 new reviews mentioned a coupon, none were at risk of being removed, and the profile had no restrictions on it going into the slow months.
The 3-star review turned out to be useful. A customer wrote that the pickup line on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving took 25 minutes. The owner replied, thanked them, and said next year there would be a second pickup table. Google’s tips page notes that a mix of positive and negative feedback often feels more trustworthy to customers.[2] Replies like that one are part of what our Google Business Profile cleanup covers when a profile has gone quiet.
What owners usually ask at this point
The first question is almost always, “What if I just don’t put it in writing?” The answer does not change. Google’s policy covers incentives offered in exchange for a review, whether or not they are printed on a card.[1] A verbal offer at the register is still an offer, and customers mention it in their reviews.
The second is, “Can I offer something to get a bad review taken down?” Google prohibits incentives for revising or removing a negative review.[1] The FTC’s guidance says its rule does not cover this directly, but paying consumers to change or remove truthful negative reviews may violate the FTC Act.[5] The FTC also says the rule does not stop you from contacting a customer who left a negative review to fix the problem.[5] Fixing the problem is fine. Paying for the edit is not.
The third is about family and friends. The FTC says a small business owner can ask relatives to review the business, but they should clearly disclose the relationship.[5] On Google, the safer path is to ask real customers and leave family out of it.
The last question is whether reviews matter enough to bother with any of this. For a business that lives on “near me” searches, they are one of the signals customers see first. The setting matters too. A profile that shows the wrong hours or gets ignored for a season can collect bad reviews it did not earn, as happened to a plumbing company that collected one-star reviews over holiday hours it never set. Reviews work best alongside the rest of a profile and site, which is the work our SEO services for small businesses focus on.
What the bakery took from it
The owner’s takeaway was not that rewards are bad. It was that the platform where the review lives sets the rules, and Google’s rule is stricter than the federal one. A business that only reads the FTC rule could reasonably decide a no-strings discount is fine and still lose its reviews on Google.
If your own holiday flyers, receipts, or email templates mention a discount for Google reviews or any reward for leaving one, it is worth pulling that line before the busy season starts rather than after. A plain ask, a link, and the same sentence for every customer is slower, and it is the version that stays on your profile. If you want a second set of eyes on your Google Business Profile before the holidays, you can reach out here.
Sources
- Prohibited & restricted content, Maps User Generated Content Policy Help, Google
- Tips to get more reviews, Google Business Profile Help, Google
- Business Profile restrictions for policy violations, Google Business Profile Help, Google
- 16 CFR Part 465, Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (2024)
- The Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule: Questions and Answers, Federal Trade Commission (2024)
