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Getting a direct link to leave you a Google review

Google generates your review link for you, inside the profile, next to the reviews. What Google never publishes is the URL format, which is why most recipes for this are reverse-engineered.

Google makes the review link for you. It sits inside your own Business Profile, next to your reviews, and you copy it. What Google does not publish anywhere we could find is the URL format, which is the single most useful fact about this topic, because a format Google does not publish cannot be built by hand from documentation.

Google’s page for this is “Create a Google link or QR code to request reviews”, and it opens on the point of the exercise:

To make it easier for customers to leave reviews on your Business Profile, you can create and share a link or QR code to request reviews.

The route is short. Go to your Business Profile, select Read reviews, then Get more reviews. Google shows you the link and a QR code, gives you a copy control for the link, and tells you to save the QR code by right-clicking the image.

One constraint on that page matters if you are doing this from a phone: “Currently, reviews QR codes can only be generated on a computer browser, not on mobile devices.” Google says that about the QR code, not about the link.

The same page lists where to put it: “Include it on your receipts”, “Include it in thank you emails”, “Add it at the end of a chat interaction”, and “Print and display the QR code in your store”. It also notes that “You can also send review requests through email, WhatsApp message, or Facebook post.”

Search this term and you will be handed a URL template to assemble yourself. We are not printing any of them, and the reason is worth stating rather than hiding.

Google’s Business Profile Help pages do not publish a URL format for the review link. They tell you to copy it. They do not tell you what it will be. A format we cannot point at on a Google page is a format we will not put on this page, however widely it is repeated and however reliably it happens to work today.

So copy the link Google gives you, paste it into a private browser window, and confirm it opens the review box for the right location before it goes anywhere permanent like a printed receipt. If you do use a template from elsewhere, treat it as undocumented behaviour that nothing obliges Google to keep.

There is one place Google describes a review link as a value: the Places API (New). Its reference documents a GoogleMapsLinks object, described as “Links to trigger different Google Maps actions.”, whose fields include writeAReviewUri, “A link to write a review for this place on Google Maps.”, and reviewsUri, “A link to show reviews of this place on Google Maps.” Note what that is. These are values the API returns to you, not patterns you fill in, and the reference describes what each string does and never what it looks like.

Two different things get called the short link. The first is whatever Google hands you in the copy control, whose length is not documented and is therefore not something to plan a design around.

The second is the custom URL Google used to offer. Google’s page “Manage your business short name & URL” gives the shape as g.page/[yourcustomname] and says that when you share it, customers can enter that address in a browser to “go directly to your Business Profile”. Two things about it matter more than the format.

It is closed. “You can no longer create or edit short names. Short names and URLs that already exist will still work but will no longer be shown on the Business Profile to customers.”

It is not a review link. It opens the profile, which is a different action from opening the review box, so swapping one for the other adds a step for every customer.

If you still have one, do not tidy it away: the same page warns that “Once you delete your existing short name, you can’t create it again.”

Putting Google’s link behind a redirect on your own domain is a separate matter. It works because it is your infrastructure, and no Google documentation covers it, so if it breaks it breaks on your side.

The marketing kit

Google once ran a separate site that generated posters and stickers from a Business Profile. We looked for a current Business Profile Help page documenting it and did not find one, and the help pages covering review requests now just tell you to print the QR code yourself. When we tried the old address, it landed on Google’s Business Profile product page rather than on a kit.

So there are no steps here for it. A tool we cannot cite is a tool we cannot write instructions for, and instructions for a retired one are worse than none.

Worth separating, because the same search covers both. “Manage customer reviews” documents that “you can share a direct link to a customer review”, and the route runs through Google Maps rather than the profile editor: find your business, open Reviews, use the More control on the review you want, choose Share review, then Send a link and copy it. That is a link to something already written. The review link in the first section is a link to the empty form.

Google publishes no guarantee about how long your review link lives, so treat any printed copy as perishable and re-test it after anything structural happens to the profile.

What Google does document, on “Resolve duplicate profiles & ownership issues”, is what happens to the reviews. On merges: “When 2 profiles are merged, their reviews are combined, but replies to reviews may be lost.” On moving: “If your business relocates, do not create a new Business Profile for the new location.” Update the existing profile’s address instead, which is also what keeps your link pointing at the same profile. And a profile Google treats as a duplicate stops showing in Search and Maps at all, which is a worse problem than a stale link.

The working rule: re-copy and re-test the link after an ownership change, a merge, or an address change, and again before any print run.

Asking is a separate question, and a separate page

What you may say when you hand the link over, the four placements Google names, the account a customer needs, and the prohibitions on incentives, gating and dictated wording are all on asking customers for reviews. This page is about the artefact rather than the request.

After the link does its job: negative reviews, rejected replies, fake reviews, removal, and review management software.

Google builds the link, Google will not tell you its shape, and your job is to copy it from the profile, test it somewhere that is not your own logged-in browser, and copy it again whenever the profile underneath it changes.

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