Our most important promise
Some review tools send low ratings away from Google. We give every customer an equal choice and tell you either way.
Send 10 free requests
ExampleAfter a 1 or 2 star rating
How would you like to share it?
Choose the option that feels right for you.
Same style.
Same weight.
Same place on the screen.
The customer decides.
Ray · AC repair
ExampleSentMon 5:48 pm
OpenedMon 7:02 pm
Then Ray picks one.
Either way, you get an email.
Public review
Ray may have posted a 2-star review
Was told everything was fixed, but it wasn't. The bill also came in higher than the original quote. Two visits later it's still blowing warm air in the afternoon.
Copied for Google, not a confirmed post.
Private feedback
Ray sent you private feedback
Still not cooling upstairs two days later. Can someone come back out and take another look?
Sent privately instead of being posted publicly.
Nobody likes a 2-star review. But a profile with a few honest ones usually wins more calls than a perfect one.
A perfect 5.0 looks too good to be true. In a Northwestern University study of online shopping, buyers were most likely to purchase at ratings between 4.0 and 4.7 stars, and less likely as ratings got closer to 5.0. Local services weren’t part of that study, but the instinct is the same: shoppers get suspicious when everything is perfect. Source: Spiegel Research Center, How Online Reviews Influence Sales
The low ones make the good ones believable. A few mixed reviews are evidence the praise came from real customers.
Your reply is what the next customer reads. Replies are public on your Google profile. A calm, specific answer to a 2-star review shows how you handle a problem, which is what a nervous new customer wants to know. Source: Google Business Profile Help, Manage customer reviews
Private feedback is a second chance, not a hiding place. When a customer chooses to tell you privately, you get to fix it. When they post publicly, you get to answer it. Either way, you hear about it.
Hiding them can cost you the profile. Google doesn’t allow sending only happy customers to review and can restrict profiles that do. More in “What is review gating?”
Review gating asks for a rating first, then sends only the happy customers to Google. Everyone else gets a private form, and Google never hears from them.
Google prohibits it. It can also restrict Business Profiles that break its rules.
For the full definition and common questions, read our guide: What is review gating?
That is not the same as saying every third-party review gate automatically violates the FTC Rule, but deceptive suppression can create separate risk under federal law.
Sources · policy reviewed July 16, 2026
A gated tool (illustration)
Sorry to hear that. What went wrong?
Your feedback goes to the business.
Tell us more…
small Talk Example
Roofing company
The new roof looks good, but we found roofing nails all over the driveway the next morning.
Response from the owner · 2 weeks ago
You're right, and I'm sorry. We missed the magnet sweep on the driveway side. We came back that afternoon to redo it, and now we sweep twice before we leave.
It's their experience. They decide where it goes.
Same style. Same weight. Same place on the screen.
All five stars and no complaints looks staged. Customers notice.
A bad review you answered well can sell harder than another five stars.
Google’s policy does not ban AI drafting, but it does require the review to reflect a genuine experience and leave the customer in control of what it says. small Talk only drafts from what the customer tapped, answered, or said out loud, and they can edit or delete anything before they copy it. More in why real reviews should have fingerprints.
The public option stays available. For lower ratings, small Talk shows the public review and private feedback choices together with equal visual weight. If the customer chooses the public option, small Talk does not block or redirect them. If they choose private feedback, the business is notified.
Some do, some don’t. The ones that use “feedback gating” or “review funnels” often make the public option harder to find, or skip it entirely for low ratings. We don’t do that. Our low-rating screen shows both options with equal design, equal text, equal visibility. You can see it in the product demo.
It is sent to the business by email with the customer’s name, rating, and message. You decide how to respond. The private option never removes or hides the public option from the customer.
small Talk does not send only happy customers to Google. Lower-rating customers see the public review and private feedback choices on the same screen with equal visual weight. The customer chooses, and nothing is posted automatically. Those are factual product safeguards. They do not predict how Google will evaluate every implementation or individual review.
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