How to Ask Patients for Google Reviews: The Compliant UK Guide for Dental Practices

You may ask patients for Google reviews. It is lawful and permitted. Ask every patient the same way. Filtering by expected sentiment is review gating. Never offer a discount, prize draw or any other incentive. Never tell patients what to write or ask them to name a clinician. Give every patient a visible route to raise a concern with you directly.

Yes, your practice can ask patients for Google reviews and doing so is entirely legitimate. The rule that matters is simple: you must ask every patient in the same way, without filtering by how happy you think they are, and without offering anything in return. Selectively asking only satisfied patients is called review gating, and it breaches Google’s policies. Offering incentives can breach UK consumer law.

This guide explains what UK dental practices are allowed to do, what they must avoid, when to ask, and what wording to use. It covers Google’s review policies, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, UK GDPR, and General Dental Council guidance.

Which rules apply to UK dental practices?

Four separate sets of rules govern how a UK dental practice collects reviews. Most practices are aware of one or two of them. Problems usually arise from the ones they have not considered.

1. Google’s review policies

Google’s Maps user-generated content policy states that contributions must reflect a genuine experience, and that merchants must not discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers. The same policy states that merchants should not require or pressure users to leave ratings or write reviews while on the premises, nor request that specific content be included.

Google classifies these behaviours under fake engagement. Enforcement can mean removal of the offending reviews, a warning, or in more serious cases restrictions on the Business Profile itself. Because Google also flags unusual volume spikes as a manipulation signal regardless of intent, a sudden burst of reviews after a campaign can trigger filtering even when every review is genuine.

2. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024

Since 6 April 2025, fake reviews and concealed incentivised reviews have been banned practices under the DMCC Act 2024, enforced by the Competition and Markets Authority. The CMA’s fake reviews guidance covers submitting, commissioning and publishing fake reviews, hiding the fact that a review was incentivised, and presenting review information in a misleading way.

Banned practices are automatically treated as unfair — the CMA does not need to demonstrate that any consumer was actually misled. The conduct itself is the breach. After a three-month grace period ended in July 2025, the CMA ran a sweep of review platforms and has since written to businesses it considered non-compliant.

For a dental practice, the practical read-across is this: do not ask staff, family or friends to post reviews; do not offer anything in exchange for a review; and if you ever do run something that could be read as an incentive, the incentive must be disclosed clearly in the review itself — which is rarely workable in practice, so the safer position is simply not to incentivise at all.

3. UK GDPR and PECR

If you send review requests by SMS or email, you are carrying out electronic marketing, and you need a lawful basis and appropriate consent under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations. Practices should also be careful about the volume and timing of messages, keep a clear record of preferences, and make opting out straightforward.

Patient status is also personal data. That has a direct consequence for how you respond to reviews, which we cover below.

4. GDC guidance

The General Dental Council requires that all information or publicity material regarding dental services be legal, decent, honest and truthful, and warns that advertising which is false, misleading, or has the potential to mislead is unprofessional and may lead to a fitness to practise investigation. Registrants must avoid statements likely to create an unjustified expectation about results, and must make clear whether a practice is NHS, mixed or wholly private.

Displaying a curated set of reviews that does not reflect genuine patient experience sits uncomfortably against those obligations. So does using a patient testimonial without consent.

What is review gating?

**Review gating** is the practice of filtering patients before asking for a public review, for example asking how their visit went and then sending only the happy ones to Google, while directing the unhappy ones to a private form. It is prohibited by Google policies because it manipulates the public rating.

It is worth being precise here, because a common misunderstanding causes real problems. Collecting private feedback is not review gating. Offering a private feedback channel to every patient, alongside an equal invitation to review publicly, is good practice. What makes it gating is using the patient’s sentiment to decide who gets asked for a public review.

Wording matters as much as workflow. A request that says "if you were happy with your visit, please leave us a Google review" is selective solicitation, because it excludes patients who were not happy. "We would appreciate your honest feedback on Google" is not.

Compliant and non-compliant practice compared

Seven situations where practices most often go wrong, and what the compliant version looks like.

Who you ask

• Compliant: every patient after their appointment, on the same terms
• Avoid: only the patients your team expects to be positive

Your wording

• Compliant: "We’d welcome your honest feedback"
• Avoid: "If you were happy today, please review us"

Screening questions

• Compliant: none — or a feedback form open to all that does not decide who is asked
• Avoid: a "how was your visit?" question that routes happy patients to Google and unhappy ones elsewhere

Incentives

• Compliant: none offered
• Avoid: prize draw entry, a discount, or free whitening in exchange for a review

Content of the review

• Compliant: the patient writes whatever they wish
• Avoid: asking patients to mention a named clinician or a specific treatment

Timing and setting

• Compliant: the patient decides when, in their own time
• Avoid: handing them a tablet at reception and asking them to complete it before leaving

Who may review

• Compliant: patients only
• Avoid: staff, suppliers, family members or friends

When to ask for a review

Timing affects response rates more than almost anything else, and the right moment differs by appointment type.

• Routine check-ups and hygiene appointments: at the end of the appointment, or by message the same day. The experience is complete and still fresh.
• Treatment involving recovery, such as extractions or implant placement: wait until the patient is comfortable and any planned follow-up has happened. Asking a patient to review while they are still sore is poor care and produces poor data.
• A course of treatment such as orthodontics or a multi-visit restorative plan: at completion, not at each visit.
• New patient consultations: after the treatment plan discussion, when they have experienced how the practice communicates.

Whatever you choose, apply it as a rule rather than a judgement call. Consistency is both the compliant approach and the one that produces a review profile that genuinely reflects your practice.

Four ways to ask, with wording you can use

1. In person at reception

The most effective method, because the patient has just met your team. It requires a script that every member of staff uses in the same way.

"Before you go — we ask all our patients to share their feedback online. It genuinely helps us improve, and it helps other people decide whether we’re the right practice for them. There’s a QR code on the desk if you’d like to."

Note what this does not do: it does not ask whether they enjoyed the visit first, it does not suggest what to write, and it does not ask them to do it there and then.

2. QR code on printed materials

A QR code on the reception desk, appointment card or treatment plan lets the patient act in their own time, on their own device. It removes the pressure of on-premises requests while keeping the invitation visible to everyone. Place it where all patients pass, not where only certain patients will see it.

"How was your visit? Scan to share your feedback — we read every response."

3. SMS or email follow-up

Useful for reaching patients who left in a hurry. Send it to every patient in the relevant appointment category, keep it short, and include an unsubscribe route.

"Thanks for visiting [Practice Name] today. We’d really value your honest feedback — it takes about a minute: [link]. Reply STOP to opt out."

4. Practice website and confirmation pages

A standing feedback link in your appointment confirmation emails and website footer catches patients who want to say something unprompted. It is passive and lower-yield, but it costs nothing and reaches everyone equally.

What to do about patients who had a poor experience

This is where practices most often stray into gating, usually with good intentions. The instinct is to catch dissatisfaction before it becomes a public review. That instinct is sound as clinical governance and unlawful as review strategy the distinction lies in whether the outcome changes who gets invited to review.

The compliant approach is to run two things in parallel, offered to everyone:

1. A visible complaints and feedback route, as required by NHS and GDC complaints procedures, that any patient can use at any time. Publicise it clearly. Many patients who would otherwise post a negative review will use it if they know it exists.
2. An equal, unfiltered invitation to review publicly, sent on the same terms to every patient.

A patient can use both. What you must not do is let their answer to the first determine whether they receive the second.

Responding to reviews without breaching confidentiality

Responding is worth doing, and it carries a specific risk in healthcare that it does not carry in other sectors. Confirming that someone is a patient, or referring to their treatment, discloses personal data even when they disclosed it first in their own review.

• Do not confirm or deny that the reviewer is a patient of the practice.
• Do not reference clinical details, appointments, or treatment history.
• Do thank the reviewer, acknowledge the feedback in general terms, and move the conversation offline.
• Do not include promotional language, offers or links in a review response.

An example response to a negative review:

"Thank you for taking the time to share this. We’re sorry to hear your experience fell short. We can’t discuss individual circumstances here, but we’d like to look into it — please contact our practice manager at [email] and we’ll take it from there."

A compliant review request checklist

Ten checks, each with the reason it matters. If your process passes all ten, you are on solid ground.

• Every patient in the category is asked, with no filtering — selective solicitation breaches Google review policies.
• No screening question decides who is asked — this is the defining feature of review gating.
• Wording is sentiment-neutral — "if you were happy…" is selective by implication.
• No incentive of any kind is offered — a banned practice under the DMCC Act 2024.
• Patients are not asked to include specific content — prohibited under Google’s policies.
• No requests are completed under pressure on the premises — Google advises against on-premises pressure.
• SMS and email have consent and an opt-out — required under PECR and UK GDPR.
• Staff, family and suppliers do not post reviews — a conflict of interest under Google policy, and a fake review under the DMCC Act.
• Responses disclose no patient information — GDC confidentiality standards and UK GDPR.
• The complaints route is publicised to all patients — GDC and NHS complaints obligations.

Summary

Collecting Google reviews compliantly is less complicated than it first appears. Ask everyone, ask them the same way, offer nothing in return, do not script what they write, and give every patient a visible route to raise a concern directly with you. A review profile built this way is slower to grow than a gated one, and it is the only kind that is both defensible under UK rules and genuinely representative of your practice.

Sources

• Google, Maps user-generated content policy
• Competition and Markets Authority, Fake reviews guidance
• Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024
• General Dental Council, Guidance on advertising
• Information Commissioner’s Office, direct marketing guidance