Get Your Google Review Link (and a Short URL That Works)

Your Google review link is the URL that opens the star-rating box directly, and it looks like https://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=YOUR_PLACE_ID. Copy it from the “Ask for reviews” or “Share review form” dialog inside your Business Profile — not from your browser’s address bar, which is where most broken links come from.

Getting the link is a two-minute job. Making sure it opens the review box on a customer’s phone rather than a map, a search result or a login screen is the part that decides whether anyone actually writes anything. This guide covers finding it, shortening it, testing it properly, and putting it where customers will use it.

Three different links, and which one you want

Most review-link problems are really this confusion:

The direct review link. Opens the review form with the star picker ready. Long and ugly, and the one you want everywhere you can hyperlink text.
The short link (g.page). Short enough to read aloud or print, but it only exists if a short name is set on your Business Profile.
The profile link. Lands on your listing. Fine for “find us,” poor for “review us” — the customer has to hunt for the review button and many will not.

Copying whatever is in the address bar while you are looking at your own listing usually produces the third one. That is why a link that seems fine to you sends customers to a map.

How to find your review link

Before anything else: sign in with the Google account that actually manages the listing. Grabbing the link from a personal account you happen to be signed into is a common and invisible failure.

From the Business Profile in search

Search your business name on Google while signed in as the owner.
In the profile panel, click Ask for reviews.
Copy the URL from the dialog that opens. That is your review link.

From the Business Profile dashboard

Open your profile management view and find the Get more reviews card.
Click Share review form.
Copy the full URL from the sharing dialog.

From your Place ID

If the dialogs are missing — a common complaint since Google reorganised its business tools — you can build the link yourself. Find your Place ID with Google’s Place ID Finder, then append it to https://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=. Our Google review link generator does the same job and hands you the finished URL.

About short URLs

The raw link is unusable in print and awkward to say out loud. Two ways to shorten it, with different risks.

The g.page short name. If your profile has a short name set, you get a compact g.page/… address. Note that a lot of older advice about creating custom vanity short names is out of date — Google retired that feature, so if the option is not in your profile, it is not something you have missed.

A third-party shortener. Bitly, Rebrandly and similar tools will wrap the long URL neatly. Two costs worth knowing: a redirect adds a step, and some people distrust shortened links enough not to tap them. There is also a durability lesson available for free — Google’s own goo.gl shortener stopped serving links in August 2025, taking a lot of printed material with it. If you shorten, keep a record of the original URL somewhere you will find it again.

Test it before you send it anywhere

Phone held in one hand with a blank screen, used to test a review link — Test the link the way a customer meets it: on a phone, signed out of your own account.

This is the step almost every guide skips, and it is the one that catches the failure owners describe most often — the link opens a browser asking the customer to sign in, or drops them on Maps, and they give up.

Open the link in a private browser window on a phone, not on your desktop. Desktop testing hides the mobile behaviour entirely.
Check what loads. You want your business name and the star picker. If you get your listing instead, you copied the profile link — go back and use the Share review form dialog.
Try it on both an iPhone and an Android handset if you can. The two handle app hand-off differently.
Send it to yourself the way you will send it to customers — as an SMS, in an email — because messaging apps sometimes mangle long URLs.
Re-test every few months. Owners report links quietly breaking over time, and the only way you find out is by checking.

A customer being asked to log in is not a bug you can fix — it is Google asking for an account before accepting a review. What you can control is that they land on the review form rather than somewhere they have to navigate from.

Where to put the link

Customer opening a Google review link on a smartphone — One link, one tap — wherever the customer already is when they are happy.

The link earns its keep in the moment right after the work is done. Practical placements, in rough order of return:

The follow-up message. An SMS or email sent shortly after the job, the appointment, or the delivery. This is where most reviews actually come from.
Your email signature. Costs nothing and works quietly in the background.
The receipt or invoice. Printed short URL, or a QR code.
A card by the till. The walk-in version — covered in QR Code Review Cards: Get Reviews From Walk-In Customers.
Your website. A review page on your own domain that everyone is sent to, which then hands off to Google.

One rule holds across all of them: one link per message. If you send a review link and a feedback link and a booking link together, most people click none of them.

Who you send it to

Plenty of advice on this topic says to send the link to your satisfied customers. Some of it says so explicitly — “don’t send a review request to every single customer you’ve had.” That advice will cost you the reviews you already have.

Google’s policy prohibits selectively soliciting positive reviews and discouraging negative ones. Sending the link only to people you expect to be pleased is exactly that, whether a piece of software does the sorting or a member of staff does. Businesses caught at it have lost the overwhelming majority of their reviews — the detail is in Review Gating: Why It Breaks Google and FTC Rules.

The compliant version costs nothing and works better anyway: the same link goes to every customer, and anyone who wants to raise a problem with you directly can also do that — offered alongside the public link, never instead of it. You will collect more reviews, and the average will be one a reader believes.

FAQ

Why does my review link open Maps instead of the review box?

You have the profile link rather than the review link. Take it from the “Share review form” dialog, or build the direct URL from your Place ID.

Do customers need a Google account to leave a review?

Yes. That is Google’s requirement, not something your link can bypass. Most people on a phone are already signed in; the ones who are not will be asked, which is why the link should never add friction of its own on top.

Can I get a review link without a Business Profile?

No — the review form belongs to a profile. If you have no listing, claiming one is the first step, not the link.

Does the link expire?

The Place-ID-based link is stable as long as the profile exists, but owners do report links that stopped working after profile changes or merges. Re-test quarterly, especially anything you have printed.

Can I link to one specific review?

Sometimes, by opening the review from the profile and copying its address — but it is fragile and has broken repeatedly over the years. Do not build anything permanent on it.

One link, tested, everywhere

Get the direct link, shorten it if you need to print it, open it on a phone in a private window to confirm it lands on the stars, then put it in the follow-up message, the signature, the receipt and the card. Re-check it a few times a year.

The link is the easy part. The hard part is that someone has to send it after every job, to every customer, without anyone remembering — which is what Reviews Wall does as a self-hosted WordPress plugin, with a private feedback route offered alongside the public invitation.

Get Your Google Review Link and Short URL the Right Way

Three different links, and which one you want