10 Simple Yet Powerful Ways to Increase Your Google Restaurant Reviews

Two types of customers visit your website: regular and new. Your overall growth depends upon continually acquiring new customers while maintaining the regular ones.

How to capture these new customers?

Before understanding the “how”, let's understand the “why”. Roughly 90% of your new customers will check Google reviews before visiting you.

Gone are the olden days of randomly visiting a restaurant. With inflation and the trend of new aesthetical restaurants opening each day. The only way to stay ahead in your game and stay safe is by showcasing credibility online through Google reviews.

Why Google Restaurant Reviews Matter for Your Business

Once you start to capture a decent amount of Google reviews. Google SEO works to categorise your reviews by showcasing the latest review, videos, vibe and ambience, specific dishes, etc.

With this, your local SEO would improve. The traction of reviews makes Google think, “Hey, this restaurant is great, people are loving it, let me show it to more people around this area”.

When customers try to shortlist a restaurant, the first thing they do is to look for restaurants with Google ratings above 4. More than 33% of customers won't visit a restaurant if the ratings are below 4. Another crucial aspect they look for is a restaurant with a high volume of ratings.

Once you build an online presence that has more than 4+ Google ratings with decent volume. That's your first step towards convincing someone to visit you.

In the next step, customers would open your Google profile consisting of reviews to check for menu, ambience, food pictures, videos, etc. Considering the short attention span of customers, it's important to capture their attention to convince them to visit.

Here's a loop that you need to understand to know how all of this is interconnected.

Loop starts-

If the loop is taken care across all of its touchpoints, this can grow your restaurant not in addition but rather through compound interest.

So far, you have the overview of why reviews matter and how this loop can help you with growth.

Must Read - Improve Your Local Search Rankings with Customer Reviews 🔥

10 Effective Strategies to Get More Google Restaurant Reviews

In this section, let's discuss the strategies you can use to maximize your review collection. Ensuring the momentum of reviews is continuous and customers keep coming in.

1. Deliver an Exceptional Dining Experience

When customers walk into your restaurant, you need to understand that food is just one of the aspects of their entire experience. Apart from that, there's couple of other factors which make up for the overall experience.

A new customer takes a leap of faith based on online reviews and visits you. If you can cater well to their visit. There's a high chance they'd drop a review and visit again.

Also, there's a stat that 53% of diners won't leave a review even if they had a great experience. You can't do much if that's the case; that's why it's crucial to 100% take care of what's in your control.

2. Make It Easy for Customers to Leave a Review

While you take care of the first pointer, which is to provide a great experience, the next step is to make sure you don't mess up the momentum built and have multiple yet simple touchpoints to capture customer reviews.

Consider these 2 methods to create your initial touchpoints:

1. QR code: Create a physical QR code that's connected to providing a Google review. Place it in the billing area, on the dining table, and probably in the bill book as well. Inform your staff to politely ask customers about their experience, and if it was good, then to request them for a review.

2. Links: Create links that lead customers to provide Google reviews. Attach this link to your digital invoice and also in the engagement message you'd send them after a day requesting a review on their experience.

Step 1: Create a Google review link and shorten the same if you want to.

Step 2:Personalize your request according to the situation at hand.

Step 3: Keep the description short and simple by showcasing how and why it matters.

Step 4: Direct customers on how to leave a review. Attach a few sample templates for their ease of use.

Step 5: Follow up after 24-48 hours with a polite nudge.

Optimize Your Google Business Profile

Let's understand how optimising your Google business profile can help you with better SEO, footfall, revenue, etc. Here are the pointers:

Ensure Accurate Business Information: Make sure that your business information is up to date. You would've observed a few reviews of other restaurants that state either wrong timing or wrong location. This is a turn-off; people won't visit a restaurant if they come across such reviews.

Updated Photos: Keep your photos updated regularly. Google categorises the photos you upload under a section called “By Owner”. The photos and videos you regularly upload here have an impact on the decisions of customers.

Engaging Description: Engagingly and interestingly, explain why people should visit you and what you stand for as a restaurant. Customers need a reason to take action, and most times, they don't create those reasons themselves. You need to hand that over.

Ambience and Food Videos: This is crucial as most of your customers will go to the pictures section of your Google business profile and check for the ambience and food on offer. They'll also check if the pictures are new.

Availability of Phone Number: This is another important factor to take care of. Customers who consider visiting a restaurant tend to call and check with the restaurant for a reservation or to re-confirm if it's open. You must have a phone number that's available throughout business hours, or else a customer who decided to visit might change their decision due to their call not being answered.

Posting Updates: The availability of pictures, videos, and correct information are the fundamentals to ensure. Posting consistent and regular updates as an owner is also crucial for optimising your Google business profile. Be it posts related to restaurant updates such as new dish introduction, offers, events, or anything in general which you want your customers to know.

Availability of Website: There's an option in your Google business profile to add your website. Up to 32% of diners have the habit of checking your website before deciding to visit. You can either create a website or a landing page(show example or connect to any relevant link of Feedspace client restaurants using wall-of-love landing page as their website) that shows the best of your audio, video, and text reviews.

If you take care of the pointers above, it's a start towards building something long-term.

Bonus Pointer:

Customers tend to prefer restaurants that engage with responses to their customer reviews. This also boosts your SEO, credibility, recall, and footfall. A stat regarding this is that 56% of new customers will choose you if you respond to online reviews, be it positive or negative.

4. Train Your Staff to Request Reviews

Your staff are the ground-level warriors who are continually in touch with your customers across the day. The experience they provide to your customers would be a deciding factor on whether the same customer would visit again. Commonly, some customers visit a restaurant because of a specific staff member they have bonded with.

Train your staff such that they understand the goal you are trying to achieve through reviews, and also it's important to make them aware how it can impact their individual growth at your restaurant in the long-term.

The staff shouldn't make the customers feel pushed or forced to give a review. It should feel natural and polite, the staff should only ask for a review after checking the customer's overall experience. This ensures smoothness.

Apart from Google reviews, you can also provide your staff with access to a QR code connected with a review collection form. Make sure that the form is simple and can collect audio, video, and text reviews with fewer clicks. Also, create ready-made templates with multiple-choice questionnaires that customers can tick; these can be physical or digital. These can help you with analytics for improving your restaurant further.

5. Use Follow-Up Emails and SMS

Sometimes, there's a high chance that some customers would not provide you with a review immediately but would likely do that after a day or so.

To engage such customers, you need to set up a process for which someone would take responsibility. The process would be to reach out to the customer over an email, SMS, or WhatsApp, whichever suits the situation best. The reach-out messages can be pre-decided, which can be iterated regularly according to the response ratio observed.

6. Offer Incentives Without Violating Google’s Guidelines

Google has its own set of rules, which, if triggered, will do the needful to remove things that triggered it. One such trigger for Google is offering direct incentives in exchange for reviews, such as, I give you this so you give me that. This is against Google guidelines.

Stick to offering incentives, but in an indirect format. An indirect format usually makes the customer want to give you a review, compared to feeling forced to do the same to get a reward. Here are a couple of indirect methods to help you:

Loyalty Program: Create engaging loyalty programs that keep your customers hooked throughout with small rewards and incentives. The whole point of this is to create something fun and engaging while having a checkpoint to get your review and also to make them visit you again.

Shout-outs: Offer a shout-out for a customer over your social media handle. Offer this to folks who tag you and post online. If you have a good social follower base, your customers would likely do this task by tagging you to get a shout-out.

Exclusive Offers: Give future dine-in discounts to the customers who leave a review. Don't offer this as a barter system. Rather, keep it casual, such as informing your customers through posters that you offer a 10% discount on their next order as a token of gratitude in exchange for their review.

7. Leverage Social Media with Reviews

Social media is the place where Rome would've been built if it was done in 2025. That's where everything is happening now. It's a crime not to utilise the best of it to increase your footfall.

Understand where your ideal diners spend most of their time on social media. Target them by creating posts that capture their attention. Know that social media marketing can be used for 2 reasons; one is to collect reviews from past customers, and the other is to showcase reviews to bring in more footfall.

For capturing reviews, provide valuable, engaging content to your target audience. Once you find them engaging with your content, that's a good time to go ahead and politely request a review.

For increasing footfall, create a compelling post that contains your best reviews. The marketing around this will help you build credibility and trust with your audience, which would push them to visit.

Must read - Best Video Testimonial Examples

8. Engage with Reviews (Both Positive and Negative)

There are 3 types of reviews in general: positive, neutral, and negative. All 3 are gold mines for growth if you look at it from a certain perspective. Here are some pointers on how to handle them:

Positive Reviews:

Even if we know the customer is happy, we need to strategize and make the best of this situation when a customer leaves a positive review. This creates a great image of the restaurant, makes the customer regular, and also gives you word-of-mouth marketing through them.

While strategising, do it such that when you respond, respond with their full name, speak about something specific that is mentioned in their review, and lastly, show your gratefulness and the fact that you heartily welcome them back for a visit. This ensures a positive review being utilised correctly.

Neutral Reviews:

These customers are just one step away from becoming your loyal, long-term customers. Usually, you observe the pattern of reviews from 1 to 5 stars, it'll be visible that 3-4 star neutral reviews speak in-depth information with insights when compared to 5-star reviews.

The neutral reviews will help you see your shortcomings from multiple perspectives. Your response to them with a solution will possibly convert them into loyal customers and also showcase your customer support, and these activities in public would lead to more footfall.

Negative Reviews:

This is the tricky part that most restaurant owners fail to address. Despite the customer being right or wrong, what matters is how you handle negative reviews in public. It's natural to feel defensive at a negative review, but always try to stay composed and handle it with ease.

Acknowledge and heartily accept a negative reviewer's experience, and express your apologies towards the same. Don't try to negate them or prove them wrong. Try your best to move the conversation offline once you've acknowledged and apologized. It's best to handle and solve this in private.

If you feel you can handle it in public and have the solution figured out at hand. Then, safely handle and solve this situation in public. This also builds a better perception of your restaurant with new customers who'd see this.

9. Use Review Widgets on Your Website

Apart from showcasing reviews over Google business profile. You can also plan to embed the same on your website if you have one. Customers will visit your website via your Google business profile. Adding widgets to showcase the best reviews on your website will be a good credibility-building touchpoint.

Read More - How to Add Feedspace Wall of Love to Google Business Profile 🔥

If you don't have a website, need not worry; you can create a landing page with the best of your reviews and link that as a website to your Google business profile. You can also link your Instagram handle or Table booking link inside your landing page; once they've seen the best reviews, there's a high chance of action from a customer over the CTA.

Step 1: Select the widget provider. It can be Google My Business, Yelp, Trustpilot, Feedspace, etc.

Step 2: Follow the widget provider's setup instructions, in which you'll be getting the embed code or API access.

Step 3: Customize the widget size and style as per what suits your website aesthetics best.

Step 4: Copy the embed code and add it to your website.

Step 5: Test it and regularly keep it updated.

10. Partner with Food Bloggers & Influencers

You need not do it all alone. Help is good. Make a list of social media food influencers and bloggers who have high engagement and visibility on their last 3 months' posts.

Reach out to them and understand the commercials for reviewing or promoting a restaurant, and see if that's something you are okay with. If yes, it's good to go ahead; else, discuss and try to come to a common ground.

Usually, the commercials will be an amount or a non-monetary benefit such as goodies, a free food pass for a week, etc; it can be anything that you and the influencer are okay with.

Approaching the bloggers and influencers shouldn't be a big deal, but making sure you already have a decent amount of credibility built is necessary. Some influencers have certain parameters, such as they would not review or promote a restaurant that has zero credibility and online presence.

All of which we spoke so far, would have made sense to you. But might have felt challenging and too much to handle at times. This is the part where an automation tool comes in. To help you handle all of it effortlessly in an efficient way. It's equivalent to having a team for review management.

Conclusion

All of which we spoke so far, would have made sense to you. But might have felt challenging and too much to handle at times. This is the part where an automation tool comes in. To help you handle all of it effortlessly in an efficient way. It's equivalent to having a team for review management.

Out of all the tools out there in the market, if you compare the features, value, and support and then map it to the subscription fee. Feedspace is the best.

Out of all the tools out there in the market, if you compare the features, value, and support and then map it to the subscription fee. Feedspace is the best.

Feedspace is a tool used by 100k+ users across the globe, which includes a ton of restaurants as well. Here's one such case study of Mocha cafe that implemented Feedspace for growth.