How to Get More Google Reviews for Your Pest Control Company

To get more Google reviews for your pest control company, ask every customer right after the service, make it easy with your review link or QR code, and text the link to anyone who’d rather do it later. Aim for about one new review a week on each profile, and never offer anything in exchange.

A slow review pace is one of the most common problems I find when I audit a pest control company. Fixing it isn’t complicated, but it has to happen every week, and Google has gotten stricter about how you do it. This post covers the review side of pest control reputation management, from the ask to the reply. If you’re still setting up your profile, start with my Google Business Profile guide.

Why Google reviews matter for a pest control company

Google says it on its own page about local ranking: “More reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking.” Reviews feed what Google calls prominence, meaning how well-known your business is. Of everything that goes into pest control SEO, reviews are the piece you control most directly.

They reach past the map pack, too.

Local Services Ads. Google counts your rating and number of reviews toward profile quality, and says higher quality profiles may rank higher and pay less per lead. My Local Services Ads guide covers the rest.
AI answers. Google’s AI pulls from Google reviews more than it used to, and a review that describes the work gives it something to repeat. More in pest control AI search.
The call itself. A homeowner with ants in the kitchen looks at three companies in the map pack and calls one. In my experience, the rating, the count and how recent the last review is decide a lot of those calls.

Pace matters as much as the total. One of our clients had four Business Profiles, and one of them never performed like the other three. It hadn’t gotten a review in over two months, and nothing else we did was going to make it rank until that changed. In competitive areas, I see rankings slip after a week or two without a new review, and a map grid scan shows where.

What Google’s review rules allow

Asking for reviews is fine. Google’s review policy lets businesses “solicit or encourage the posting of content that does represent a genuine experience, without offering incentives to do so or attempting to influence the rating or the contents of the review.”

Most of that section lists what businesses can’t do.

Google doesn’t allow businesses to	What that means for you
Offer incentives “such as payment, discounts, free goods and/or services” for a review	No $10 off the next service, no free mosquito treatment, no gift card drawing for reviewers
“Selectively solicit positive reviews from customers”	Ask every customer, including the one whose callback ran late
“Require or pressure users to leave ratings or write reviews while on the premises”	Never make it a condition, and never stand over someone while they type
“Request that specific content be included”	Don’t ask them to mention a tech, “termite control” or your town
Ask staff to “solicit a certain number of reviews” or reviews with “content that identifies a staff member”	No review quota for each tech, and no asking customers to name the tech

“On the premises” is written for storefronts, but I’d treat a customer’s driveway the same way. The policy also says incentivized reviews “are not allowed and will be removed from Maps.”

Fake reviews are illegal, too

Never buy reviews, write them yourself or have employees, family or friends post them. Google’s policy counts a conflict of interest, including “current or former employment” and family relationships, as rating manipulation.

The FTC’s rule on fake reviews went into effect on October 21, 2024. As the FTC described it, it bans fake reviews (AI-generated ones included), paying for reviews that have to be positive or negative, reviews by a company’s officers or managers and other insider reviews that don’t disclose the connection. Courts can impose civil penalties for knowing violations.

Asking in person, right after the service

I recommend two ways to get reviews. Ask the customer yourself right after the service, or use software like Applause. The in-person ask costs nothing, so start there.

First, do a great job. Make sure the customer is happy with the work before you leave, and fix anything that’s wrong on the spot. That’s about the service, not about choosing who gets asked. Everyone gets asked.

Then make a real pitch, from the heart. I tell owners to say something like this:

“Reviews are the lifeblood of our business, and our customers mean everything to us. Would you be willing to leave us a Google review?”

Pretty much every time, customers say yes. Then say, “Great, let me show you how,” and walk them through scanning your QR code, or searching your company name on Google and finding the button to write a review.

Lots of owners ask, get a yes and never see the review, because the customer forgets. Ideally they get to the review screen while you’re still there.

Keep it an offer. Once they’re on the review screen, step back and let them write it in their own words, or let them finish after you leave. If they’d rather do it later, that’s fine, and you text them the link. Never make it a condition, never stand over them and don’t suggest what to write. Google says customers need to be signed in to a Google Account to leave a review, though it doesn’t have to be a Gmail address.

This works best for companies under about $1M a year, where the owner or a small team makes the pitch at every stop and it’s easy to organize. Bigger companies use it too. Carmen Reino told me Anchor Pest Control tried the review programs, and nothing beat standing in front of someone with a QR code.

Your review link, QR code and a text for later

Google gives you a review link and QR code for each profile. According to Google’s help page, the QR code can only be generated in a computer browser, not on a phone.

On a computer, go to your Business Profile.
Select Read reviews, then Get more reviews.
Select Copy to copy the review link.
To save the QR code, right-click it and select Save image as.

Do it for each profile and label the files, so no tech hands out another office’s code. Put the QR code on a card and on each tech’s phone. Google also suggests receipts and thank-you emails, so add the link to your invoices.

Then text the link the same day to anyone who’d rather do it later, and to customers who weren’t home. Keep it short, and leave out anything about stars or how happy they were.

Hi Karen, thanks for having us out today. If you have a minute, a Google review would mean a lot to our team: [link]

If your CRM can send a text when a service is marked complete, set it up once and let it run. One text to one customer after a visit is very different from blasting your whole list, for reasons I’ll get to below.

Review software like Applause

Once you have more techs than you can organize by hand, software helps, and the one I know best is Applause. Its co-founder, Chris Anderson, came on Pest Control Legends to explain why great reviews start with your technicians.

Chris told me Applause connects to your CRM and texts the customer after the service codes you pick. It asks for one thing at a time, usually the Google review, and once a customer has left one, it rotates through Facebook, Nextdoor and the BBB instead of asking for a review you already have. He says the value shows up at about five technicians. White Knight Pest Control, an early customer, went from about 191 reviews in a month with its own review texts to more than 1,300 the next month on Applause, on slightly more services.

If you have several locations, it makes it easier to spread reviews across your profiles, with each customer getting the link for the office that served them. Never send one customer to review several of your Google profiles. A review has to reflect a real experience with that location, and a customer of your Naperville office never dealt with your Aurora office.

It also asks on other platforms, and reviews on Facebook, Nextdoor and the BBB help in AI answers. Yelp is the exception. Yelp’s content guidelines say “Businesses should never ask customers to write reviews,” so leave Yelp out of your ask. Yelp reviews have to come on their own.

With any review software, read the message it sends. It shouldn’t ask for five stars or a tech’s name, or send only customers who scored you high on to Google.

Paying techs for reviews

A lot of companies pay techs about $20 for each review they bring in. Chris told me most companies he sees pay $10 to $20 per review. It’s definitely an option. It’s also technically against Google’s guidelines, and you should be wary of it.

Look at the last row of the table above. Google bans asking staff for a set number of reviews, or for reviews that name a staff member, and a per-tech review bonus usually leans on both. The tech is paid by the count, and the usual way to tell whose review it was is the tech’s name in it. Before Applause automated it, Chris said, someone in the office read every new review looking for a tech’s name.

Google removes reviews it decides break the policy, and says those won’t be restored. Whether you pay per review is your call. If you do, don’t ask customers to name the tech.

Applause’s scorecards also let owners attach bonuses to other numbers, like reservice rate and route completion, which rewards techs without touching reviews.

Why Google reviews disappear

I’m seeing this much more in 2026. Google removes reviews, sometimes with no clear reason, usually because something looked suspicious. Google’s page on missing reviews says reviews are usually removed for policy violations like spam, and its review policy lists “unusual volumes or patterns of review contributions” as a sign of rating manipulation.

One of our clients had about 15 reviews on their profile, then got about 20 more in a single week. Google removed every one of the new ones. A profile that more than doubles its review count in a week looks like someone gaming it, even when the customers were real.

So avoid anything that looks suspicious, and don’t collect reviews in batches. No texting your whole customer list in one afternoon, and no review push one week followed by two months of nothing. Ask every customer after every service, so reviews arrive at the pace of your normal work. That’s the steady pace of about one a week per profile I aim for.

A review that hasn’t shown up yet may not be gone. Google says its policy check can delay a new review by a few days.

Replying to reviews

Reply to every review. Match the customer’s energy and acknowledge everything they said. If someone writes about how the tech found the mouse entry behind the dryer and was great with their dog, thank them for both. That way it’s clearly not an AI response. Google’s tips for replies agree, telling businesses to address the reviewer by name, acknowledge their specific feedback and skip promotions.

For a one-star review, leave a detailed reply that explains the situation calmly, and say you’ve contacted them, or will, to make it right. Then call. That reply is really for the public, who read your bad reviews to see how you handle them. Keep the customer’s private details out of it.

Josh Fleenor of Pest Pros told me he treats each legitimate one-star as a chance to show who his company really is, and he says those customers end up loving them. Make it right because it’s the right thing to do, not as a trade. Google’s policy bans offering anything in exchange for revising or removing a negative review.

If the rest of your profile needs work, that’s our Google Business Profile service.

Questions pest control owners ask

Can I offer a discount for a review?

No. Google bans offering “payment, discounts, free goods and/or services” for a review, even if you don’t ask for a good one. The FTC’s rule only bans incentives tied to a positive or negative review, but Google’s rule decides whether your reviews stay up.

Why did my Google reviews disappear?

Most likely Google decided they looked suspicious. A burst of reviews in a short time is one pattern its policy calls out, and reviews from employees or family are another. Removed reviews won’t come back, so keep a steady pace from here on.

Should techs ask for reviews?

Yes. The tech is the one at the house, so train every tech to ask every customer the same way. Don’t give each tech a number to hit or have them ask customers to mention them by name, since Google’s policy bans both.

How many Google reviews does a pest control company need?

There’s no set number. Look at the three companies in the map pack for your main town, work toward passing them and keep about one new review a week coming in on each profile. If you’d like a second set of eyes on your profiles, book a call.