What Is Review Gating?
Review gating is the practice of screening customers by satisfaction and only directing the happy ones to leave a public review, while steering unhappy customers away from it. Google explicitly prohibits gating in its review policies.
Review gating typically works by first asking a customer how satisfied they are. If they respond positively, they're sent to the public Google review page. If they respond negatively, they're routed to a private feedback form instead — and never shown the public review link. The effect is an artificially inflated star rating that doesn't reflect every customer's experience.
Google's review policies prohibit this. They state that businesses should not discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers. Platforms and businesses caught gating risk having reviews removed and can damage the trust their rating is meant to represent.
The compliant alternative is to invite every customer to leave a public review while still giving unhappy customers an easy way to share private feedback first. The key difference: the customer always retains access to the public review link. You're surfacing a private channel as an option, not blocking the public one.
Five Star Hype is built to be compliant by design. Customers who select a low rating are invited to share private feedback so you can make things right — but they always keep access to your public Google review link. You get honest insight into problems without gating anyone out of leaving a public review.