Where the link lives, what the place ID actually is, how to shorten it, how to print a QR code that survives receipt paper, and the five places worth putting it. Published 2026-07-17.
QUICK ANSWER
Your Google review link is a URL that opens the review box directly instead of your business listing. The form to use is the short link Google hands owners from the Ask for reviews panel in the Business Profile:https://g.page/r/YOUR_CODE/review
There is an older form built from your location's place ID, https://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=YOUR_PLACE_ID. It still works in most cases and it is the one to build when you are handling many locations, but its behaviour is less consistent than the g.page link, so test it signed out before you commit it to print.
Get the link from the Ask for reviews panel in your Business Profile, or generate it along with a QR code in about ten seconds with the free review link tool. Then put it on the receipt, the email signature, the counter card, and the post-service text, and send it to every customer rather than the ones you expect to be happy.
Most businesses share their Google Maps listing and call it a review link. It is not one. A Maps link opens a page about the business, and the customer has to scroll past photos, hours, and directions before finding the review button. People drop off at every one of those steps, and they drop off hardest on a phone, which is where nearly all of this happens.
A review link skips that. It opens the star selector with your business already attached. The customer taps a star, types a sentence, and is done. The whole discipline of review collection comes down to removing steps between the moment someone feels good about you and the moment their words are public.
There are three URL shapes you will encounter, and they are not interchangeable.
Shape
Opens
Use it for
g.page/r/XXXX/review
The review composer
Anything a customer touches
search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=
The review composer, less consistently
Building links at scale, after testing
maps.app.goo.gl/XXXX
The business listing
Directions, never review asks
The place ID, explained properly
A place ID is Google's identifier for one physical location. It looks like a random string usually beginning with ChIJ, its length varies, and it belongs to the location rather than to your account. One thing it is not is permanent. Google's Places documentation states that place IDs can change over time and tells developers to refresh stored IDs. Treat yours as stable, not fixed. This matters in three practical ways.
A rename does not normally change it. Change your business name, your hours, or your category and the ID generally stays put. Generally is not always, which is why the next point exists.
Re-verify before you print in volume. Load the finished link signed out, on a phone, the week you send artwork to a printer, and again before any reorder. A ten second check is cheaper than five thousand invoices carrying a dead code. If you can, point the QR at a redirect on your own domain, so a changed ID is a one line fix instead of a reprint.
It does not survive a move, and it is per location. A new address is a new place, so a relocation means a new link. Three branches means three IDs and three separate links. Pointing all three at one listing concentrates reviews on one branch and leaves the others looking new.
One point of confusion worth clearing: the identifier inside a g.page short link is not your place ID. Google issues that separately for owner sharing. Both open the review box, so use whichever you have, but do not try to convert one into the other by hand.
To look yours up, use Google's Place ID Finder, the utility page inside the Google Maps Platform documentation.
Four ways to get your link
Method 1: Google Search, signed in as the owner
Fastest if you already manage the profile. Works on desktop and mobile.
Sign in to the Google account that owns the Business Profile.
Search your business name on Google. The profile manager panel appears above the normal results.
Open the panel and find the option labeled Ask for reviews (older accounts show Get more reviews).
Google shows a short link in the form https://g.page/r/XXXXXXXX/review. Copy it.
Paste it into a browser in a private window, signed out. It should open the star box directly, not the business listing.
The g.page link is the one Google itself hands owners, so it is safe to print. It carries a different identifier from the raw place ID, which is why the two strings look nothing alike.
Method 2: Google Maps share link (and why it is not enough)
Useful when you do not own the profile yet, for example an agency auditing a prospect.
Open Google Maps and find the business listing.
Tap Share, then Copy link. You get a maps.app.goo.gl short link.
Open it. Note what happens: it loads the listing page, not the review form.
That costs the customer two extra taps: scroll to reviews, then tap Write a review.
Every extra tap is a place to lose someone. Use the Maps link for internal reference and the direct review URL for anything a customer touches.
Method 3: build the URL yourself from the place ID
The most durable option, and the one to use when you manage many locations.
Open Google's Place ID Finder, the utility page in the Google Maps Platform documentation.
Type the business name and address. The map drops a pin and prints the place ID underneath it.
Copy the identifier. It usually begins with ChIJ, and its length varies, so copy the whole string rather than trusting it to look a particular size.
Append it to this base: https://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=
Load the finished URL signed out. It should open the review composer for the correct location.
Verify the address on the pin, not just the name. Franchise and multi-suite listings return several near-identical results, and the wrong place ID sends reviews to a location you do not run.
Method 4: the free generator
When you want the link, a shortened version, and a print-ready QR in one step.
Open the Google review link tool.
Type your business name and city.
Confirm the matched listing is yours by checking the street address.
Copy the direct review URL and download the QR as SVG for print or PNG for screens.
SVG is the file your printer wants. It stays sharp at any size, which matters when the same code goes on a business card and a window decal.
Shortening the link without breaking it
The raw writereview URL is long and ugly. That is fine in a hyperlink and a problem when it has to be read aloud, typed from a card, or squeezed into a text message next to a name and an opt-out line. Three options, in order of preference.
Use the g.page link Google gives you. It is already short, it is first-party, and no third party can take it away or start charging for it.
Redirect from your own domain. A path like yourdomain.com/review that 301s to the review URL is the most durable choice you have. You own it, you can repoint it after a move without reprinting anything, and it is the only version that looks trustworthy in a text message from an unknown number.
A public URL shortener, last. Shortener domains are widely used by spam, so mobile carriers and spam filters treat them with suspicion, and links inside SMS are exactly where that suspicion is costliest. If you use one, use a branded domain.
Whichever you pick, test the final string signed out, on a phone, on both cellular and wifi, before it goes anywhere near a printer.
Turning it into a QR code that actually scans
A QR code is just the URL encoded as a grid. The generation is trivial. The failures are all physical: too small, too pale, too glossy, cropped too tight, or printed from an upscaled PNG.
Generate from the final link, after shortening. Shorter URLs make simpler grids with fatter modules, and fatter modules scan from further away.
Export SVG for anything printed. PNG is for screens only. Enlarging a PNG is the single most common cause of a code that scans on the designer's monitor and fails on the counter.
Size it for the scan distance. Roughly one inch for something held in hand, two inches for a counter card, and much larger for a window or a vehicle.
Keep the quiet zone. The blank margin around the grid is part of the code, not padding, and cropping it is how good designers break good codes.
Dark on light, matte, high contrast. No gradients, no photo behind it, no inversion.
If you must place a logo in the middle, regenerate at error correction level H first. Otherwise the logo eats data the scanner needs.
Test the printed piece on at least two phones, including one that is a few years old, and once more after the first production run arrives.
The review link generator outputs both SVG and PNG with the quiet zone intact, so steps two and four are handled for you.
Where to put it, specifically
The link is worth nothing until it sits somewhere a satisfied customer already looks, at a moment their phone is already out. Ordered roughly by how much work each placement does for the effort it costs.
The receipt
The receipt reaches every paying customer and costs nothing to change. Most point-of-sale systems have a receipt footer field that takes a line of text, and the newer ones accept a QR block.
Printed thermal receipts: keep the QR at least one inch square. Thermal paper is low resolution and the ink fades in a warm car, so print larger than looks necessary and test on the actual roll, not on your laser printer.
Digital and emailed receipts: use the link as a tappable line rather than an image. Many mail clients block remote images by default, and a blocked QR is a blank rectangle.
Keep the footer copy to one short sentence. Anything longer gets skipped or truncated by the printer.
The email signature
Your signature already goes out dozens of times a day to people mid-conversation with you. It is the cheapest placement you own.
Put the line below your contact details, not above them. Above reads as a pitch, below reads as a footnote.
Use hyperlinked text, not a bare URL and not an image. Text survives image blocking, dark mode, and forwarding.
One line only: Leave us a Google review. Nothing about how much it would mean to the team.
The counter card
A small card at the payment terminal catches people during the pause while the card reader thinks. That pause is the only moment in a transaction when a customer is idle and holding a phone.
Mount it at eye level for a standing adult, angled slightly back. Flat on the counter means glare and a bad scan angle.
Matte finish, not gloss. Overhead lighting reflects off laminate and confuses phone cameras.
Dark code on a light background, never inverted. Inverted QR codes fail on a meaningful share of older phones.
Leave the quiet zone: a clear margin around the code roughly four modules wide. Designers routinely crop it and break the scan.
The post-service SMS
For anything that happens at a customer's home or on a schedule (a repair, an appointment, a move-out inspection), the text message is the highest-intent placement available, because you can send it while the result is still fresh.
Identify the business in the first six words. An unidentified link from an unknown number reads as phishing and gets deleted.
One link, nothing else. No survey, no upsell, no newsletter.
Send it the same day. The same message loses force with every hour that passes.
Include an opt-out and honor it immediately. This is a legal requirement in most jurisdictions and simple courtesy in all of them.
One follow-up at most, several days later, then stop. There is no third message that works.
The invoice and the job-completion document
Trades and professional services hand over a document at the end of every job. That document is read carefully, which is more than can be said for most marketing.
Put the QR near the signature line, where the customer's eye already goes.
On PDFs, make the QR a clickable link too, since many invoices are read on a phone where scanning your own screen is impossible.
The physical window or door
A decal near the exit catches people leaving satisfied. It performs worst of the placements listed here, but it costs about the price of lunch and it works while you sleep.
Interior side of the glass, at shoulder height, out of direct sun. UV fades the print and heat curls the vinyl.
Print larger than you would indoors. Scan distance scales with code size, and nobody presses their face to your window.
WORKED EXAMPLE · ILLUSTRATIVE, NOT A REAL BUSINESS OR CUSTOMER
Imagine a two-van appliance repair shop called Thistlewood Appliance Repair, and a customer named Odalys Brennerman whose dryer was fixed at 4pm on a Thursday. Here is the whole sequence, written out.
On the invoice, handed over at the door
A one-inch QR beside the signature line, with the line: Scan to tell us how we did.
Text message, 6:30pm the same evening
Thistlewood Appliance here, thanks for having us out today. If the dryer is behaving, a quick Google review helps other people find us: thistlewoodrepair.example/review. Reply STOP to opt out.
One follow-up, four days later, then nothing
Same link, one sentence shorter. If Odalys does not respond to that one, she never will, and continuing to ask converts a satisfied customer into an annoyed one.
Note what the sequence does not do: it does not ask whether she was happy first, it does not offer anything in exchange, and it does not vary by how the job felt to the technician. Every customer of this illustrative shop gets exactly this, which is the point.
Why you should ask everyone, not just the happy ones
Plenty of software will offer to screen customers for you: a one-to-five widget in an email, where high scores get the Google link and low scores get a private feedback form. It is called review gating, and it is sold as reputation protection. Two separate arguments say not to do it.
The compliance argument
Start with the part that is not arguable. Google's review policies prohibit review gating, meaning selectively soliciting reviews only from the customers you expect to be happy. That is a platform policy fact, set out in Google's prohibited and restricted content policy for user contributions, and enforcement lands on your listing, which is the asset the whole exercise was meant to protect.
The federal picture is narrower than vendors on both sides of this claim. The FTC's 2024 rule on consumer reviews and testimonials, 16 CFR Part 465, does not name gating as a per se violation. The Commission declined to codify an express prohibition. That is not affirmative permission: review suppression can still be reached under 465.6 and under Section 5 depending on the facts. Read it as an unsettled question rather than a green light, and do not let anyone sell you a gating feature on the strength of it.
The defensible practice is the simple one: ask every customer, and offer a private feedback channel in addition to the public ask, never instead of it. A customer who wants to complain quietly should have somewhere to do it. That somewhere just cannot be the place you send people so they do not reach Google.
The yield argument, which is the one that usually convinces people
Gating is also just worse at the job. It adds a step before the link, and every step loses people, including the enthusiastic ones you were trying to reach. It shrinks your asking pool to the customers who volunteer a rating first, when the quietly satisfied majority are precisely the group that only responds to a direct, frictionless ask.
It also produces a review profile that looks wrong. A listing with no critical reviews at all reads as managed rather than earned, and shoppers who sort by lowest-first find nothing to calibrate against. A handful of mixed reviews with thoughtful owner responses underneath does more persuading than an unbroken wall of five stars, because it is evidence that the reviews are real and that someone is paying attention.
The honest version is simpler to operate, too. One message, one link, everyone, same timing. Nothing to configure, nothing to defend, no branch of logic that someone has to remember to update. Then answer what comes back, including the criticism, in public. If drafting those replies is the part you dread, the free response generator will get you a first draft that sounds like an owner rather than a legal department.
Six ways this goes wrong
Common mistake
Do this instead
Sending customers to your Google Maps listing and hoping they find the review button.
Send the direct review URL that opens the star box on arrival.
Screening customers with a one-to-five widget and routing only the high scores to Google.
Send the same link to everyone, in the same words, at the same point in the job.
Offering a discount, a free drink, or a raffle entry in exchange for a review.
Ask for the review and give the discount to everyone, or to nobody, independent of whether they write anything.
Asking staff or family to post reviews to get the count moving.
Ask real customers. Platforms detect clusters of related accounts, and the penalty lands on your listing, not theirs.
Bulk-texting your entire customer list on a Tuesday because reviews are down.
Trigger the ask off the completed job, one customer at a time, so the pattern looks like what it is.
Printing the QR once and never scanning it again.
Test the printed code monthly on two phones. Codes outlive the profiles they point at.
Troubleshooting
The link opens the wrong location
You almost certainly copied the place ID of a neighboring listing or an old duplicate profile. Rebuild it from the Place ID Finder and confirm the street address on the pin before you copy. If a genuine duplicate listing of your own business exists, request a merge in your Business Profile first, because reviews split across two listings help neither.
I run several locations and the links look similar
Each location has its own place ID and its own review link. Never share one link across a portfolio: the reviews land on one listing and the other locations stay invisible in local search. Label the links by street address, not by nickname, so nobody prints the wrong counter card.
I am a service-area business with no storefront
Hidden-address profiles still have a place ID and still take reviews, so the link works exactly the same way. The QR just moves off the counter and onto the invoice, the van, and the follow-up text.
The link works for me but not for customers
You are testing while signed in as the owner, which changes what Google renders. Always test in a private window, signed out, on a phone. That is the state your customer is in.
A customer says the review never appeared
Google filters some reviews automatically, more often from accounts with no history, from a device that has posted several reviews in a short window, or when text trips a policy filter. There is nothing to fix on your end. Do not ask the customer to post it again from a different account.
The QR scans on my phone but not on my customer's
Nearly always contrast, size, or the quiet zone. Reprint darker, larger, with a clear margin, on matte stock. If it still fails, regenerate the SVG rather than upscaling a PNG, which is what usually softened the edges.
How the placement changes by industry
The link is identical everywhere. The moment worth attaching it to is not, and the rule for finding it is the same in every trade: pick the point where the customer knows the outcome and still feels it, which is rarely the point where they are paying. A dental patient is not that person at the front desk with a numb jaw and a bill; they are that person the next morning. A furnace repair customer is that person the evening the heat comes back on. If you want the version written for your trade, the industry pages go through the timing case by case.
When the link stops being the bottleneck
Everything above is free and takes an afternoon. Do it first. The link, the QR, the receipt footer, and the signature line are the highest-value hour of reputation work available to a local business, and no software makes them unnecessary.
What manual placement cannot do is remember. It cannot text every customer on the evening of their job without someone sitting down to do it, it cannot notice when a new one-star lands on a Sunday, and it cannot tell you which of your three locations quietly stopped asking. That is the part software is for, and it is what Praisly does: the ask fires automatically at the moment each customer is most likely to act, Google, Yelp, Trustpilot and Facebook land in one inbox, and responses arrive pre-drafted for you to edit and post.
Praisly starts at $59 a month for one location, month to month, cancel in two clicks. Every price is on the pricing page. There is no sales call and no notice period, which is not true of every tool in this category. If your review volume is already healthy and you just needed the link, take the link and go. That is what the tools page is for.
Get your link and QR now
Business name, city, done. Direct review URL plus a print-ready QR in SVG and PNG. No signup. If you also want to know where your reputation currently stands against the businesses next door, the reputation scan takes about the same time.