Rewarding a referral is fine. Rewarding a review is not — and most owners mix these up

This week's check of the courses turned up a correction I need to put in front of you, because the old wording in the Referral Engine course could have got somebody in trouble.

Here's the distinction, and it's the one most local business owners get wrong.

Paying someone for sending you a customer is allowed. A referral reward — give fifty, get fifty, a service credit, a gift card to a decent local spot — is a legitimate tool. The only requirement is disclosure: under the FTC's endorsement rules, if you give someone anything of value for recommending you, that connection has to be disclosed when they recommend you and when you publish it.

Paying someone for leaving a review is not allowed. At all. Google's own policy bars reviews that have been paid for "directly or in kind," and bars a business from offering payment, discounts, free goods or services in exchange for posting a review. Here's the part that catches people: that applies to *any* review, not just a five-star one. "Leave us an honest review either way and get a discount on your next service" is still a violation. So is a raffle entry, a free dessert, or a gift card.

The Referral Engine course used to say not to offer incentives for *positive* reviews specifically. That's too narrow, and the narrow version is the dangerous one — it reads like neutral review incentives are a safe workaround. They aren't. That lesson and the Vault referral sheet are both corrected.

Why it matters more this year: Google has been tightening enforcement through 2026, including automated filters that read review text looking for reward-related wording. A profile caught at it can end up with a warning banner showing on the listing and its reviews pulled down. That is a hard thing to explain to a customer who is standing on your listing deciding whether to call you.

So the clean setup, and it's simpler than what most people are running:

Reward referrals, and say out loud that there's a reward. Ask every customer for a review, every time, same link, and reward nobody for it. Let the reviews say what they say.

If you've got a review incentive running right now — a discount for a review, a drawing, anything of that shape — that's worth switching off this week. Keep the referral reward. Drop the review reward. The referral one is where the money was anyway.

The Reputation course already had this right, so if that's the one you worked through, nothing changes for you.