The short answer
Suppressing negative reviews is now explicitly unlawful in the United States: the FTC's 2024 rule on consumer reviews (16 CFR Part 465) bans deceptive review practices, and Google's policies separately prohibit review gating — soliciting reviews only from customers you expect to be positive. Asking "how did we do?" first is still allowed, as long as every customer keeps a clear path to the public review page no matter how they answer.
What review gating is
The classic gating funnel asks every customer "were you happy?" — then routes happy customers to Google and quietly diverts unhappy ones to a private feedback form with no review link. The public rating ends up measuring the filter, not the business. For years this was sold openly as a feature; that era is over.
What the FTC rule changed
The FTC's Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials took effect in October 2024. It bans buying fake reviews, buying positive or negative reviews, and review suppression, and it lets the FTC seek civil penalties of over $50,000 per violation. Suppressing or preventing negative honest reviews — which is what gating does — sits squarely inside what the rule targets.
Google's position
Google's review policies prohibit "discouraging or prohibiting negative reviews, or selectively soliciting positive reviews from customers." Google can remove reviews collected through gating funnels and has penalized listings over solicitation practices. Since the reviews are the asset you are trying to build, collecting them in a way Google may delete is self-defeating even before the legal risk.
What is still allowed — and what ReviewNudger does
You may ask every customer for an honest review. You may offer a private feedback channel alongside the public one. You may even ask how the visit went before showing next steps — if, and only if, the public review link is shown to every customer regardless of their answer.
ReviewNudger's default sends every eligible customer the identical neutral request — no screening of any kind. Locations can opt into an ask-first landing page (a quick sentiment question or short survey), and on those pages the negative and below-threshold paths still always display the public Google review link. That is the line between learning from your customers and gating them, and it is built in as a hard rule.
Frequently asked questions
Is asking "how was your visit?" before the review link considered gating?
Not by itself. It becomes gating when the answer changes whether the customer can reach the public review page. Ask-first flows are fine when every path — positive, negative, or skipped — still shows the review link.
Has review gating actually been enforced against?
The FTC has brought consumer-review cases for years and wrote the 2024 rule specifically so it could seek civil penalties without proving each practice deceptive from scratch. Google enforcement is quieter but constant: gated reviews get removed, and solicitation funnels get flagged.
Does ReviewNudger do review gating?
No. Every eligible customer gets the same neutral request by default, and the optional ask-first landing pages always render the public Google review link on every path. This is a compliance rule in ReviewNudger, not a setting a growth plan can change.