You can buy Google reviews only in the sense that sellers exist: one in the UK results charges 100 dollars for five. It is banned twice over: by Google's policies, which remove paid reviews and can restrict your Business Profile, and by UK law, which since April 2025 explicitly bans posting and commissioning fake reviews, with CMA fines of up to 10% of global turnover.
So why do businesses still buy them?
Because the Google profile is the shop window that matters most for a local business, and the competitor down the road has 200 reviews while you have 14.
The reasoning we hear most often from owners goes like this:
- "Everyone does it", so the risk feels low;
- "They're real, verified accounts", so they look genuine;
- "I'll only buy ten", so Google won't notice.
We checked all three on 10 November 2026: what appears when you search for where to buy them, what sellers actually sell, what Google does to the profile and what the law says. In our guide to getting Google reviews we had already measured how many reviews UK local pack businesses have: a median of 210. That number comes back later, when we work out what "buying the median" would cost.
What you find when you search "buy Google reviews" (6 sellers out of 9 results in the UK)
In the UK, someone searching "buy Google reviews" mostly finds sellers and "best sites to buy" lists: in our check on 10 November 2026, 6 of the 9 organic results. In Italy, the same search in Italian shows mostly forums and articles advising against it, with a single seller in 8 results.
| Query and market | Organic results read | Sellers or "where to buy" lists | Against buying | Forums (Reddit, Quora, Google Community) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| buy google reviews, United Kingdom (mobile) | 9 | 6 | 1 | 2 |
| buy google reviews, United States | 9 | 5 | 3 | 1 |
| comprare recensioni google, Italy | 8 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| acquistare recensioni google, Italy | 8 | 0 | 5 | 3 |
All four results pages open with an AI Overview, and all four tell you not to buy.
The sellers are specific about price. In the UK and US results one starts at 100 dollars for 5 reviews, another at 22 dollars a review. The Italian one asks 12 euros a review, with delivery within 7 days and payment in cryptocurrency, while claiming it is "100% legal".
Payment in crypto tells you most of what you need to know about "legal".
What a review package actually buys (accounts, not customers)
A review package is a service in which accounts controlled by the seller post stars and text on your profile that do not come from a real experience. That is Google's definition of "fake engagement" in its Maps policy on prohibited and restricted content.
Among the content Google bans and removes:
- reviews or ratings that are paid for, directly or in kind;
- content that is not based on a real experience;
- content posted from multiple accounts by, or at the request of, one person.
A ten-review package ticks all three boxes.
"But they're real, verified accounts."
It makes no difference. The policy doesn't ask whether the account is real. It asks whether a real customer actually used your business. A real profile reviewing a place it never visited is still a fake review.
The same goes for the "softer" versions owners often don't count as buying:
- a discount or a free coffee for five stars: Google bans offering payment, discounts or free goods and services in exchange for a review;
- reviews from staff: a conflict of interest, which for Google includes current or past employment;
- review swaps between businesses: content not based on a real experience.
What Google does to a profile that buys reviews (three restrictions and a public warning)
As well as removing fake reviews, Google can restrict the profile of a business that breaks its fake engagement policy: no new reviews for a period, existing reviews unpublished and a warning shown to customers. That is what Google's page on Business Profile restrictions for policy violations says (checked on 10 November 2026).
- the profile "will not be able to receive new reviews or ratings for set period of time";
- its existing reviews will be unpublished for a set period, genuine ones included;
- it "will display a warning to let consumers know that fake reviews were removed".
Google emails the owner before applying a restriction, and the business can appeal. No duration is given.
So they don't suspend the profile?
Not necessarily. Both AI Overviews we saw said Google "permanently" suspends buyers; Google's own page talks about restrictions. Suspension is a separate process, tied to the profile's details, and we cover it in Google Business Profile suspended.
The point is that the warning is worse than a suspension. A suspended profile disappears. A restricted one stays live, with no visible reviews and a notice telling your customers why.
And the odds of getting away with it aren't great: in 2025 Google blocked or removed over 292 million policy-violating reviews, removed over 13 million fake Business Profiles and placed posting restrictions on more than 782,000 accounts (Google's official blog, 16 April 2026). These are global figures; Google doesn't publish UK numbers.
Few reviews on your profile and a competitor with three times as many?
You've just seen what happens to businesses that try to close the gap by buying: hidden reviews and a public warning on the profile. Let's look at where your customers come from today and how to turn them into genuine reviews, with a process that keeps working.
Book a strategy callWhat UK law says (an explicit ban and fines of up to 10% of turnover)
In the UK, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 includes "an explicit ban on the posting and commissioning of fake reviews", in force since April 2025. The CMA can fine a business that breaks consumer protection law up to 10% of its global turnover (CMA announcement, April 2025).
The word that matters is "commissioning": you don't have to write the reviews yourself, paying for them is enough. The CMA's guidance on fake reviews sets out what businesses and review platforms are expected to do.
The US and the EU: the same direction
In the US, the Federal Trade Commission adopted a federal rule on reviews on 14 August 2024 (16 CFR Part 465) that bans businesses from buying fake reviews and lets the agency seek civil penalties against knowing violators.
In Italy, where our team is based, commissioning fake reviews has been an "always misleading" practice since 2023 (Consumer Code, article 23, letter bb-quater), with fines from 5,000 to 10 million euros. On 13 October 2026 the Italian competition authority, AGCM, published guidelines on online reviews stating that reviews whose content results from an incentive are always unlawful.
And there is a criminal precedent too: on 12 September 2018 a court in Lecce sentenced the owner of PromoSalento, which sold fake Tripadvisor reviews to hospitality businesses, to nine months in prison and around 8,000 euros (ANSA). The person convicted was the seller, not the buyers.
So if an overseas seller tells you "it's normal where we are", it's banned there too.
Do bought reviews help you rank on Maps? (the sums don't add up)
Reviews matter for local rankings, but not enough to justify the risk: in Whitespark's Local Search Ranking Factors survey they account for roughly 16-17% of local pack ranking. The rest comes from category, proximity, website and how complete the profile is.
Here are the sums with this article's numbers. To reach the UK local pack median of 210 reviews from 14, you need 196. At 20 dollars each, that's 3,920 dollars.
Against that:
- a filter that removed 292 million reviews in 2025;
- a regulator that can fine up to 10% of global turnover;
- the chance of seeing your 14 genuine reviews hidden for a while too.
And if Google lets them through? You're left with 196 reviews that all arrive in the same month and then stop. The pace counts more than the total, and a spike followed by silence is the opposite of what a healthy profile looks like. The levers that actually move rankings are in our guide to improving your Google Maps ranking.
Bought reviews and AI answers (ChatGPT won't name the sellers)
AI answers about local businesses draw partly on review text, and bought reviews are almost always generic: they say "great service" and nothing an AI could repeat. On 10 November 2026 we asked ChatGPT, with web search on, whether it is worth buying Google reviews and where to buy them.
The answer was "no": no seller named, a summary of the risks and two linked sources, Google's Maps policy and the AGCM guidelines. The AI Overviews on the same topic cited Reddit, YouTube and blogs from review software vendors.
In our test of how AI describes seven Italian companies, the three with reviews on third-party platforms got answers with ratings, numbers and specific themes; the other four got a cautious formula. A hundred "great, recommended" reviews give an AI nothing specific to say. Twenty real ones that mention the service, the area and the engineer do. Nobody can promise a citation, but the citable material is written by your customers, not by a seller. More on this in our guide to local AI visibility.
What to do instead (four options, cheapest first)
The lawful alternative is to ask every customer for a review, straight after the service, with the direct link and nothing offered in return. Google allows it, as long as you don't ask only the happy ones.
- The direct link in a message after the service. No cost. How to get it and what to write is in our guide to getting Google reviews.
- A QR code and an NFC tag at the counter. A few pounds of printing. Where to put them is in Google review QR codes.
- Replying to every review, negative ones included. Ten minutes a week. The templates are in how to respond to Google reviews.
- A request triggered by your booking or invoicing system, sent automatically when a job closes. It's the only way to keep a steady pace without thinking about it.
And if I've already bought some?
Stop now. An owner can't delete a review from their own profile: only the author or Google can, as we explain in how to remove Google reviews. From here on, genuine reviews only.
And if a competitor is buying them?
Report it. The process and forms are in Google Maps spam. If someone is flooding you with fake negative reviews instead, that's a different case, covered in our guide to negative SEO.
Reviews are one part of local SEO. If you'd like someone to look at your profile alongside your website and the searches in your area, that's the work we do in our SEO service.
Frequently asked questions about buying Google reviews
Yes. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act bans posting and commissioning fake reviews, and the CMA can fine a business up to 10% of its global turnover. In the US the FTC rule on reviews (16 CFR Part 465) also bans buying fake reviews.
Mostly, yes: in 2025 it blocked or removed over 292 million policy-violating reviews. When it finds fake engagement it can also stop new reviews, unpublish existing ones and show a warning on the profile.
No. Google Maps policy bans payments, discounts and free goods or services in exchange for a review. The ban covers the discount offered after the visit as well as cash.
No, not from your profile: only the person who wrote a review can delete it, or Google if it breaks the rules. As the owner you can only report it.
Yes. UK law covers fake consumer reviews on any platform, and each platform has its own rules that ban them.
To recap:
The seller is real, the review isn't.
Google blocks, hides and warns your customers.
UK law allows fines of up to 10% of global turnover.
AI answers repeat what real customers write.
One last thing nobody mentions. Bought reviews leave traces anyone can see: sudden spikes, near-identical wording, profiles reviewing businesses in ten different towns in the same week. If a competitor buys them, those traces are your best case for a report. If you buy them, they are theirs.
Speak soon!
