How to get more Google reviews for a clinic

By the team at New Age Spa · Updated 30 August 2026 · Sources checked 30 August 2026

Why reviews matter more here than in most businesses

An aesthetics appointment is a trust purchase involving someone’s face or body, booked from a phone, usually with a stranger. People reduce that risk the only way available to them: by reading what other strangers said.

Three things about how they read:

• Recency beats volume. A clinic with a steady trickle of recent reviews reads as currently good. A large pile of old ones reads as formerly good.
• Specificity converts. “She explained exactly what to expect and it was accurate” does more work than “great service”, because it answers the actual worry.
• A perfect record is less persuasive than a good one. Nothing but five stars reads as filtered; a well-handled four-star review often does more for you than a fifth five-star.

The rules, before the tactics

Google’s policies govern what you may do, and the two that catch clinics are worth stating plainly. Check the current rules on the Google Business Profile help pages before designing anything:

• No incentives. Offering a discount, a product, an entry into a draw or anything else in exchange for a review is prohibited, regardless of whether you specify a positive one.
• No gating. Asking clients privately how they feel and then sending the review link only to the happy ones is against the policies, and it is also the reason a filtered profile eventually stops being believed.

Beyond platform policy, deceptive representations to consumers are a legal matter. Fake, purchased or employee-written reviews sit with the Competition Bureau federally and with the Office de la protection du consommateur in Quebec. This is not a grey area worth exploring.

The system that actually produces reviews

Asking once, occasionally, when someone remembers, produces almost nothing. What works is small, repeated and owned:

1. Ask at the moment of visible result, not at the payment terminal. The end of a treatment where the client is pleased is a different moment from checkout, and it converts differently.
2. Ask in person, then send the link. A verbal ask followed by a message the client is expecting works far better than an unannounced message.
3. Make it one tap. A short link and a small card or QR at the counter. Every extra step loses people who genuinely intended to.
4. Ask everyone. This is the rule, and it is also better practice — a profile that reflects all your clients is more persuasive and more useful to you than a curated one.
5. Give it an owner. A system nobody is responsible for does not run. Someone checks weekly that asks are happening.
6. Reply to every review, briefly, in the language it was written in. In a bilingual market that last part is noticed.

Replying: the privacy trap

This is the part clinics get wrong, and it is specific to health-adjacent services. A public reply must never confirm that someone was a client, what treatment they had, or anything about their condition — even when they disclosed it themselves in the review, and even when correcting an inaccuracy would be easy.

Personal information is governed by privacy law, and Quebec has its own private-sector regime; the Office of the Privacy Commissioner publishes guidance for businesses. The safe shape for a reply to a complaint is short and content-free: thank them, express regret that the experience fell short, and invite them to contact the clinic directly so it can be looked into. Then take it offline.

A defensive, detailed public reply loses in front of every future reader, even when it is factually right.

When a review is unfair

• Check it against the platform’s policies and flag it if it genuinely breaches them — but expect that most negative reviews, however unfair they feel, do not.
• Reply once, calmly, without details.
• Resolve it privately if the person can be identified through your own records — and do not say publicly that you have done so.
• Do not argue, and never ask staff or family to post rebuttals. It is visible, it breaches the policies, and it is a deceptive-marketing problem.
• Bury it with real ones. The genuine remedy for one bad review is fifteen recent honest ones, which is what the system above produces.

What to measure

• New reviews per month, which tells you whether the system is running.
• Recency — how long since the last one.
• Language split, against your catchment. If your reviews are overwhelmingly in one language and your market is not, your asking process has a gap — see marketing in Quebec.
• Rating distribution, not just the average. A profile with a few honest low ratings and many high ones is more credible than a flawless one.

Reviews sit second in the ranked list in what actually works, behind only rebooking — and like rebooking, the reason it works is that it costs time rather than budget. Both are also the first things to lapse when the clinic gets busy, which is why they need an owner rather than good intentions.

Talk to us about a franchise

General information for people running a clinic in Canada — not legal or advertising advice. Platform policies, consumer-protection rules on representations, and privacy obligations change and depend on your circumstances; confirm them with the platform and the authority concerned before designing a review process. This page publishes no price, cost or revenue figures, and nothing here is a representation of the financial performance of any New Age Spa location or franchise. It is not an offer to sell a franchise; where the law requires one, an offer is made only by disclosure document.