Google quietly updated its review snippet structured data guidelines on 24 July 2026, and the recaps that followed all said the same thing: Google banned incentivized reviews. Read the actual line and that is not what it says.
The guideline bans fake or undisclosed incentivized reviews. A properly disclosed one is a different case, and whether you can run one at all depends on which of three separate rulebooks you are standing in. This piece separates them, because a store owner running a “leave a review, get 10% off” campaign is sitting in all three at once.
Key Takeaways
- Google’s new guideline bans “fake or undisclosed incentivized reviews” in your markup, not incentivized reviews as a whole. Disclosure is the hinge.
- Three rulebooks govern this and they disagree: Google’s structured data guidelines, Google Business Profile policy, and the US FTC endorsement guides.
- Google Business Profile is the strict one: it does not allow incentivized reviews on Google at all, disclosed or not.
- Breaking the structured data guideline costs you your review rich results (the stars), through a structured data manual action, not a sitewide penalty.
- Your review app usually writes the markup, so the practical question is whether your disclosure sits inside the marked-up review or somewhere the markup never sees.
What did Google actually change about incentivized reviews?
Google added one line to its review snippet structured data guidelines: “Don’t include fake or undisclosed incentivized reviews on your page or in your structured data markup.” It then gives two examples of what that covers.
The first example is “Reviews that aren’t based on a genuine experience of a product or service.” The second is “Reviews written in exchange for a benefit (such as money, discounts, vouchers, or free products) that don’t clearly and prominently disclose the incentivization.”
Read the second example slowly. It does not say incentivized reviews are banned. It says incentivized reviews that “don’t clearly and prominently disclose the incentivization” are banned. The whole rule turns on two words most recaps skipped: or undisclosed.
Does this ban all incentivized reviews, or only undisclosed ones?
Only fake or undisclosed ones. Under the structured data guideline, an incentivized review that clearly and prominently discloses the incentive is not what this rule kills, so a store that already discloses “this reviewer received a discount” inside the review is not automatically offside.
This matters because the headline everyone repeated, “Google banned incentivized reviews”, quietly rewrites the rule into something stricter than what Google published. If you run a disclosed review-incentive campaign, the question the guideline actually asks you is narrower: is the disclosure clear and prominent, and is it on a surface where the incentive is allowed in the first place?
That second half is where it gets genuinely complicated, because “a surface where the incentive is allowed” is not one answer. It depends on whether the review lives on your own product page or on your Google profile, and those two are governed by different documents that do not agree.
Can you offer a discount for a Google review?
On your Google Business Profile, no. Google Business Profile policy does not allow incentivized reviews on Google at all, and there is no disclosure that fixes it. On your own product page, it can be allowed if the incentive is clearly and prominently disclosed, because that surface is governed by the structured data guideline instead.
Google’s Business Profile prohibited content policy is blunt about it. Under Fake Engagement it says merchants may not “Offer incentives, such as payment, discounts, free goods and/or services, in exchange for posting any review”, and under Rating Manipulation it lists “Content that has been posted due to an incentive offered by a business, such as payment, discounts, free goods and/or services” as not allowed.
There is no disclosure carve-out in that policy. So “leave us a review on Google, get 10% off” breaks the Google Business Profile rules even if your disclosure is perfect, while “leave a review on our product page, get 10% off, and we will label it as incentivized” can be compliant on your own site. Same offer, two different surfaces, two different answers.
Google structured data, Business Profile, and the FTC: three rulebooks, not one
A store running a review-incentive campaign is subject to three separate rulebooks at once, and the recaps covered one. Here is how they line up, because the differences are the whole decision.
| Rulebook | Incentivized review allowed? | Disclosure requirement | What you lose if you break it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google review snippet structured data guidelines | Yes, if properly disclosed | “clearly and prominently” | Your Review and AggregateRating rich results, through a structured data manual action |
| Google Business Profile policy | No, on Google’s own profile, disclosed or not | Not applicable, the act itself is banned | Reviews unpublished, or new reviews blocked, for a period |
| FTC endorsement guides (US) | Yes, if disclosed and not conditioned on a positive review | “clearly and conspicuously”, near the endorsement | FTC enforcement action and civil penalties |
Read across the rows and the pattern is clear. Two of the three allow a disclosed incentivized review; the outlier is Google Business Profile, which bans the incentive on its own platform outright. So the surface the review lives on decides more than the disclosure wording does.
What do you actually lose if you break the review markup rule?
Your review rich results, not your whole site. The guideline sits under Google’s structured data policies, so the penalty is a structured data manual action, and Google’s own wording is that when that happens “the structured data on the page will be ignored (although the page can still appear in Google Search results).”
In plain terms, you lose the stars. The Review and AggregateRating rich result stops showing, the page keeps ranking, and there is a Manual Actions report in Search Console telling you it happened. That is a real cost for an eCommerce store, because star ratings lift click-through, but it is not the sitewide penalty the word “manual action” makes people picture.
Keep that scope in mind before you panic and tear down a review program. “I might lose my stars” and “I might get my site penalized” are different risks, and the recaps let readers blur them together.
How to check your own review markup, step by step
Here is the part nobody writes: on most stores, you do not write your review markup, your review app does. So the real check is finding which app emits your Review and AggregateRating nodes, and confirming your disclosure text actually sits inside the marked-up review body rather than somewhere on the page the markup never sees.
Check your review markup on one product URL
- Open one product page and view its source, or paste the URL into Google’s Rich Results Test.
- Search the markup for “Review” and “AggregateRating” to see which review nodes exist on the page.
- Identify which review app or plugin emitted them, because that is what you will need to configure, not your theme.
- Confirm your incentive disclosure text sits inside the marked-up review body, not in a caption or footer the markup never includes.
If your disclosure lives outside the marked-up review, Google’s structured data sees an incentivized review with no disclosure attached, which is exactly the case the new guideline names. Fixing that is usually a setting in the review app, not a rebuild, and it is the highest-value thing on this list. If you want the wider picture on how these same review and product nodes get read for AI answers, our guide on schema markup and AI citations covers it.
What do the FTC endorsement guides require for incentivized reviews?
In the US, the FTC does not ban incentivized reviews either, but it requires the material connection to be disclosed clearly and conspicuously, and it does not let you condition the reward on a positive review. Its endorsement guidance frames the test as whether “knowing about that gift or incentive would affect the weight or credibility your readers give to your recommendation.”
A discount for a review clears that bar easily, so it has to be disclosed, near the review and not buried in fine print. The FTC’s 2024 rule on consumer reviews went further and made it unlawful to pay for reviews that express a particular sentiment, so a campaign that only rewards five-star reviews is a bigger problem than the incentive itself.
This layer is US-specific, but it points the same direction as Google’s structured data guideline: disclose the incentive plainly, and never buy the sentiment. If you satisfy the FTC honestly, you are most of the way to satisfying Google’s markup rule too.
How can you get more reviews without breaking any of these rules?
Ask for genuine reviews without attaching an incentive to them, and you stay clear of all three rulebooks at once. Google Business Profile explicitly allows merchants to “Solicit or encourage the posting of content that does represent a genuine experience, without offering incentives to do so.”
In practice that means a few things worth doing deliberately, because each closes off a different way to trip the rules:
- Ask everyone, not just happy buyers. Selectively soliciting only your satisfied customers is review gating, which Google Business Profile treats as manipulation, so send the request to all buyers and take the honest average.
- Keep incentives off Google entirely. If you run a reward, keep it tied to reviews on your own product pages where disclosed incentives are allowed, never to reviews on your Google profile where they are not.
- Reward the act, never the rating. Offer the discount for leaving a review, not for leaving a good one, which keeps you clear of both the FTC sentiment rule and Google’s manipulation policy.
- Disclose inside the review. Make sure the incentive disclosure is part of the review content your markup captures, so a disclosed review does not read to Google as an undisclosed one.
So, can you offer a discount for a review or not?
Honestly, the answer splits by surface, and that split is what the one-line recaps threw away. On your own product pages you can, as long as the incentive is disclosed clearly and prominently and you never pay for a positive rating. On your Google Business Profile you cannot, full stop, because Google’s own platform policy bans the incentive with no disclosure that saves it.
My real advice for most stores is to stop chasing incentivized reviews on Google and put the incentive, if you run one at all, on your own site with a plain disclosure baked into the markup. It is the one place the rules actually let you, and it is the place you control. The new guideline did not close a door most stores were using well; it just named a sloppy practice, and the fix is disclosure, not retreat.
Common questions about incentivized reviews and Google’s markup rule
Does the new rule apply to old reviews already on my product pages?
The guideline governs what you mark up now, so undisclosed incentivized reviews still sitting in your markup are the exposure. The safe move is to add the disclosure to those reviews or stop marking them up, rather than leaving them as they are.
Work with WpConsults
Not sure if your store’s review markup is compliant?
We can check which app writes your Review and AggregateRating markup, whether your disclosures sit where Google can see them, and where your review program is quietly breaking one of the three rulebooks.
Update Logs
28 Jul 2026
- First version, written after Google updated its review snippet structured data guidelines on 24 July 2026, with the guideline, the Business Profile policy, and the FTC endorsement guides quoted from their live pages.
Want our posts to show up more often on Google?
One step & Google will surface this site in your Top Stories.
