5 places to put your Google review link this week

There are five places a practice can put its Google review link this week: follow-up texts, staff email signatures, a card at the front desk, a “Review us” page on your website, and the paperwork patients take home. None of them needs a budget or a project plan – each is a job you can hand to one person and tick off before the weekend.

Why the link needs to be everywhere patients already look

Most patients who would happily review you never do, simply because nobody put the link in front of them at a convenient moment. The audience is there: 71% of patients check online reviews as the first step in finding a new doctor (Software Advice), and 76% of consumers regularly read online reviews when browsing local businesses (BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey 2023). With NHS.uk having closed its public star-ratings in 2025, your Google listing is now the main place that first impression is formed.

One rule before you start: put the link in front of everyone, not just patients you expect to be positive. Selectively steering happy patients to Google – often called review gating – breaches Google’s review policy, and offering any reward for a review breaches it too. Under the UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act – in force for reviews since April 2025, with CMA guidance in CMA208 – hiding negative reviews or selectively soliciting positive ones is a banned practice in its own right, not just a Google-policy issue.

1. Your follow-up texts

If you already send appointment confirmations or reminders by SMS, you have a channel patients actually read. Add one short message after the visit:

• “Thanks for visiting [practice name] today. If you have 20 seconds, we’d value your feedback: [link].”

Keep it to one text, sent the same day, and it reads as courtesy rather than marketing.

2. Every staff email signature

Reception and admin teams send dozens of emails a day – results letters, booking confirmations, replies to queries. A single line under the sign-off works quietly in the background:

• “How are we doing? Leave us feedback here: [link]”

Set it once in your email templates and it never needs thinking about again.

3. A card at the front desk

The moment a patient says “thank you so much” at reception is the natural moment to hand them something. A small card – “We’d love your feedback” with a short link or QR code – lets the receptionist respond in five seconds without a sales pitch. Keep a stack by the card machine, where every patient pauses anyway.

4. A “Review us” page on your website

A raw Google review URL is long and ugly. A simple page at yourpractice.co.uk/review gives you one tidy address to print on everything, and a place to invite honest feedback of every kind – not just praise. If a patient had a poor experience, that page can route their comments to you privately instead of leaving them with nowhere to go but a public forum. Link to it from your homepage footer so it is always one click away.

5. The paperwork patients take home

Appointment cards, treatment plans, invoices, new-patient welcome letters – anything a patient carries out of the building can carry the link or QR code. A single printed line is enough:

• “Been in recently? Tell us how it went: [link]”

Paper has a longer life than a text; it sits on the kitchen counter and gets a second chance.

Then reply to what arrives

Once the link starts working, the follow-through matters. Businesses that respond to reviews are seen as 1.7× more trustworthy (Google/Ipsos), so give someone the job of replying briefly and politely – never confirming clinical details or that a named person is a patient. A week of small placements, plus a habit of replying, is how a practice’s Google page starts to reflect the care it actually gives. No placement guarantees a particular number of reviews – what it does is stop willing patients slipping past for want of a link.