How to Make a QR Code for Google Reviews

Find the review link first

Everything starts from a link Google itself issues. Sign in to the account that manages the business, open the Business Profile — searching for your own business name while signed in is the shortest way in — and look for the option to ask for reviews. Google returns a short link that opens the review form with your business already selected.

Copy that link and open it on a phone before you do anything else. You are checking two things: that it lands on the review form rather than a search result, and that it names the right location. Businesses with several branches have a separate link per branch, and printing the wrong one on the wrong receipt is a mistake nobody notices for months.

Google also offers a marketing kit that includes a ready-made QR code. It works and it is free. What it cannot do is tell you anything afterwards, or change where it points — which is the whole argument of the next section.

Static from Google, or a dynamic code you own

The kit's code carries the review link inside the pattern. That has real advantages: nothing sits in the middle, nothing lapses, and it will keep working for as long as the link does.

What it cannot do is separate placements. Every printed copy is the same code, so scans from the receipt, the table and the window are one undifferentiated number — and in practice the number is invisible to you anyway, because Google does not report scans of its own kit code.

A dynamic code carries a short redirect that forwards to the same review link. The review experience is identical; what you gain is a count per placement and the ability to repoint it later — to a different branch, to a feedback form outside opening hours, to a new link if Google ever changes the format. If you print one code and never look at a number, take the kit. If you print five and want to know which one earned its space, you need your own.

Where the code goes, and when

A review is asked for at a moment, not at a place. The best time is immediately after the thing that went well — the meal ended, the repair worked, the parcel arrived intact — and the placement is whatever the customer is holding at that moment.

• On the receipt or the bill folder: the strongest placement in hospitality, because it arrives exactly when the experience is complete.
• At the counter or checkout, at eye level rather than flat on the surface, where someone is already waiting a few seconds.
• On the table, but as a separate code from the menu one — a card that asks for a review and a card that opens the menu are two different jobs.
• Inside the parcel or on the packing note for anything shipped, where the moment of arrival is the moment of goodwill.
• On the invoice, the service report or the handover document for trades and B2B, where the customer is already reading.
• Not on the front door, the window or the pavement sign: those reach people who have not experienced anything yet.

What you may and may not ask for

Google's policies are short and worth reading once. The parts that matter to a printed code are these: you may ask any customer for a review, and you may make it easy. You may not offer anything in exchange for one, and you may not ask only the happy ones.

Filtering — surveying people first and showing the review code only to those who answered well — is called review gating, and it is against the rules. It is also the strategy most likely to be sold to you as a clever funnel. A code that goes to everyone is both compliant and more useful: the negative reviews it collects are the ones that tell you something.

Do not put "leave us five stars" on the card. Ask for a review, not for a rating, and keep the wording neutral enough that it would read the same to a customer who is unhappy.

Measuring it without fooling yourself

Scans are not reviews. Someone scans, reads the form, decides they will do it later, and never does — that is a normal scan and it counts toward nothing. Expect the gap between scans and published reviews to be large, and treat the scan count as a measure of the placement rather than of the outcome.

What the split by placement tells you is which surface people actually use. Print a separate code for the receipt, the counter, the table and the parcel, and after a month one of them will be carrying most of the scans. That is the one to print more of, and the others are the ones to move or drop.

Compare the review count in the profile month to month rather than trying to attribute individual reviews to individual codes — Google gives you no way to connect the two, and any tool that claims otherwise is guessing.

Before it goes to print

The list below is short because most review-code failures are the same handful of things, and all of them are cheaper to catch now.

• Scan the printed proof and confirm it opens the review form on a phone that is not signed in to your business account.
• Check it lands on the right branch if you have more than one.
• Print it large enough for where it sits: 3 cm minimum on a receipt or table, more on a counter sign read from standing.
• Write a call to action that says what happens — "leave a review on Google" — rather than "scan me".
• Keep the wording neutral, with no rating asked for and nothing offered in return.
• Give the code an owner, so that a link change or a branch closure does not leave printed material pointing nowhere.