QR codes for collecting business reviews
How do you make a QR code for business reviews?
Take the review link from your business profile and encode a short link that redirects to it, rather than encoding the review page directly. Put the code where the customer is still holding what they would review. The redirect lets you re-aim the code without reprinting, and it counts scans, which no review platform reports back to you.
Placement decides almost everything
A review ask is a favour, and the answer depends almost entirely on when you ask. The code itself changes very little.
The best placements are the ones where the customer still has the thing in front of them: the receipt, the table, the counter while the card machine finishes, the card inside the box. The worst is a poster by the exit, which is read by people already leaving, and the second worst is only in email, where a QR competes with a tappable link on the very same screen and loses.
If you are printing on till receipts, note that thermal paper is not white and fades. Keep the contrast genuinely dark on genuinely light, and keep the code big enough that the receipt printer can place its edges, which is the same millimetre problem covered in the inventory guide.
The shortcut that gets a listing penalised
Several products sell this as a feature, so it is worth stating plainly: sending happy customers to your public review page and unhappy ones to a private complaint form is review gating, and Google's policies prohibit it. So do several others.
The exposure is not that a filtered review gets removed. It is that the practice attaches to the listing, and a listing is harder to replace than a review. We sell the redirect rather than the reviews, so we have no reason to soften this: do not build the fork.
What is allowed is offering everyone the same two doors. A card that says "tell us how it went" with a review link and a contact link, shown to every customer regardless of mood, is not gating. The difference is whether the routing decision is made by you or by them.
Why the code should be re-pointable
Review destinations move more than people expect. Profiles are merged and get new URLs. A business opens a second branch and needs the card in each to point somewhere different. Plenty of firms move platform entirely.
A static code has today's destination baked into the pattern, so every one of those means reprinting the receipts, the table tents and the cards already in customers' hands. A short link is a pointer: change where it aims and the next scan follows, worldwide, within about a minute. Nothing gets reprinted.
Measuring whether it works
Review platforms report reviews. They cannot report the people who saw your card and did nothing, which is the number that tells you whether to move the card or rewrite it.
A short link gives you that, and it separates a scan from a tap: a phone camera opening the printed code is a different event from somebody clicking the same link in an email. If your scans are near zero while your taps are healthy, the printed card is in the wrong place and the wording is not the problem. That split is covered in what a scan can tell you, including what it deliberately cannot.
One caution on reading the numbers: chat apps and messaging clients fetch a link to build a preview, and those fetches are not people. We record them as bot traffic and keep them out of the click count for exactly this reason, because a review campaign shared in a group chat can otherwise look three times more successful than it was.
Questions
The things people ask before they commit something to paper.
How do I make a QR code for Google reviews?
Get the review link from your Google Business Profile, then encode a short link that redirects to it rather than encoding the review URL directly. The redirect is what lets you re-aim the code later without reprinting anything, and it is what gives you a scan count, which the review platform will never tell you.
Can I ask only happy customers to leave a review?
Not through a filter, no. Sending satisfied customers to a public review page and unhappy ones to a private form is review gating, and Google prohibits it. The risk is not theoretical: it applies to the listing rather than to the individual reviews. Ask everyone the same way and route complaints through a separate channel that is offered to everyone.
Where should the QR code go?
Wherever the customer is still holding the thing they would review. A receipt, a table tent, the counter, the packaging in the box. A code on a wall by the door is scanned by people already leaving, and a code in an email is competing with a link that is easier to tap on the same device.
How do I know whether the code is working?
Count the scans, which the review platform cannot do for you. A short link separates a camera scan from an ordinary tap, so you can tell whether the printed card is doing the work or whether all the traffic is coming from the email you also sent. If the scans are near zero the placement is wrong, not the wording.
Should the review QR code be dynamic?
Yes, for a practical reason rather than a philosophical one. Review destinations move: profiles get new URLs, businesses add a second location, and plenty of firms switch platform. A static code bakes in the destination it had on the day it was printed, so any of those means reprinting every card, receipt roll and table tent you have already put out.