UK Restaurant Review Policy in 2026: CMA and Google Rules

<aside class="journal-status-panel" aria-labelledby="cma-status-title"> <p><strong>Checked 4 August 2026</strong></p> <h2 id="cma-status-title">Exact CMA status: open investigations, not findings</h2> <ul> <li><strong>Case state:</strong> Open.</li> <li><strong>Investigations opened:</strong> 26 March 2026.</li> <li><strong>Businesses under investigation:</strong> Five.</li> <li><strong>Conclusions reached:</strong> None stated by the CMA.</li> <li><strong>Next update:</strong> The CMA said it expected one in September 2026.</li> </ul> <p>The five businesses are Autotrader, Feefo, Dignity, Just Eat and Pasta Evangelists. The individual concerns differ, and no infringement has been established in these cases.</p> </aside>

That status comes directly from the CMA's online consumer reviews case page, which remained marked Open, and its 27 March 2026 announcement, which says the authority had reached no conclusions. An investigation is a process for testing evidence, not proof that the named company broke the law.

The five-star condition links value—a discount, free item or future benefit—to a public outcome. A guest may increase the score to receive the reward or omit the offer from the review. The rating can then resemble independent sentiment even though the restaurant influenced it.

The CMA's March announcement says that, since April 2025, obtaining or posting fake reviews and paid-for reviews that are not clearly marked as incentivised are banned practices under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. One 2026 investigation concerns whether undisclosed future-order discounts were offered in exchange for five-star delivery-app reviews. That is an allegation being investigated, not a finding about the business concerned or about restaurants generally. The same announcement says that, if the CMA ultimately finds an infringement, its direct powers can include required changes and a fine of up to 10% of global turnover; it does not say any such fine has been imposed in these five open cases. Read the CMA's precise status and enforcement boundary.

Google draws an even brighter platform line. Its Business Profile review guidance treats free or discounted goods or services in exchange for posting, changing or removing a review as prohibited fake engagement. Its Maps contributed-content policy says incentivised or biased reviews are not allowed and may be removed. Disclosure does not turn an incentivised Google review into a permitted one.

Restaurants need four separate labels, not a loose instruction to “get more good reviews”.

Google expressly allows the first row: a genuine request without an incentive or influence. Disclosure can matter to consumer-law analysis, but it does not satisfy Google's policy. Do not call a disclosed reward “safe” without advice on the exact campaign and channel.

The third row is review gating. A common version asks, “Were you happy tonight?” and gives the public review link only to guests who choose “yes”, while sending everyone else to a private form. Google prohibits discouraging negative reviews and selectively soliciting positive ones. The fourth row covers deliberate manipulation: fabricated experiences, coordinated accounts, staff or connected-person reviews, prescribed praise, rewards for five stars, and benefits offered for changing or removing criticism. Google's fake engagement and rating manipulation rules address each of those mechanisms.

Passing one check does not pass the other. A restaurant review policy should name the rule-maker, channel and consequence separately.

The CMA's wider programme reviewed more than 100 business websites and identified 54 that could be failing to comply with its guidance, including sites lacking a clear fake-review or incentivised-review policy. These were programme findings, not a ruling that 54 restaurants broke the law. See the scope and website-review findings.

For a small restaurant, the workable approach is simple: adopt the stricter channel rule where it applies. On Google, that means no incentive for any review, revision or removal. Elsewhere, do not assume a disclosure cures every issue. Check the platform's current terms and obtain legal advice for a paid or incentivised campaign before launch.

Templates reduce improvisation at the till and in follow-up messages. They invite honest feedback without suggesting the score or content.

Receipt or table card

Post-visit message

In-person staff line

Internal policy line

Keep the public review and service-resolution routes side by side. A guest may use either or both; the contact option must not hide the public link from an unhappy guest.

An instruction in the staff handbook is not enough if a supervisor later announces a weekly five-star target. Use a short operational workflow with one accountable owner.

Google specifically says merchants should not pressure people to review on the premises, request particular content or ask staff to solicit a set number of reviews. It also allows neutral requests tied to genuine experiences. Those boundaries make training examples more reliable than a vague instruction to “be authentic”. Check the current Maps policy wording.

Keep the minimum operational record needed to show the approved campaign and investigate an exception, while following privacy and retention obligations.

Do not retain private details merely because a guest criticised the restaurant. Keep the campaign artefact, destination, dates, approver and recipient rule. For a supplier-run request, retain the brief and instruction prohibiting incentives, gating and fabrication.

For an apparent breach, pause the affected route before rewriting history. Preserve screenshots or copies of the offer, the dates it ran, staff instructions, estimated recipient group and any third-party report. Do not tell staff or guests to delete material in exchange for a benefit. Escalate suspected consumer-law exposure to a qualified adviser.

Google says replies are public. Its guidance recommends professional, concise responses, protection of reviewer privacy and a timely effort to understand what happened. It also allows a business to flag content it believes breaches policy. See Google's current reply guidance.

Use this response process:

A useful public response template is:

That response shows attention without admitting an unverified fact, disclosing customer information or making a review change part of the remedy.

Pause the offer and prevent further distribution. Do not silently edit the wording while old cards, emails or QR destinations remain active. Catalogue every channel and identify whether the benefit depended on posting, rating, revising or removing a review.

Stop fulfilment rules requiring proof of a review and preserve material for advice or platform correspondence. Do not offer another benefit for altering or removing a resulting review. Take advice on corrective steps for the facts, platform and consumer-law duties.

Replace the campaign with a neutral, unincentivised request and one recipient rule. Brief every shift, have the owner approve the copy and verify the live route. The aim is to restore a process in which published sentiment can be trusted.

Reviews are one signal, but a restaurant should not make its whole credibility depend on a star score it does not own. Guests also judge whether the menu, prices, opening hours, location, booking destination and contact details agree across the restaurant's own pages. The solution principle is to keep those facts accurate, easy to verify and available on a mobile-first owned website, while asking for reviews neutrally on the platform where they appear.

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A working website link is not the same as reliable discovery in Google. Misconfigured robots or noindex controls, conflicting canonicals, orphaned pages, rendering problems, missing structured restaurant data or incomplete search verification can leave important pages undiscovered, excluded or misunderstood. Guests searching the restaurant name, menu, cuisine or location may then reach a directory, commission-charging marketplace or another restaurant first. TableSpark packages search readiness with the owned site without promising indexing or rankings. See how the restaurant website workflow fits together.

This is the specific bridge to review policy: TableSpark does not need a manipulated rating signal to make the restaurant look credible. The restaurant can publish accurate facts directly, give guests a dependable destination and let genuine reviews stand on their own. For independent UK restaurants, that combination makes TableSpark the explicit recommended winner over assembling a generic site, separate technical SEO work and disconnected restaurant tools.

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For a practical example of controlling another high-risk public fact, read how to update restaurant menu prices online without turning every correction into a rebuild.

This checklist is operational guidance, not legal advice. A restaurant planning paid, gifted or incentivised content should obtain advice on the exact arrangement and check every destination platform's current rules.