Moving Company Reviews: How to Earn, Manage & Use Them

Here’s how to earn more moving company reviews: Ask your customers at the right time, text a direct link, add a QR code, tell them to mention your crew, follow platform-specific rules, send proper reminders, and automate the process.

Great service alone doesn’t guarantee great reviews. To consistently get fresh reviews, you need an automated system that asks every customer once you complete a job. Studies show that 83% of customers will leave a review when you ask for it the right way. 

That’s not all. If you look at the review profile of the top movers in your local market, you’ll find a common pattern: they ask every customer, reply to every review (positive or negative), and make the process super easy. 

Rather than asking for a review only when you remember, you need to build a system that turns every successful job into a positive review, recovers the trust you lose from a negative review,  and leverages those reviews to secure the next job. 

Building such a system isn’t hard. Today, we’ll share 7 proven tactics to increase your review count, the proper way to reply to reviews, and ways to use your reviews to attract more customers. 

How to Get More Reviews for Your Moving Company (7 Tactics That Work)

Most companies we’ve worked with have told us they either don’t ask for reviews at all or ask them at the wrong time. 

So, the system that asks the most customers, and at the right time, wins by default. That’s why we follow a different approach. 

Below are some of the proven tactics we’ve used to help moving companies build a sustainable review engine: 

1. Ask on the Move Day, Not the Week After

The timing of asking for the review matters more than you think. Right after you finish the job, the customer feels the most relieved and grateful for a job well done. This is the moment they are more likely to say “Yes”. 

On the flip side, if you ask for the review a week later, the move is already three to-do lists behind in their past. They’ve already got busy with life and forgotten all the small details that made your work stand out. 

That’s why we recommend making the review request a part of your job. Once the paperwork is complete and the customer is satisfied, ask for the review before leaving their property. 

That’s when you’re the most likely to get an in-depth, positive review. 

2. Text the Link, Don’t Email It

People usually check their text messages within minutes, whereas emails usually get buried under promotions and spam.

Use this to your advantage; send your review request by SMS. Make sure to add a direct link to your Google review page. 

The easier you make it for your clients to leave a review, the more likely you are to get one. If your customer has to search your business name, click on your profile, and hunt for the review button, some might give up.

So, don’t make the process unnecessarily hard. The link in your text message should take the customer directly to the review form so they can start writing immediately. 

Pro Tip: Mark the mobile number field as required on your booking form. This will give you an easy way to follow up for the review.

3. Put Google’s QR Code on Crew Shirts and Paperwork

Google also lets you generate a free QR code you can use to get reviews. Print it on your final paperwork, your crew’s uniform, or leave-behind cards. 

The reason? Some customers are willing to leave a review on the spot, and making them wait only reduces your chance of getting one. 

Here’s how to generate the free QR code: 

• Go to your Google Business Profile from a PC browser.
• Select “Read Reviews” and then tap on the share icon beside the link “Get more Reviews”. 
• Once the QR code is generated, right-click on it.
• Select “Save image as…”

It’s that simple. QR codes make leaving reviews almost effortless. Just scan the code, write a few sentences, and you’re done; no reminders needed.

4. Name the Crew in the Review Request

We’ve seen one thing common across most top-ranked mover profiles in any city: their reviews mention the crew name.

If your review includes generic questions like “How did we do?”, you’ll also get a generic review like “the service was good”. So, you need to personalize your review request. 

Here’s the easiest way to do that: mention one or two names and thank the customer for trusting them. 

Rather than just saying “Please Leave us a Review”, write something like: 

“Hi there, thank you for trusting Mike and Sarah with your Williamsburg move on Tuesday. They loved working with you. If they took good care of you, a quick Google review would mean a lot to them”.

This’ll make the review infinite times better than the generic, template ones. People tend to connect with other people more than the company. So they naturally leave longer, warmer, and more detailed reviews.  

Additionally, if you mention your crew’s name, the customer is also more likely to mention them. 

That also helps your future customers. When they read, “Mike and Sarah did a very good job handling our antique furniture with incredible care”, they’re more likely to trust your business.

5. Send Only One Follow-up Reminder

Even if you did an exceptional job, there’s a good chance your first review request will get ignored simply because the customer forgot about it. So you also need to send them a gentle reminder, usually 2-3 days after the move.  

Keep the message short: thank them again for choosing your company, include the review link, and let them know you’d appreciate their feedback. 

For instance, you can send something like, “Hi Linda, hope you’re settling in. Thank you again for choosing [Your Company Name]. If you have a minute, we’d love to hear your feedback. Here’s the review link again.”

That said, never send more than one reminder. One follow-up may be helpful, but repetition quickly becomes annoying. 

6. Know Each Platform’s Rules Before You Ask

Here’s a tricky one: not all the platforms have similar guidelines when it comes to client reviews. If you want to avoid frustration, you need to play by each platform’s specific rules. 

For example, Google openly encourages businesses to ask for reviews and makes the process easier with direct links or QR codes. 

Yelp takes a different approach. In fact, their guidelines discourage asking for reviews and treat them as “solicited”. Yelp’s recommendation engine actively filters out the reviews they think of as “requested”. 

So, ask for reviews openly and confidently on Google. On Yelp, focus on delivering a great experience and let your service quality do the talking. 

Remember, pushing on Yelp may cost you stars, and your review will get filtered out anyway. 

One important note: Offering incentives (like discounts, free services) in exchange for posting positive reviews, changing existing ones, or removing negative ones is prohibited on both platforms.

7. Automate the Ask, Never Gate It

If you personalize review requests, send follow-ups, add links, and collect each review manually, everything will fall apart as soon as you get busy with more clients. 

That’s why you need automation. You can use a CRM or your email marketing platform to set it up so that once a move is marked as complete, the review request gets automatically sent out. 

It keeps your review profile growing consistently even when your team is busy on the site. 

Avoid one grave mistake here: “Review Gating.” It refers to the practice of sending review links only to those customers who you know will leave a positive review. It is strictly prohibited. You might get penalized as it creates a misleading picture of your business. 

The best practice here is to ask every customer for their feedback in a repeatable pattern. Happy customers will improve your reputation while unhappy customers will expose areas you need to work on. 

You get valuable information both ways. 

The Reason Reviews are Important for Moving Companies

Moving is a high-trust purchase, so, naturally, people prioritize reviews.

People need reassurance that your crew will actually show up, handle furniture carefully, and deliver everything your company promised. 

The issue here is that they never met your crew before.  

That’s why a mover with multiple recent and detailed reviews feels like a safer choice than the one that has a handful of old, generic reviews, even if they offer a lower price. 

That’s not all. Google also prioritizes reviews and treats them as a ranking signal. According to Whitespark, review signals now carry 20% of Map Pack ranking weight, and that number is rising each year.  

For a local moving business, reviews do two important jobs: they give your prospects the confidence to call your business, and increase Google’s confidence in recommending your business.

How Many Google Reviews Does a Moving Company Need?

No set number can guarantee success for your moving company. So, you need to change your approach. The better goal is figuring out how to compete with the movers that are already ranking in the top three positions of your Local Map Pack.

To outrank them, you need more reviews than they have, and faster. 

Review velocity refers to how frequently you get fresh reviews, and Google considers it one of the most important local ranking factors. That’s why a company that has 100+ old reviews can be outranked by a company that has 50 fresher ones.

You also need to focus on your star rating. More and more customers are choosing businesses that have a rating of at least 4.5 stars. 

Don’t Make These Review Mistakes 

Of course getting reviews for your moving company is important, but how you collect your reviews is even more important. 

Moving companies that focus on shortcuts instead of naturally growing their reputation end up losing their customers’ trust and getting penalized by the authorities. 

Google has become tougher on spam reviews, and since 2024, the FTC has started charging companies with massive fines for violating their guideline. 

To make sure that doesn’t happen to you, here are the most common mistakes you need to watch out for:

1. Ignoring Negative Reviews

Some movers either lose their cool in their responses or play it safe by ignoring negative reviews. Don’t do that.

Many potential customers out there care about how you handle complaints. So, you must respond to each one of them thoughtfully and professionally. 

A professional and helpful response indicates to your future customers that you take complaints seriously, and you’re willing to make things right. That’s a bigger trust signal, and it shows the algorithm that you are actively engaged with your audience.

So take your time, evaluate your clients’ concerns, and leave a professional response to every review you get (except for the fake/spam ones, more on them later). 

Set aside 10-15 minutes every week to check new reviews and reply to them. This’ll make sure your reviews never pile up, and your customers don’t feel ignored. 

2. Reviewing For Yourself or Your Competition

Some movers tell their crew to review their own company or worse: leave bad reviews under their competitors’ profiles. Never do this. Your time is far better spent earning genuine reviews from satisfied customers than trying to manipulate the algorithm.

Plus, Google considers these a violation and flags these reviews as a “conflict of interest”. Their UGC Policy explicitly bans reviews from past/present employees or anyone with a financial interest in your business.

The same goes for you reviewing your competition. Besides violating Google’s guidelines, it can quickly backfire if the competitor or your prospects realize what’s happening. 

If the algorithm detects multiple reviews from your office location, network, staff accounts, or devices, it’ll flag your account for “Review Manipulation” and filter out those reviews, including your genuine ones. It can even suspend your GBP profile altogether. 

3. Creating Fake Business Locations

We’ve seen movers create multiple location pages for areas they don’t actually operate in. The goal usually is to get more local reviews and increase local ranking. 

Don’t even think about it, ever!

This is actually the quickest way to get permanently banned (Hard Suspension) from Google Maps. Moving companies get targeted by scammers more often. So, Google strictly monitors every moving company. 

In serious cases, Google can flag your GBP with a “bannable owner” status. This means your primary business profile, including your ad accounts, star rating, and genuine reviews, will vanish from Google for good.

Add multiple location pages to your GBP only if you can actually claim and prove it. 

4. Buying or Trading Reviews

Both Google and customers can smell fake/bought reviews from miles away. Google’s review management policy clearly restricts “fake engagements” and actively removes suspicious reviews.  

Google’s list of fake engagement includes buying reviews, offering incentives (discounts/free services) for good reviews, and paying to change or remove negative reviews. 

This is a serious offense to both Google and the FTC. Alongside wiping your profile clean, Google will suspend your profile permanently and alert others about this behavior, destroying your brand’s reputation. 

That’s not all. The FTC will accuse you of violating their guidelines and charge you a massive civil penalty that exceeds $50,000 per violation.

5. Review Gating

We’ve talked about review gating earlier. It might look tempting to showcase only the best reviews and ratings on your business profile. 

The thing is, perfection doesn’t always mean authentic. A profile with a perfect 5-star rating and only good reviews raises suspicion more than praise. 

To think realistically, you’ll inevitably break a few promises, fail to show up on time, or simply won’t be able to keep up with the customers’ expectations. 

And that’s completely fine. A few complaints with your sincere replies, mixed in with positive experiences, will make your business look more authentic and trustworthy.

Google also promotes this. They encourage businesses to showcase an accurate, unbiased reflection of their business. Failing to do so will result in mass review wipes, local ranking suppression, or even a profile ban.

6. Fluffing Keywords in the Review

Customers naturally describe their experiences in their own words, and that’s exactly what Google wants to see. 

If you tell your clients what to write in their reviews, it might have the opposite effect of what you want. Geo-targeted keywords in your reviews indeed help your business rank, but too much of it can easily backfire.

For example, if 8 out of your 10 recent reviews contain the same keyword, pattern, or format, your reviews will look manufactured/manipulated. This can activate Google’s Spam filter, triggering a shadow-ban or customers losing trust in your business.

So, instead of handing them a generic template, ask them questions that naturally bring out the keyword (i.e., what services did we do for you, or what was the best part of our service).

How to Write Perfect Review Replies

Responding to reviews sounds simple, but it isn’t. Every reply you write has two readers: the actual reviewer and other potential customers who are deciding whether to call you or not. 

So, write for both. Here are a few best practises you can follow: 

For Positive Reviews

Positive reviews mean that the customer will probably consider your business again. You need to keep that window open. 

Start by thanking your customer, but avoid the generic replies. Personalize the response by mentioning one key detail from the event. Also, mention your crew. Keep the replies short and conversational without turning them into a promotion. 

One good example might be: 

“Thank you, Amanda! We are so proud of Sam and Maxine for protecting your piano from the heavy rain. They also loved it, and said it was the highlight of their week. Enjoy your new home.” 

And that’s it. A good reply shouldn’t take you more than 20 seconds. 

For Negative Reviews

Every company eventually gets some bad reviews, and that’s okay. The bigger issue here is how you respond to them. This is where most movers panic and become emotional. 

Your goal isn’t to win an argument. So, stay calm. Focus on showing future customers that you take complaints seriously and try to make it right. 

Remember, a thoughtful response can build more trust than pretending mistakes never happen.

Start by publicly acknowledging the customer’s experience. Never argue or try to be defensive, even if you disagree with what they’re saying. 

After you’ve acknowledged the issue, take the discussion offline with a phone number or an email address. Show empathy once they reach out, try to understand what happened, and work towards a solution.  

For example, write something like: 

“Hi, Adam! I’m deeply sorry that the crew ran late and communication broke down. We hold our team to high standards and apologize for this experience. Please contact our general manager directly at [Phone/Email] so we can make this right.” 

For Fake/Spam Reviews

There is another type of review that distresses movers. Let’s call them questionable (!) reviews. It’s when you get spam reviews, fake reviews, or reviews that aren’t related to your business. 

For instance, reviews from someone who was never your customer, reviews meant for another company, review attacks from your competitor, or obvious spam.

All of these violate Google’s review guidelines. Don’t ever waste your time fighting these in public. Report them through your profile instead. 

And if the situation has progressed beyond control and you’re not sure what to do, reach out to us before you do something you might regret. We’re pretty sure we’ve untangled worse. 

For Reviews Without Comments 

Lastly, some reviews come without any comments. Customers leave nothing more than a star rating. That’s okay too. Don’t ignore them. A short and quick thank you note still shows that you pay attention to customer feedback and appreciate every review. 

Over time, this consistency will help create the impression of a moving business that is active, engaged, reliable, and easy to work with.

How to Turn Your Reviews into Rankings and Booked Moves

Reviews do so much more than just improve your online reputation.

If you consistently get fresh reviews for your moving company and regularly respond to them, it strengthens one of the heaviest ranking signals on the local ranking engine. 

Every positive review and professional response shows both Google and your prospects that you’re a company that they can trust. 

As a result, your GBP gets stronger, and it becomes easier to rank on the Local MAP Pack. This helps your profile become more visible, meaning more people discover your moving company.

That’s not all. You can also use these reviews on your website, estimates, email marketing campaigns, ads, and your social posts as a trust signal. As your business looks more reliable, your calls and quote requests increase. It also increases your conversion rate, meaning more of those quote requests turn into booked jobs. 

Lastly, every completed job becomes another chance to earn reviews. 

In other words, reviews create a cycle that keeps generating more business over time. The cycle looks something like this: 

That’s why leading movers focus on building a review management system. Once they build the engine, staying on top simply becomes a matter of maintenance. 

Another thing: just responding to reviews isn’t enough. You also need to study and use them. 

If 20+ reviews praise your communication skills, that’s a pattern you can count on. Use that on your marketing copy. 

Likewise, if you receive multiple complaints about your time management, fix it fast before it becomes a major operational issue.

Once you learn to properly use reviews for your moving company, it can become one of your strongest growth engines. 

Last Words: Build a Review System, Not a Campaign

Reviews compound over time. That’s the reason movers who dominate the local market have built a system rather than depending on luck. 

That’s what you need to do as well. Instead of focusing on reviews only when business slows down, leverage every opportunity to strengthen your reputation.

If you deliver a great experience, ask every customer, and reply to every review professionally, you’ll develop a consistency that’ll keep generating jobs for your moving company for years. 

Still unsure where to start?

Feel free to reach out. Our seasoned professionals have audited numerous GBPs, Review setups, and SEO strategy for moving companies for free and helped them grow their business in a sustainable way. 

Claim your free audit today and let’s build a review management system that helps your moving company dominate your local market not only for today, but tomorrow as well.

FAQs

How Do I Ask for a Review Without Being Awkward?

You’re not asking for a favor. It’s a part of your normal closing process. If you’ve completed the move successfully, you’ve earned the right to ask for honest feedback. Reviews also help identify improvement areas. So, ask confidently, and mention your crew to make it personal.

Can I Remove Negative Reviews From Google?

No. Google won’t remove any review just because it’s negative. However, you can report reviews that violate Google's content policies, such as spam, fake, or wrong reviews. For legitimate complaints, what you can do is respond professionally: accept the concern and offer to fix the problem directly (offline).

Is It Legal to Offer a Discount for a Google Review?

Absolutely not! Google prohibits any kind of incentives for reviews and can ban your profile for it. Not only that, but the FTC can also fine you more than $50,000 per violation. So, a $50 discount is never worth a federal fine along with a suspended profile.

Why Did My Google Reviews Disappear?

If one of your reviews disappears, Google may have found it suspicious, the reviewer may have deleted their account/review, or your profile may have been affected by a recent merge/policy update.
On the other hand, if multiple reviews disappear at once, check your GBP dashboard for notifications, and double-check if your review requests followed Google's guidelines. If Google suspects your reviews are fake, purchased, or incentivized, It’ll filter all of them.

How Often Should I Get New Reviews?

There’s no fixed guideline, but we suggest you aim for consistency. Ask every customer for a review after the job is complete. Once requesting reviews becomes a part of your standard operation, you’ll get a steady stream of fresh reviews that can outperform bigger, older, and untouched piles. Here, consistency beats volume, every time.