What is Review Gating?
Review gating is the practice of asking customers how they feel before showing them the review link — happy customers are sent to Google, while unhappy ones are diverted to a private feedback form the public never sees. It filters which experiences reach your public rating. Google's policy explicitly prohibits gating, and profiles caught doing it risk having reviews removed.
The compliant version, used widely in India, asks every customer for feedback and shows everyone the Google link, while additionally offering an internal complaint channel — the difference is that no one is blocked from reviewing publicly. This still helps ratings, because unhappy customers usually prefer venting directly to the owner and getting a resolution over writing a public one-star, but the choice remains genuinely theirs.