Review requests for landscapers: ask every customer, not every visit
Some of your customers get a visit every week and are never home, so the question is rhythm, not whether the job is done. Here is who to ask and when, which sites matter, a sample email and the rules.
For your trade › Landscapers · Facts checked October 16, 2026
Who to ask, and how often
Landscaping is two businesses in one. Maintenance means a visit every week or month, often with nobody home. A project, such as planting, hardscape or an install, ends once and the client lives with the result. The ask works differently for each.
| Customer | When to add them | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly or monthly maintenance | After the third visit or the first month. Then at most twice a year. | After one visit there is little to judge. Jobber's help center (read on 16 October 2026) says it sends a given client one review request every 6 months at most [1]. |
| A project: planting, hardscape, an install | About a week after you finish. | The client has had time to live with it. The project gets one ask. |
These timings are our advice, and we found no neutral study of when to ask. Add a customer when you want the email to go. It leaves within about 10 minutes, inside your sending hours (8am to 8pm by default), and one reminder follows after 72 hours. GossipGarden asks every customer you add, so the rhythm is yours: once, at the visit you chose, and again only when the next period is up. A customer who leaves earlier is added when they leave.
If you send customers from a Google Sheet, or through Zapier or another webhook, make sure only that visit arrives. A customer is asked once for each job number, so a new number on every weekly visit counts as a new job each time.
Which review sites matter to a landscaper
Google comes first. It lists both landscaping services and lawn care services among the businesses that can run Local Services Ads [2], and says star ratings and the number of reviews affect ranking there [3]. Beyond Google, as read on 16 October 2026:
| Site | What to know as a landscaper | Do we ask there? |
|---|---|---|
| Google says customers are more likely to review if the request comes from you directly [3]. | Yes. The main ask. | |
| Meta's Community Feedback policy covers ratings and reviews on Marketplace and Shops, and bars incentives for them unless disclosed under its branded content policies. It does not mention Page recommendations [4]. | Yes. | |
| BBB | BBB does not accept incentivized reviews, even when the incentive is disclosed [5]. | Yes, if you have a BBB profile. |
| Nextdoor | TrueReview, a vendor blog (posted 18 August 2024, updated 11 July 2026), calls it “hyperlocal”, with neighbors asking neighbors for recommendations [6]. | No. See the questions below. |
| Yelp | Yelp says it is against its policy for businesses to ask for reviews [7]. | Never. If you add your Yelp page, your review page shows a “Find us on Yelp” link instead. |
| Angi, Thumbtack | Lead sites. Angi gives pros a personalized review link [8]. | No. Not sites we ask on. |
You pick which sites are on and how the asks are split between them. Nothing about the customer changes which site they are sent to.
A sample email for a yard
Many of your customers are not home, so this lands in an inbox and gets read later. Keep the address, the schedule and any gate code out of it. Name your business and the work, and nothing more about the visit.
Subject: A thank-you from [Your business]
Hi [First name],
Thanks for letting [Your business] take care of your yard.
If you have a minute, a short Google review helps other homeowners choose a landscaping company:
Leave a review on Google
Thank you,[Your business]
Square brackets mark what GossipGarden fills in for each customer. You can write wording like this in Settings › Templates; the link is the button GossipGarden adds under your words.
The rules on asking
Google does not stop you asking. As read on 16 October 2026, its policy lets a merchant “solicit or encourage the posting of content that does represent a genuine experience, without offering incentives to do so or attempting to influence the rating or the contents of the review” [9]. On a route, that means:
- The same ask for every customer. Google lists “selectively solicit positive reviews from customers” as prohibited [9]. In the FTC's Endorsement Guides (16 CFR 255.2(e), Example 11, as read in the eCFR on 16 October 2026), inviting only the purchasers who give very positive feedback to post reviews may be an unfair or deceptive practice if it makes the posted reviews substantially more positive than they would have been. Inviting all recent purchasers “would not have been unfair or deceptive” [10].
- Our advice: not the same ask every week. Neither Google's policy nor the FTC's Guides tells you to ask at every visit. What they target is choosing whom to ask by how they seemed, so let timing follow the kind of work, never the customer.
- Nothing in return. No credit on the next bill, no extra visit thrown in. Google calls incentives for reviews “strictly prohibited” [11], and the FTC rule on consumer reviews (16 CFR 465.4, as read in the eCFR on 16 October 2026) makes it an unfair or deceptive practice to give compensation or other incentives in exchange for, or conditioned expressly or by implication on, reviews expressing a particular sentiment [12].
- No quotas for crews, no pressure on the property. Google lists “Merchants requesting that staff solicit a certain number of reviews” as prohibited. It also says merchants “should not require or pressure users to leave ratings or write reviews while on the premises” [9], without saying whether a yard counts. Your crews are there every week, so let the email do the asking.
Nothing in GossipGarden scores, screens or routes a customer. Your route decides when you add someone, and everyone you add gets the same email. The template editor rejects common incentive words, but it is a word list, so the rule is still yours to keep.
Questions landscapers ask
- I mow 80 yards every week. Do I ask each week?
- We suggest not. Add each customer once, after the third visit or the first month, then ask again at most twice a year. The Contacts page shows each customer's request count, and “Ask again” is the button for a repeat; GossipGarden enforces no gap, so the schedule is yours.
- Can I put a Yelp sticker on my trucks?
- Yes. Yelp's guidance suggests a “Find us on Yelp” sticker “for your storefront or service vehicle” [7]. It asks businesses not to request reviews, so GossipGarden never does. If you add your Yelp page, your review page shows a “Find us on Yelp” link.
- Can GossipGarden ask my customers for Nextdoor recommendations?
- No. Nextdoor is not a site GossipGarden asks on. Nextdoor's own advice (a 2019 business blog post, updated 2021) is to ask neighbors who have already done business with you to like your Business Page, leave a recommendation or do both [13]. Share that link yourself.
- Most of my customers are never home. Does that change the email?
- Only in what you leave out: the address, the schedule, any gate code. The email names your business and the work. We suggest the first ask for maintenance comes after the third visit, when there is something to look at.
Sources
Each number in the text points to the source it came from, as read on the date shown. Rules and prices change; check the source before you rely on one.
- Jobber Help Center: reviews and marketing tools (read October 16, 2026)
- Google Local Services Ads Help: business types available in the US (read October 16, 2026)
- Google Ads Help: reviews in Local Services Ads (read October 16, 2026)
- Meta: Community Feedback policy (read October 16, 2026)
- BBB: paid and incentivized customer reviews (read October 16, 2026)
- TrueReview: Best Contractor Sites in 2026 (posted 18 August 2024, updated 11 July 2026) (read October 16, 2026)
- Yelp for Business: how to get Yelp reviews without asking (7 March 2025) (read October 16, 2026)
- Angi help: how to have success with reviews (read October 16, 2026)
- Google Maps User Generated Content Policy: prohibited and restricted content (read October 16, 2026)
- eCFR: 16 CFR Part 255, the FTC Endorsement Guides (current text; last amended 26 July 2023) (read October 16, 2026)
- Google Business Profile Help: reviews (asking, incentives, replies) (read October 16, 2026)
- eCFR: 16 CFR Part 465, the FTC rule on consumer reviews (current text; last amended 21 October 2024) (read October 16, 2026)
- Nextdoor for Business: how businesses can get more recommendations (posted 9 October 2019, updated 16 July 2021) (read October 16, 2026)
Every customer gets the same ask. GossipGarden never filters, screens or routes anyone by rating or sentiment. Why that matters.
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If your customers already live in one of these, the step-by-step guides show how to send them to GossipGarden: Housecall Pro, Google Sheets.