G2 Review Rules for Vendors and How to Ask for Reviews Within Them
What G2's Community Guidelines and documentation allow when vendors request reviews, offer incentives, claim a profile or dispute a review, and where the FTC rule applies.
On this page
- What may a vendor do when asking for reviews?
- How do the Community Guidelines treat incentives?
- Who can leave a review, and what gets one rejected?
- Claiming the profile and keeping its facts accurate
- Managing reviews once they are published
- Where the FTC's rule applies
- A request sequence that keeps reviews eligible
- Sources
G2 publishes its vendor rules in three places: the Community Guidelines (prohibitions and penalties), the Review Validity page (reviewer verification and challenges), and the my.G2 documentation (campaigns, statuses, profile fields). We read each on October 7, 2026, alongside the FTC's Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule, because G2 lists FTC non-compliance among its prohibited vendor behaviors. For a team working on AI share of voice, review volume is the tempting target, and the rules reward an even-handed method.
What may a vendor do when asking for reviews?
G2's review guidelines put the vendor rules for soliciting reviews in one clause, which the G2 Community Guidelines title "Biased Review Collection". It prohibits "collecting reviews by any method that segments out potentially negative reviews or exclusively targets positive reviews; conditioning incentives on reviews being positive; independently incentivizing reviewers without disclosing those incentives to G2; discouraging negative reviews of your product or service." A separate clause bars contacting a reviewer "for the purpose of influencing, coercing, or pressuring the reviewer to change their review".
Asking is encouraged: "We encourage all sellers to ask their customers to leave reviews with authentic, unbiased feedback. If G2 finds evidence of a seller soliciting only positive reviews, we will remove the reviews." We read an invitation list limited to NPS promoters as the collection method the first clause describes. G2 lists six enforcement actions for vendors, among them revoked my.G2 access, a profile banner that can say G2 has removed fraudulent reviews, and a ban.
How do the Community Guidelines treat incentives?
G2's Community Guidelines handle vendor reviews, incentives and review solicitation as one policy: an incentive is acceptable when it is capped, unconditional and disclosed to G2. The cap reads: "G2 limits the value of any incentive offered in exchange for a review to $100 USD." It covers cash, gift cards and non-cash items such as swag, credits and subscriptions.
One documented route is a Self-Service Review Campaign in my.G2. G2 Documentation (updated February 26, 2026) states that "Incentivized campaigns are billed only for reviews that pass moderation and are marked as approved." We found no plan requirement on that page.
Under § 465.4 of the federal rule, as published in the eCFR, a business may not provide incentives "in exchange for, or conditioned expressly or by implication on, the writing or creation of consumer reviews expressing a particular sentiment, whether positive or negative". The FTC staff Q&A (November 2024) gives an example of an implied condition: "Tell us how much you loved your visit to John's Steakhouse and get a $5 coupon". Staff add that the section "applies whether the reviews appear on your website or third-party review platforms."
Who can leave a review, and what gets one rejected?
G2.com's vendor guidelines rest on a separate review authenticity policy, the Review Validity page, which decides whether a customer's review gets published. G2 states there: "We require users to validate themselves before writing a review. We accept LinkedIn, business email, or a personal email with a screenshot."
Four rules in the Community Guidelines shape a request list:
- Employees of the vendor and employees of a direct competitor may not leave reviews.
- Business partners such as resellers may, but their reviews "do not count toward the G2 Score" and carry a "Business Partner" label.
- Guest user reviews have not counted toward the G2 Score since June 2024.
- A review based on an experience older than two years is not allowed.
The guidelines permit generative AI help only when the reviewer is LinkedIn Verified, on a seller-provided list or submitting in-app, while G2 Documentation (updated January 29, 2026) lists "Review content is written with a generative AI tool" among common rejection reasons.
Claiming the profile and keeping its facts accurate
G2's vendor policy for claiming your profile sits in the help center, apart from the review guidelines. An unlisted product goes through the Product Submission Form, where G2's research team verifies eligibility and categorization. Then, per the G2 Help Center, you hover over Unclaimed and select "Claim this profile", and "G2 will review it and provide final approval within 1–3 business days." The same page says G2 does not accept B2C products or products in alpha or beta.
Accuracy is a guideline matter too, since the Community Guidelines prohibit "materially misleading corporate or product details". G2 Documentation (updated August 26, 2026) sets the naming standard: "Your product and vendor names on G2 should match how they appear on your website, without added marketing terms, keywords, or trademark symbols." The discipline matches an entity consistency audit: one name, one category and one description wherever a buyer or a model reads about you.
Managing reviews once they are published
G2's guidelines for vendors managing a brand profile and its reviews leave two moves after a review is live: reply or report.
Replying is the default. G2's documentation "recommends responding to both positive and negative reviews", and FTC staff confirm that a business can respond publicly. The limit is § 465.7, which bars unfounded legal threats, physical threats, intimidation, and knowingly or recklessly false public accusations made to block a review or get one removed.
Reporting is narrow. The Community Guidelines state: "We do not edit or remove reviews at a seller's request or act as fact-finders to facilitate disputes between sellers and G2 users." A concern filed from the Review Activity tab "will be reviewed by G2's moderation team within 2 business days." The Review Validity page adds that "disputing a vague review is more likely to be successful if it is supported with a second reason."
Where the FTC's rule applies
The FTC's staff Q&A says the rule "went into effect on October 21, 2024" and "authorizes courts to impose civil penalties for knowing violations". Ad agencies and reputation management companies "are not immune from liability" under it, and staff caution that their guidance "isn't definitive or comprehensive, and it doesn't provide a safe harbor from potential liability."
Whether the rule reaches B2B software reviews is less clear from the text. It defines a consumer review as an evaluation "published to a website or platform dedicated in whole or in part to receiving and displaying such evaluations". We found no definition of "consumer" in § 465.1 and no statement in the staff Q&A about business software, so coverage of a given G2 review is a question for counsel. On G2 the answer matters less, because the Community Guidelines list "Non-compliance with FTC Guidelines" among prohibited vendor behaviors.
| Practice | G2's position | FTC rule and staff Q&A |
|---|---|---|
| Invite only satisfied customers | Prohibited; G2 says it will remove the reviews | No specific prohibition in the rule; staff say it "could violate the FTC Act" |
| Same reward for any approved review | Allowed up to $100 USD when disclosed to G2; labeled Incentivized | Not prohibited by the rule without an express or implied sentiment requirement; staff add that failing to disclose incentives "could be a violation of the FTC Act" |
| Reward for a positive review | Prohibited | Violates § 465.4, even with a disclosure |
| Pressing a reviewer to change a review | Prohibited | Unfounded legal threats, physical threats and intimidation violate § 465.7; paying to change truthful negative reviews "may violate the FTC Act" |
A request sequence that keeps reviews eligible
Taken together, G2's vendor guidelines on how to get reviews legitimately reduce to a sequence a customer marketing team can repeat each quarter. The steps are our proposed implementation; the rule behind each one is G2's or the FTC's.
- Fix the profile first. Claim it, correct names and categories, and have product marketing sign off.
- Select by a neutral rule. Pull account status, last active date, employer and partner flag from the CRM. Exclude staff and competitor employees, tag partners, and leave satisfaction scores out of the query. Legal and customer marketing approve the rule in writing.
- Offer one reward to everyone, or none. Keep it at or under $100 USD, run it through a G2 campaign or disclose it to G2, and get finance approval.
- Ask for an honest review. With a reward attached, copy that asks what customers loved implies a sentiment requirement, by the FTC's example.
- Send through closed channels. G2 warns that publicly shared landing pages can become targets for gift card abuse.
- Track, reply, report sparingly. A named owner approves every public reply and every concern report.
A hypothetical example with assumed rates: the neutral rule returns 800 contacts. Assume 6% submit a review (48) and 75% of those pass moderation (36). With a $25 gift card, billing is based on the 36 approved reviews, roughly $900 in incentives. Both rates are placeholders.
The failure modes are predictable: a list filtered by satisfaction score, a CSM promising a credit G2 never hears about, a public landing page link, an account manager leaning on a reviewer to edit.
For measurement, the Review Activity tab reports moderation status, review source and incentive status. Track approval rate by source, the mix of rejection reasons, and the share of reviews in the 0–90 day decay period, since G2 says "older reviews have less weight when calculating your scores for category and Market Report ranking." UTM parameters set in Product Information let your analytics attribute profile referral traffic, which is where review work connects to pipeline. Whether assistants draw on G2 when buyers compare your category is a separate check within the work of getting cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews. Our guide to raising share of voice in AI category comparisons and the AI Visibility Checker are further resources, and AI search optimization is the service page for teams that want help.
A neutral list will likely yield fewer five-star reviews than a promoters-only push. We found no ground in G2's guidelines for removing reviews over a neutral collection method, which makes them the safer base for a pipeline forecast.
Sources
- G2: Community Guidelines (read October 7, 2026)
- G2: Review Validity (read October 7, 2026)
- G2 Documentation: Review Activity (updated January 29, 2026)
- G2 Documentation: Self-Service Review Campaigns (updated February 26, 2026)
- G2 Documentation: Product Information (updated August 26, 2026)
- G2 Help Center: Finding or listing a product on G2 (published September 18, 2025)
- FTC: The Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule: Questions and Answers (November 2024)
- eCFR: 16 CFR Part 465, Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials