Review gating is asking customers to rate their experience first, privately, then only inviting the ones who said they were happy to post a public review. It sounds like customer service. Review platforms and Google both treat it as manipulating the public record, because that's exactly what it does.
What it actually looks like
The common pattern is a private survey or a simple "Were you satisfied?" prompt. A "yes" gets routed to a public review link. A "no" gets routed to an internal feedback form instead, never reaching the review platform at all. The result is a public review page that only ever sees the good outcomes.
Why platforms prohibit it
Google's guidelines on review policies specifically prohibit discouraging or selectively soliciting reviews from customers based on their expected sentiment. A star rating is supposed to represent a business's real distribution of outcomes. Gating breaks that on purpose, and Google treats it as a policy violation that can result in review removal or a suspended profile.
The honest version of the same instinct
Wanting to catch a problem before it becomes a public review isn't wrong. The honest way to do it is to make it easy for any customer, happy or not, to reach you directly (a clear phone number, a follow-up call, a simple way to flag an issue), separate from the review request itself, rather than using the review request as the filter.
What to do if you're already routing reviews this way
Stop routing based on sentiment. Invite every customer to leave a review through the same single link. If you're worried about ending up with the occasional unfair one, see how to respond to a negative review: a good response to a rare bad review does more for your credibility than a suspiciously perfect page ever will.
Questions
Is a general "Please tell us how we did" survey the same thing?
No. A survey isn't gating unless the outcome determines who gets a public review invitation and who doesn't. The problem is the selective routing, not asking for feedback.
Can this actually get a profile suspended?
Yes. Google Business Profile suspensions specifically list solicited or filtered reviews as a policy violation, alongside other Terms of Service issues. See Google Business Profile suspensions: common causes for the broader list.
What if a customer volunteers that they're unhappy before I ask anything?
Handle it directly, like any other customer service issue. That's a normal conversation, not the same thing as filtering who gets asked for a review in the first place.