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For most local businesses, Google Reviews is the only review platform that really matters. Real estate is the exception. Buyers and sellers vetting an agent will check Google, but they'll also check Zillow — and increasingly check Zillow first, because that's where they're already searching for homes.
For a working agent, that means the review playbook isn't one platform; it's two, run in parallel, with different mechanics on each. Google reviews are easy to request and one-tap to leave. Zillow reviews are harder to request and harder for clients to actually complete. The agents who build a working system on both pull dramatically more inbound leads than the ones who treat reviews as something they'll handle later.
This guide is the modern playbook: when to ask, what to say, how to handle the differences between Google and Zillow, and how to build the whole thing into the closing process so it runs without you remembering to do it.
The two platforms serve different stages of the agent decision funnel.
Zillow is where the buyer or seller already is. Most home buyers and sellers start their search on Zillow looking at properties. While they're there, they end up on agent profiles — sometimes the listing agent of a home they're interested in, sometimes the Premier Agent shown in their feed, sometimes through Zillow's agent finder. At that moment, your Zillow review count is the deciding factor. Five reviews vs. fifty, on otherwise comparable agents, and the buyer is calling the second agent.
Google is where they go to verify. Once a prospect has a name — yours, or one a friend referred them to — they Google you. They're checking for any red flags before reaching out, and your Google review count and average rating do most of the talking. Even agents who get most of their inbound through Zillow find that Google reviews drive the conversion from "interested" to "actually called."
The agents who win at both tend to dominate their local market. The ones who only have one are competing one-handed.
Real estate has unusually clean ask-windows because the milestones are well-defined. The three best moments are:
At mutual acceptance (under contract). Counter-intuitive but powerful. Asking for a review when you go under contract — before the closing process can introduce friction — captures the highest emotional peak in most transactions. The buyer just got the house they wanted; the seller just got the offer they wanted. Reviews from this moment are short but glowing, and the friction-free request rate is the highest of any window.
The catch: many agents are uncomfortable asking before close, on the theory that something could still go wrong. The data says ask anyway. If the deal falls through, you can address it then; but for the 90%+ of deals that close, you've captured a great review at peak emotion.
Within 3 days of closing. This is Zillow's own recommended window, and it works for both platforms. The closing day itself is high-emotion but chaotic — keys exchanged, paperwork everywhere, family pulling at the client's attention. The next 1-3 days are the sweet spot: still fresh, but the client has had a quiet evening to think about how the experience went.
At a 30-day or 60-day check-in. Send a brief check-in to past clients ("how's the new house treating you?") and combine it with a review ask. This works particularly well for clients who didn't respond to your closing-week request. It also reads warm rather than transactional, because you're genuinely checking in.
What doesn't work: asking 6+ months later. Memory fades, and the review you'd get becomes generic ("she was great") rather than specific ("she negotiated $15K off the asking price and walked us through every step of inspection"). Specific reviews are dramatically more effective at converting future prospects, and specificity decays with time.
The rules are the same as other verticals — short, personal, with a direct review link. Real estate-specific templates that work well:
At mutual acceptance:
Hi {Client Name}! Congrats again on the {accepted offer / new home}! While the moment is fresh, would you mind leaving me a quick Google review? It really helps me grow my business: {Review Link}
Post-closing standard:
Hi {Client Name}, congrats again — it was a pleasure helping you {buy / sell} your home. If you have a moment, a Google review would mean the world: {Review Link}
For the Zillow ask (sent separately):
Hi {Client Name}, one more favor — would you mind leaving me a Zillow review too? It's where most buyers/sellers find me. The link is here: {Zillow Review Link}. Thanks again!
The 30-day check-in + ask:
Hi {Client Name}, hope you're settling into the new place! If you have a minute, a Google review of our work together would mean a lot: {Review Link}. Thanks again!
Subject line options:
Email body (post-closing):
Hi {First Name},
Congratulations again on closing on your {new home / sale}. It was a true pleasure working with you through the process, and I'm grateful you trusted me with such an important decision.
If you have a few minutes, would you mind leaving me a Google review? Reviews from clients like you help other buyers and sellers in {City} find an agent they can trust — and they're how I keep growing my business.
[Leave a Google Review →]
Thanks so much,{Your Name}
For agents who want to ask for both Google and Zillow without sending two separate emails (which works, but doubles the friction), an alternative pattern is to send the Google ask first and the Zillow ask 5-7 days later. Asking for both in the same email cuts response rates roughly in half — the customer reads it as a chore rather than a favor.
Zillow's review request mechanics are different enough from Google that they deserve their own walkthrough. The platform has a built-in request flow inside your agent profile.
To request a Zillow review natively:
A few things that catch agents off guard about the Zillow flow:
The reviewer has to create a Zillow account. Unlike Google, where reviews can be left from any device with a Google account (which most people already have), Zillow requires the reviewer to register on the platform if they don't already have an account. This adds friction — expect 30-50% of clients you ask to drop off at this step.
Reviews are moderated before publishing. Zillow's review team reviews each submission for guideline compliance before it goes live. This typically takes a few days. Don't panic if a review your client says they wrote isn't showing up immediately.
Reviewers must classify the relationship. Zillow asks reviewers to indicate whether they were a buyer, seller, both, or "shopped but didn't buy / listed but didn't sell." Make sure your client knows to expect this — some assume the form will already know.
The native bulk email is capped at 50 addresses per day. Fine for most working agents, but a meaningful constraint for high-volume teams or agents catching up on a backlog of past clients.
Three options, and the right answer depends on your volume:
Option 1: Native Zillow only. Free, built-in, fine for solo agents doing 20-30 transactions a year. The constraint is that Zillow's tool only requests Zillow reviews — you'll still need a separate process for Google, Facebook, and any other platforms. Most solo agents using only the native tool end up generating Zillow reviews and forgetting Google entirely.
Option 2: Direct link only, sent through your own email or SMS. Copy your personalized Zillow review URL once, then drop it into your own templated emails or texts to clients. This works because Zillow's direct link works whether the request was sent through their platform or yours. The advantage: you can send the Zillow ask alongside (or sequenced with) your Google ask, all from the same workflow. The disadvantage: you're managing two review pipelines manually.
Option 3: Use a review request tool that handles both platforms. This is the modern setup most agents settle on once they pass ~30 transactions a year. A single tool sends an SMS or email with the review link of your choice (Google, Zillow, Facebook, or all three sequenced), tracks who's responded, sends reminders to non-responders, and aggregates the reviews into one dashboard.
TrueReview is set up for this pattern — the platform supports custom review links so you can send Zillow review requests through the same SMS/email flow you use for Google, and the dashboard pulls in your Zillow reviews alongside Google and Facebook so you see everything in one place. The Zillow widget feature also lets you embed your Zillow reviews on your website, which matters for the "verify on Google" stage of the funnel.
The agents who consistently generate reviews across both platforms aren't doing it manually transaction by transaction. They've built the ask into their closing process — meaning it happens by default, not by remembering.
A typical setup looks like this:
Step 1: Mention reviews early. Somewhere in your initial buyer/seller onboarding (the buyer consultation, the listing presentation), include one casual line: "Once we close, I'll send you a quick request for a Google and Zillow review — it's how I grow my business, and I appreciate the help." This sets the expectation. Clients aren't surprised when the request comes; they're prepared.
Step 2: Trigger the request from your CRM. When you mark the deal as "closed" in your CRM (LionDesk, Follow Up Boss, Top Producer, kvCORE, etc.), that action triggers an automated review request 24-48 hours later. Most modern real estate CRMs support this through native integrations or Zapier. TrueReview integrates directly with LionDesk and connects to most other CRMs through Zapier.
Step 3: Use the right sequence. A typical sequence for a closed deal:
This sequence respects the client's time, doesn't pile multiple asks on top of each other, and gives Zillow a separate moment so it doesn't compete with the Google ask.
Step 4: Track who responds. Most agents discover that 60-70% of clients leave a review when asked, but they're losing the other 30-40% to silence. The right tool tells you which clients didn't respond so you can follow up personally — a quick phone call to a high-value past client who didn't leave a review converts at 80-90%, but you have to know who they are to make the call.
For team leads and brokerages, review collection has additional logistics worth getting right.
Each agent needs reviews under their own profile. A buyer who searches "best agent in {City}" gets agent-specific results — Google ranks and displays individual agent profiles, not the brokerage's. Make sure each agent on your team has their own Google Business Profile (as a service-area business or agent-specific profile) and their own Zillow profile, and that reviews are landing on those, not on the brokerage.
Centralize the workflow but personalize the messages. A team admin or transaction coordinator can run the review request automation for the whole team, but the SMS or email should come from the individual agent's name and number. Generic "thanks from XYZ Realty" requests convert at half the rate of "thanks from Maria" requests.
Track review velocity per agent. The agents on your team generating the most reviews will tell you something useful: they're either the busiest, the friendliest, or both. Use the data to identify what they're doing right and replicate it across the team. A team where every agent is generating 3-5 reviews a month dramatically outperforms a team where the top producer has 200 reviews and everyone else has 8.
Use a tool that supports multi-user access with permissions. Each agent should see their own reviews and only their own client list; the team lead should see everything. TrueReview's Premium plan supports unlimited teammates with permission controls, which lets a brokerage run the whole team's review workflow from one account.
Negative reviews are inevitable in real estate — it's a high-stakes, high-emotion transaction, and even the best agents will occasionally end up with a frustrated client. The way you respond is what other prospects see.
A few principles:
Don't respond in the heat of the moment. Wait 24 hours. Real estate clients sometimes leave heated reviews after a deal falls through that they'll regret in a week — and Zillow does allow review removals in some cases.
Acknowledge without admitting fault publicly. "I'm sorry your experience didn't meet expectations" is fine. "I'm sorry I missed the inspection deadline" is a public admission that can affect E&O claims and brokerage liability.
Move it offline. Provide a phone number or email and ask them to reach out. The act of offering reads well to prospects scanning the response, even if the original reviewer never calls.
On Zillow specifically, reviews go through moderation. If a review violates Zillow's guidelines (factually false claims, slander, language, off-topic content), you can dispute it through the platform. Don't dispute reviews you simply disagree with — that doesn't work — but for genuine guideline violations, the process is real and works.
A safe response template for negative reviews on both platforms:
Thank you for sharing your feedback, {Name}. I'm sorry your experience didn't meet expectations, and I take your concerns seriously. I'd welcome the opportunity to discuss them directly — please call me at {phone number} so we can talk through what happened.
A few practices that show up in real estate review marketing but should be avoided:
Asking for reviews before the deal closes. Mutual acceptance is fine; under contract before inspection cleared is a roll of the dice. If something derails the deal, you've created a window for a negative review during the breakdown.
Incentivizing reviews. Both Google and Zillow prohibit offering anything of value in exchange for reviews. Closing gifts that are unrelated to whether the client leaves a review are fine; "leave us a review and we'll send you a $50 gift card" is not, and it can get your profiles suspended on either platform.
Writing your own reviews under fake accounts. Both platforms detect and remove these, and Zillow's moderation team is particularly aggressive about it. The risk-reward math is terrible.
Asking past clients to "fix" their negative review. Pressuring a client to remove or update a negative review can backfire publicly — they may post a follow-up review describing the pressure. If the review is unfair, address it through the platform's dispute process; if it's fair, learn from it.
Treating Zillow as optional. Many solo agents focus only on Google because the platform's friction is lower. The agents pulling the most inbound from Zillow are the ones who built the Zillow review pipeline anyway, accepting the 30-50% drop-off as the cost of being competitive on the platform where buyers and sellers actually start their search.
A real estate agent or team running a well-built review program has all of these in place:
Agents who get all of this right tend to dominate the local 3-pack on Google search and the top results on Zillow's agent finder within 12-18 months. Agents who don't tend to spend that same period buying leads instead — which costs dramatically more than running a review pipeline ever does.
Ready to systematize Google and Zillow reviews for your real estate business? Start your free 14-day trial of TrueReview — direct LionDesk integration, support for custom Zillow review links alongside Google, embeddable Zillow review widgets for your agent website, and team-level dashboards for brokerages. No setup fees, no contracts.
