The short answer is no, Google doesn’t like that. They’re looking for original content. But in practice, people do copy their Yelp or Zillow reviews over to their Google Business Profile.
If you have absolutely zero reviews on Google, you can give this a try, but please be mindful of the potential consequences - especially if you have competitors that might want to take you down.
What if my client asks me to draft their review for them?
You want to avoid that because no matter how much you try to sound unique, it will end up looking and sounding like you’re writing your reviews, or that you’re using a bot or buying your reviews.
It might not count if you do it once, but if you do it over and over again there will be a pattern. Google will catch that, and you will get shut down. It happens quite often, and when it does... Google might delete all your reviews, not just the “fake” ones.
Plus, there’s no going back from this. You can’t fight against it, because you were caught red-handed so it’s reasonable for Google to see your other reviews as suspicious or spammy.
Review gating
Review gating is basically stopping bad reviews from getting published. This can be done in multiple ways... adding a piece of code to your website, redirecting people to a form, etc.
It makes sense to do this from a business perspective, but Google doesn’t like it. Google says, if you’re review gating, you're basically going ahead and you're manipulating your review score.
It doesn’t matter that your intentions are pure, and you want to resolve any bad experiences your clients may have had.
Buying reviews.
Just don’t.
If you get caught, there’s a strong chance that ALL of your reviews will be deleted. Google is really good at catching fake reviews, too.
The guys writing them, they’re not trying very hard to cover their tracks. They’ll either use a VPN in the same place, or write a ton all at once, or they use names like Obama, so it’s very obvious.
If your competitor asks Google to take a look at your obviously fake reviews, they will.
And they’ll go one step further and look at ALL of your reviews for spam. There’s a good chance that even your legit reviews will flag their spam filter and they’ll come down, too.
You may even lose your entire listing. It’s just not worth the risk.