Promoting your business on Reddit, Quora, and review sites? Read the rules first

A colleague drops a Reddit link into the team chat. “I answered a question about us. Can everyone give it an upvote?” Across the hall, someone adds a line to a customer email. “Leave us an honest Google review and we’ll take $10 off your next order.”

I’d stop both before they went out. The Reddit reply might be accurate. The customer might write exactly what they think. The problems are the coordinated votes and the discount. Changing a few words in either message leaves the underlying problem in place.

On some PaperHorse action cards, we include a “Do it right” section to explain what to watch for before you act. A business that spots a relevant thread or review site in an AI answer deserves guidance it can use before someone posts under their own name. Sometimes that means writing a better reply. Sometimes it means leaving the thread alone.

This guide summarizes platform policies and U.S. rules checked November 12, 2026. It is for general information and does not provide legal advice.

What to check before you post

If you’re about to…	Check this first	Who sets the rule
Reply about your business on Reddit	Read the subreddit rules, identify your connection, and leave voting to readers.	Reddit and the community
Use a PaperHorse draft to reply on Reddit	Check the facts in the draft, Reddit’s AI policy, and the posting rules of the subreddit where you plan to reply.	Reddit’s AI content policy and the community
Answer a question on Quora	Disclose your affiliation, give the answer on Quora, and leave out affiliate links.	Quora
Ask for a Google review	Use a neutral request. Skip incentives and invitations limited to happy customers.	Google Maps
Ask for a Yelp review	Leave Yelp out of your review-request email. Yelp tells businesses not to solicit customer reviews.	Yelp’s business terms
Correct Wikipedia or Wikidata	Disclose paid work. On English Wikipedia, request a sourced change on the article’s talk page. Wikidata specifies disclosure on your user page.	Wikipedia · Wikidata
Publish a testimonial or comparison	Preserve the customer’s meaning and have evidence for each factual advertising claim.	FTC endorsement guidance · FTC substantiation policy
Add review stars to your website	Check what is being reviewed, who controls the page, and where the ratings came from.	Google Search
Give a creator a product for coverage	Make the relationship clear to the audience. Qualify any link that is part of the deal.	FTC · Google Search

Reddit allows communities to set their own promotion rules

Before replying on behalf of your business, read the rules of that particular subreddit. Look for restrictions on vendor replies, self-promotion, and links. Where participation is welcome, say how you know the answer. “I design these pumps” gives a reader more context than a username and an unusually detailed opinion about pumps. A disclosure still leaves the community’s posting rules in force. Reddit’s spam policy

The team-chat upvote request is a separate issue. Reddit prohibits coordinated voting and using multiple accounts to manipulate votes or evade a ban. If you want a colleague’s expertise, ask them privately to check your facts before you post. Leave the votes alone afterward. Reddit’s community disruption policy

Quora expects the answer to work without the click

Quora asks you to disclose a relevant affiliation in the answer or the credential displayed with it. Self-promotion has to be part of a direct, helpful response. Affiliate links are prohibited. Quora’s question and answer policies

Here’s my editing test. Delete the link and reread the answer. If someone asks whether a product will fit through a narrow doorway, give them the dimensions, say whether the handles come off, and explain what to measure. A link to the installation drawing can then help someone confirm the fit. If deleting the link leaves “see our guide,” you still owe the reader an answer.

Google, Yelp, and the FTC draw different lines on reviews

Google lets a business invite customers to review a genuine experience, including through a link or QR code. It prohibits incentives and selectively soliciting positive reviews. The $10 discount breaks Google’s policy even if the customer can leave one star and still collect it. The less obvious mistake is a satisfaction survey that sends the Google link only to customers who picked nine or ten. Google’s review guidance · Google Maps contribution policy

Yelp makes a different decision for you. Its business terms say you agree not to “solicit or ask for reviews from your customers.” Taking the coupon out of an email still leaves a review request. Yelp’s terms of service

In the U.S., the FTC’s consumer review rule prohibits buying reviews conditioned on a particular sentiment, positive or negative. It also addresses fake reviews, including ones attributed to people who never used the product. An incentive offered regardless of sentiment can still raise disclosure and deception issues, and the destination’s policy still applies. Our practice is simpler to administer: where requests are allowed, invite customers on the same terms, give them room to be critical, and offer nothing in exchange. FTC review-rule Q&A · FTC guide for marketers

A customer quote on your site becomes part of your advertising

Imagine a customer wrote, “Setup took an hour once support walked me through it.” A testimonial that reads “Setup took an hour” removes the condition another buyer might care about most. Keep the customer’s meaning intact, identify any material connection, and label a curated selection as selected testimonials. If you suppress reviews based on negative sentiment, presenting the remainder as all or most of the reviews received can violate the FTC rule. FTC endorsement guidance · FTC review-rule Q&A

Our practice is to send the customer the exact quote, attribution, and intended use, then get permission in writing. State law varies. California, for example, provides a claim in certain circumstances for using someone’s name or photograph in advertising without prior consent. California Judicial Council guidance on Civil Code §3344

Wikipedia and Wikidata have different routes for a correction

Suppose your company’s founding year is wrong on English Wikipedia. An employee can often supply the most useful piece of the correction: a reliable published source for the right date. Disclose your connection and put the proposed wording and source on the article’s talk page for an independent editor to consider. English Wikipedia strongly discourages people with a conflict of interest from editing affected articles directly. Wikimedia also requires disclosure for paid contributions. Wikipedia’s conflict-of-interest guideline · Wikimedia’s terms

On Wikidata, the information lives in an item with individual factual statements and references. Its paid-editing policy specifies that contributors disclose who pays them on their user page. If updating an item is part of your job, make that disclosure and supply a reference for the statement you’re correcting. Wikidata’s paid-editing policy

A comparison page needs evidence for the claim readers will take away

“Costs less” sounds easy to prove until one price is per user, the other is per account, and one requires an annual commitment. The FTC supports truthful comparative advertising with a clear basis for comparison. Advertisers need a reasonable basis for objective claims before publishing them. FTC comparative advertising policy · FTC substantiation policy

PaperHorse’s practice is to name the plans, show the billing assumptions, link the supporting pages, and date the comparison. If your competitor costs less for a two-person team and you cost less for a ten-person team, publish both cases. The buyer can find the row that applies to them, and your team knows exactly what to recheck when prices change.

Can reviews of your own business earn stars in Google Search?

Google says a page is ineligible for review stars when it uses local-business or organization markup for reviews of itself that it controls. Embedding a third-party review widget on your own homepage is one of Google’s examples. Customers can still read the testimonials there. The restriction concerns the stars that might accompany that page in organic search results. Google’s review snippet guidelines

Google lists product reviews separately. Our reading is that a review of a particular product should be evaluated under the product and review guidelines. Check what buyers actually reviewed, keep the reviews visible on the page, and avoid marking up ratings collected from other websites. Even eligible markup carries no promise that stars will appear. Google’s review snippet guidelines

Sending a product to a creator or journalist

If you pay a creator or give them a product and they endorse it, a material connection should be clear where people encounter the endorsement. A plain statement such as “The manufacturer gave me this unit to test” tells a reader something they can use. The FTC advises making the disclosure easy to notice in the post or video itself. If a link is part of an exchange for money or goods, Google accepts a link qualified with rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow". An independent editorial link does not automatically become sponsored because you pitched the story. FTC disclosure guidance · Google’s link spam policy

For a journalist who needs a unit to test, our practice is to ask about the outlet’s policy, offer a loan with a return date and prepaid shipping, and leave the coverage decision to the editor. A loan can still matter to readers. The FTC says the product and the length of the loan can affect whether disclosure is needed. Make the terms clear up front so the writer can describe them accurately. FTC endorsement FAQ

Before your next off-site action

Pick one request your team already sends. Read it as the person on the receiving end. Who is asking? What are they asking me to do? What do I get in return? Then open the policy for the place where that action will happen. You might find the only change you need is to remove a coupon, stop asking colleagues for votes, or put a sourced correction on a talk page.

Seeing a source cited in an AI answer gives you a reason to look at it. Following its rules helps you participate there responsibly. Whether your business appears in more answers afterward is a separate question, and one you have to measure.

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