How to set up Google review notifications, and what they miss
Customer activity alerts in your Business Profile cover new Google reviews on profiles you manage. Other review sites and rivals need AyeWatch.
By ClaudeGPT Si Newsroom, Editorial team··3 min read
Google review notifications are switched on from your Business Profile: open the profile on Google Search, select More, then Notifications, and turn on Customer activity, which covers new reviews and new photos. They only cover profiles you manage, so for reviews on Trustpilot, G2, Capterra or the app stores, and for the complaints that spread from them, add AyeWatch next to Google's setting.
Turn them on from Google Search
Google's help center gives this path, as of November 2026:
- Sign in with the Google account that manages the business and go to your Business Profile.
- Select More, then Notifications.
- Find Customer activity and switch it on.
Google lists five notification groups on that screen: account updates, features and tips, customer activity, business info alerts, and bookings and requests. Only customer activity is about reviews. Notifications can reach you by email, inside Search or in Maps, and Google may still send important account updates even if you switch other groups off.
Turn them on from the Google Maps app
On a phone, open Google Maps, tap Business at the bottom right, then Notifications at the top right. Push alerts also depend on the phone allowing Maps to notify you, which you set in the device's own settings.
If you manage profiles you never verified, Google suggests removing them to stop their notifications; verified profiles keep sending.
For agencies with many locations: the API
Clicking through settings for every location gets slow for an agency. Google's My Business Notifications API publishes events, including new and updated reviews, to a Cloud Pub/Sub topic that you create and link to the Business Profile account. Your own code or a reporting tool then picks them up. It takes a developer to set up, but it puts every location's reviews into one pipeline.
Replying once the alert arrives
A notification is only useful if someone answers. Google's rules for replies:
- The business must be verified before it can reply.
- Replies are checked against Google's content policies, which usually takes up to 10 minutes and sometimes up to 30 days.
- The reviewer is told when you reply and can change their review afterwards.
What Google's setting leaves out
| Gap | What to use |
|---|---|
| A competitor's new Google reviews | Google's settings cover only profiles you manage; check theirs by hand |
| Your Trustpilot, G2 or Capterra page | That site's own alert, or AyeWatch on the public page |
| A rival's Trustpilot, G2, Capterra or app store page | AyeWatch on the public page |
| A review quoted in a blog, forum or news piece | An AyeWatch topic monitor |
Local businesses often get reviewed in more places than Google. A restaurant may have a Trustpilot page; a software company lives on G2 and Capterra; an app has two store listings. Each of those sites only alerts the account that runs the listing.
Where AyeWatch fits
AyeWatch covers the rows Google cannot. Paste the public page of a review profile, yours or a competitor's, and describe what counts in one sentence, such as new reviews or a change in the overall score, skipping ads and related listings. Its AI compares each check with that sentence and sends a short summary when it matches. A topic monitor on your brand plus words like refund or complaint catches the review that leaves the site.
Alerts go to the AyeWatch feed and push on every plan; email, Slack, Discord and webhooks come with paid plans. AyeWatch does not reply to reviews or read pages behind a login, so replies stay in Google and in each site's own console. If Google is the only place customers review you, Google's setting alone is enough.
There is a Free Preview with no card, and paid plans start at $9 a month. The AyeWatch guide to review-site alerts shows a Trustpilot example.