Reply to Google reviews with AI in SGEN

Read and reply to your Google Business Profile reviews without leaving the dashboard

The Reviews tool inside SGEN's Analytics section brings your Google Business Profile reviews into the dashboard. You can reply to them by hand, let AI draft every reply for you, or go fully automatic — with pacing, daily caps, and a content safety gate keeping every publish clean. This guide covers all three approaches and explains what happens at each stage, including how Google moderates replies after they go out.

What is this for?

The Reviews surface is SGEN's connection point between your business and what customers write about you on Google Search and Maps. It gives you three things in one place: a summary of your rating and response rate, the full list of recent reviews, and the controls to reply. Replying matters — a listing that stays quiet starts to look unattended. The AI tooling reduces that work from minutes per review to seconds.

The feature lives at Analytics → Reviews inside the SGEN Dashboard. It is a staff-gated surface: only users with staff or owner access can open it. Everyone else sees a "Coming soon" screen; access is granted by an admin.

Scope

What this guide covers: reading the Reviews workspace, replying to a review by hand with AI assistance, saving and publishing drafts, turning on Auto-draft, turning on Auto-reply with owner consent, configuring the AI voice and contact opt-ins, understanding the pacing and daily cap rules, and handling Google moderation outcomes.

Out of scope: reviews on platforms other than Google (Facebook, Yelp, Trustpilot, and others are not connected); requesting removal or flagging a review as inappropriate (those actions happen in Google's own tools); promoting offers or inserting URLs via automatic replies (the content safety gate blocks these in auto-published replies — use manual reply for promotional content); and the GMB Posts feature (a separate tab in the same Dashboard surface, covered separately).

Reference

Mode options

The AI replies toggle is a three-way switch stored per domain. The three modes are:

Switching from Auto-reply to Off or Auto-draft cancels any replies already queued but not yet published. Switching from any other mode into Auto-reply requires the consent dialog to be completed. When you first switch into Auto-reply, existing drafts for that domain are queued to publish gradually — not all at once.

Summary cards

The three cards at the top of the Reviews workspace each show:

Review row action buttons

The action button on each review row changes based on the review's current state:

AI instructions fields

All fields in the AI instructions modal apply to manual "Reply with AI", Auto-draft, and Auto-reply equally.

Pacing and cap rules (Auto-reply)

Every auto-published reply must clear all of these gates before it goes out. A reply that fails a gate is either deferred (retried later) or held as a draft for manual review.

Content safety gate rules

The gate checks in this order, and a draft is blocked at the first rule it trips:

1. Empty draft
2. Reply over the length limit (approximately 4,096 bytes)
3. Any URL (http://, www., and similar)
4. Email addresses — unless exactly matching an opted-in contact email
5. Phone numbers — unless exactly matching an opted-in contact number (format-tolerant; extra digits still block)
6. Advertising language ("discount", "promo code", "% off", "follow us", "sign up", and similar)
7. Near-duplicate of a reply recently published for the same location (high text similarity)

The gate applies only to automatic publishing. When you publish by hand, you are the reviewer — the gate does not block manual submits.

Good use cases

Staying on top of a steady review flow. If reviews arrive faster than you can write individual replies, Auto-draft clears the backlog while you keep the final approve-and-publish step.

Running multiple locations under one account. The location filter on the Reviews page scopes the list and the summary cards. Auto-reply handles each location independently, with its own spacing and daily cap.

Recovering a low response rate. Your Response Rate card shows the gap between reviews received and reviews answered. Turning on Auto-draft surfaces a ready-to-publish draft for every unanswered review.

Keeping a consistent voice across your team. AI instructions are set once and apply to every reply — manual, drafted, or automatic. No variation in tone depending on who happens to open a review first.

Responding to negative reviews with a safety window. The 15–30 minute delay on 1–2 star reviews gives you time to step in personally. If you do nothing within that window, Auto-reply publishes an empathetic, policy-compliant draft.

What NOT to use this for

Replying to reviews on platforms other than Google. The Reviews tool reads from and writes to Google Business Profile only.

Managing the content of the reviews themselves. You can reply to a review; you cannot edit, flag, or request removal of a review from inside SGEN.

Injecting promotional content via Auto-reply. The content safety gate blocks links, promotional language, and unapproved contact details from auto-published replies. Write and publish promotional replies by hand — the gate does not apply to manual submits.

How this connects to other features

• Google integration (Connect Google Business Profile) — The Reviews tool requires a connected Google account with business.manage permission on the location before any reply can publish.

See Connect your Google Business Profile first if the account is not yet linked.

• GMB Dashboard (Posts tab) — Reviews and Posts share the Analytics → GMB Dashboard surface but are independent features with separate settings.

AI instructions for Reviews do not affect Post scheduling.

• Analytics overview — The three summary cards (Overall Rating, Response Rate, Sentiment Analysis) feed into your broader Analytics view.

They update as the background job scans reviews.

• Settings — AI instructions and daily cap are per-domain.

Switching between sites in the dashboard resets the panel so one site's configuration never bleeds onto another.

Before you start

Two things must be in place before you can publish a reply:

1. A connected Google account with reply permission. The account must manage the Business Profile location with edit rights. Connect or re-connect under Analytics → GMB Dashboard → account settings.

2. Staff or owner access on the SGEN Dashboard. The Reviews page is visible only to privileged users. If you see "Coming soon", ask an admin to grant access.

For Auto-reply specifically, you also need to complete the consent step in Step 4. Auto-reply publishes on your behalf, so it requires a recorded, versioned opt-in tied to the connected account.

Where to find it

Open the SGEN Dashboard and go to Analytics → Reviews in the left navigation. The in-app path is /analytics/reviews.

The page is part of the Live Analytics section, which is staff-gated. If the URL returns a "Coming soon" screen instead of the Reviews workspace, the account does not have the required access level.

Steps

Start with Step 1 to open the workspace. Then follow whichever path matches your goal: replying once by hand (Step 2), turning on Auto-draft (Step 3), or enabling Auto-reply (Step 4). Step 5 covers AI instructions, which apply across all three modes and can be configured at any time.

1. Open the Reviews workspace

Navigate to Analytics → Reviews in the left-hand navigation. Select the location you want to work with if more than one is connected. The three summary cards load at the top: Overall Rating, Response Rate, and Sentiment Analysis. Below the cards, the recent review list appears with one row per review.

The AI replies toggle sits above the review list and shows the current mode: Off, Auto-draft, or Auto-reply. The sparkles (✨) button to its right opens AI instructions.

2. Reply to a single review by hand

This path keeps you in control of every publish. Use it for a specific review you want to handle immediately, regardless of the automation mode.

Open the respond dialog. Find the review in the list and click its action button. Respond (green) appears when no reply exists. Respond again (amber) appears when the customer edited their review after you last replied. Edit response appears when a current reply already exists.

Generate an AI draft. Click Reply with AI inside the dialog. A draft appears in the text box, written in your configured tone and referencing the review content. Click Rephrase to get a different wording while keeping the same meaning.

If the review includes customer-attached photos, tick Include photo before clicking Reply with AI so the draft can reference the photo.

Edit the draft. Change any word, add a personal detail, or rewrite the draft entirely. The text box is free-form; the AI draft is a starting point.

Submit or save. Click Submit Response to publish the reply to your live Google listing immediately. Click Submit Draft to save without publishing. A saved draft appears on the review row and can be published later.

After you click Submit Response, Google receives the reply immediately. Google runs a brief moderation check before the reply becomes publicly visible on your listing.

3. Turn on Auto-draft

Auto-draft is the safe starting point for automation. The AI writes a draft for every review that needs a reply and saves it. Nothing publishes until you do it.

Click Auto-draft in the AI replies toggle above the review list. It switches on immediately — no confirmation dialog required.

A background job then scans your reviews and creates drafts for any that have no reply, or for reviews edited after you last replied. The draft text appears on the review row. Open any review row, review and optionally adjust the draft, then click Submit Response to publish.

The background job does not re-draft a review whose draft already exists and whose review text has not changed. If a customer edits their review, the job detects the new version and creates a fresh draft.

4. Turn on Auto-reply

Auto-reply publishes the drafts automatically, paced and safety-checked. This requires your explicit, recorded consent.

Click Auto-reply in the AI replies toggle. A dialog titled "Turn on Auto-reply?" opens.

Read the dialog. It discloses that AI-drafted replies will publish automatically for all star ratings, with at least approximately one minute between replies per location, up to your daily cap per location per day. The locations the feature will act on are listed.

Tick the consent checkbox inside the dialog. The "Enable Auto-reply" button becomes active only after you tick it.

Click Enable Auto-reply. The toggle moves to Auto-reply.

Your consent is recorded: who consented, when, which account was connected, the disclosure text, and a version stamp. Auto-reply publishes only while that consent remains valid. Consent goes stale if the connected Google account changes or if the consent terms are updated to a new version. When consent goes stale, Auto-reply pauses publishing while drafts continue being written. Re-confirm by clicking Auto-reply in the toggle again.

When you first turn on Auto-reply, existing drafts already saved for that site are queued to publish gradually — spaced out over a period of minutes per location, not all at once.

To stop Auto-reply, click Auto-draft (to keep drafting but pause automatic publishes) or Off (to stop everything including drafting). Switching out of Auto-reply cancels any replies queued but not yet published.

5. Set the AI voice and contact details

The AI instructions control how every reply sounds. They apply to manual "Reply with AI", Auto-draft, and Auto-reply equally. Open them by clicking the sparkles (✨) button above the review list.

Pick a tone template. Click one of the five chips: Balanced (default), Warm & friendly, Professional & concise, Empathetic & apologetic, or Custom.

Write custom instructions (optional). Click the Custom chip and type in the textarea. Use {{business_name}} anywhere you want the business name to appear — it fills in automatically at reply time. Custom instructions are capped at 8,000 characters. Click Reset to default to go back to the built-in persona.

Opt in to contact details and staff names. The four toggles in the "Include in replies" section are all off by default. Include contact number, Include email, and Include location draw their values from your live Google Business Profile — you do not type them, and they are never shown in the modal. They appear in replies after your profile has been synced.

Tick Mention staff or owner to reveal a name-chip editor where you add short name tags. The AI uses those names when contextually fitting and never invents additional names.

The contact and staff details you opt in to are the only contact information the content safety gate allows through an auto-published reply.

Click Save. Settings save without touching the automation mode or your consent.

What success looks like

After publishing a reply by hand, the reply text appears beneath the review in the list. The action button changes from Respond to Edit response.

After turning on Auto-draft, review rows begin showing draft text with a Respond button. The Drafted tab count in the review list increases as the background job processes eligible reviews.

After turning on Auto-reply, replies trickle out over time according to the pacing rules. The Response Rate card percentage rises as more reviews receive published replies.

Google moderates every published reply before it shows publicly. Pending means the reply is with Google for moderation. Approved means it is live on your listing. Rejected means Google declined it — the draft re-opens in SGEN so you can rework the text and re-submit.

What to do if it does not work

"Coming soon" instead of the Reviews page. Your account does not have staff or owner access. Ask an admin to grant the required access level.

Reply with AI produces no draft. The AI service may be temporarily unavailable. Refresh the page and try again. If the problem persists, contact support.

Auto-reply is on but no replies are publishing. The most common cause is that the global publish switch is off at the infrastructure level — drafts continue being written in this state. The second common cause is stale consent: if your connected Google account changed since you enabled Auto-reply, consent is no longer valid. Re-confirm by clicking Auto-reply in the toggle.

Replies are publishing but very slowly. This is expected. Per-location spacing, per-star delays, the hourly ceiling, and the daily cap all spread publishes over time. A backlog of unanswered reviews trickles out over hours. This pacing is intentional and protects your listing from appearing automated.

A draft shows on a review but never auto-publishes. The draft likely tripped the content safety gate — a link, an unapproved phone number or email, advertising language, or text too similar to a recent reply for that location. It may also have been edited within approximately the last 2 minutes, which temporarily locks it. Open the draft, adjust the text, and save.

My opted-in phone number is not appearing in replies. Contact details come from your synced Business Profile. A freshly connected account may need a sync before the value is available. Allow time for the next sync to complete after connecting or reconnecting the account.

Google rejected a published reply. A rejected reply is flagged and its draft re-opened in SGEN. Rework the wording and click Submit Response again. Avoid anything that reads as promotional, off-topic, or contrary to Google's review response policies.

The "Enable Auto-reply" button is not active in the consent dialog. The button enables only after you tick the consent checkbox inside the dialog. Tick the checkbox, then the button becomes clickable.

Examples

Example 1: Clearing a backlog and improving response rate. Your Response Rate card shows 38% — fewer than half your reviews have a reply. Turn on Auto-draft. Within the next background scan, draft replies appear on every unanswered review. Work through the list: open each one, check the draft, click Submit Response. When the backlog is cleared, switch to Auto-reply so incoming reviews get answered without manual action. Your Response Rate card climbs steadily as replies go out.

Example 2: Setting a consistent brand voice across multiple locations. Your business runs three locations, each with a separate Google profile. You want every AI reply to offer the booking line when a customer asks about it, and to reference the team by name. Open AI instructions, select Warm & friendly, tick Include contact number and Mention staff or owner, add two name tags, and click Save. Every AI-generated reply across all three locations draws from those instructions. The contact number appears only when a reply naturally calls for it.

Example 3: Handling a wave of negative reviews with the safety window. A service disruption generates a cluster of 1 and 2-star reviews over two days. Auto-reply is on, but the 15–30 minute delay on low-star reviews gives you a window to review each draft before it publishes. Open the drafted replies, adjust the tone to address the specific incident directly, and publish by hand. For reviews that arrive after business hours, Auto-reply publishes the draft within the delay window. No review goes unanswered and no reply looks rushed.

Related reading

• Connect your Google Business Profile — required before any review reply can publish.
• GMB Dashboard overview — the Posts tab and other GMB Dashboard surfaces alongside Reviews.