Google Review Notifications: How to Get Alerted Instantly (2026)

A new 1-star review has been sitting on your Google Business Profile for three days. You had no idea it was there. By the time you find it, the customer has already told five friends about their bad experience, and dozens of potential customers have read it with no response.

Quick Answer: Google offers built-in review notifications through the Google Business Profile app (push notifications) and email, but both are unreliable. Studies show Google's email alerts can delay by hours or miss reviews entirely. For consistent, instant alerts, businesses use dedicated monitoring tools that pair the notification with a ready-to-post response. Responding within 24 hours leads to higher customer satisfaction and better ratings over time.

In this guide, you'll learn:

• Three ways to set up Google review notifications (and what each one misses)
• Step-by-step setup for push and email alerts
• Why getting notified is only half the problem
• How to close the gap between notification and response

Why Review Notification Speed Matters

The clock starts the moment a customer posts a review. Research from Harvard Business Review found that businesses responding to reviews see an average rating increase of 0.12 stars and receive 12% more reviews. But those gains depend on responding quickly.

According to BrightLocal's 2024 Local Consumer Review Survey, 53% of customers expect a business to respond to negative reviews within a week. But the businesses that stand out respond within 24-48 hours. For a detailed look at why timing matters, see our guide on how fast you should respond to Google reviews.

The problem isn't that business owners don't care about responding. It's that they never saw the review in the first place. Google's native notification system has gaps, and those gaps cost you.

Tired of manually checking for new reviews? Try our free AI review response generator to draft replies in seconds.

3 Ways to Get Google Review Notifications

Google offers two built-in notification methods, and there's a third option that fills the gaps both leave behind.

1. Google Business Profile App (Push Notifications)

The GBP app sends push notifications to your phone when someone leaves a review. This is the fastest native option.

How to set it up:

1. Download the Google Business Profile section within the Google Maps app (Google retired the standalone GBP app in 2024)
2. Sign in with the Google account that manages your business
3. Tap your profile icon and go to Settings
4. Find Notifications and toggle on Reviews
5. Make sure your phone allows notifications from Google Maps at the OS level

What it gets right: Notifications usually arrive within minutes. You see the star rating and review text directly in the alert.

Where it falls short: Push notifications get buried under other alerts. If you miss it once, there's no follow-up. And if your phone is on silent, do-not-disturb, or the app is force-closed, you might never see it.

2. Google Email Notifications

Google can email you when a new review is posted. This is less immediate but creates a record you can come back to.

How to set it up:

1. Sign in to Google Business Profile
2. Go to Settings (gear icon)
3. Select Notifications or Email preferences
4. Enable the Reviews toggle
5. Verify the email address is correct

What it gets right: Emails don't disappear like push notifications. You have a searchable record of every review alert.

Where it falls short: Google's review emails are notoriously inconsistent. Some arrive within 30 minutes. Others take hours. Some reviews never trigger an email at all. Multiple business owners have reported missing review emails in Google's support forums. If the email lands in your Promotions or Spam tab in Gmail, you may never see it.

3. Dedicated Review Monitoring Tools

Third-party tools monitor your Google Business Profile independently and send their own notifications when new reviews appear. These don't rely on Google's notification system at all.

What they get right: Consistent, reliable alerts regardless of Google's email quirks. Most check for new reviews every few minutes and notify you immediately. Many also bundle the notification with a suggested response, so you can act instantly.

What to look for: The best tools don't just notify you. They close the gap between "you have a new review" and "your response is posted." More on that below.

For a broader look at monitoring tools and what to evaluate, see our real-time review monitoring guide.

The Real Problem: The Notification-to-Response Gap

Here's what most notification guides skip. Getting alerted about a new review is only half the equation. What happens next?

With Google's native notifications, the workflow looks like this:

1. You receive a notification (push or email)
2. You open Google Business Profile or Google Maps
3. You find the review
4. You think about what to say
5. You type your response
6. You proofread and post it

That's six steps. On a busy day, most people stall at step 2 or 3. The notification did its job, but the response never happened because the friction was too high.

This is the notification-to-response gap, and it's where most reviews go unanswered. A SOCi study on the state of Google reviews found that a significant percentage of Google reviews never receive a response from the business. The notification wasn't the bottleneck. The response workflow was.

The Email-First Solution

The most effective review notification systems collapse those six steps into two:

1. You receive an email with the review and an AI-drafted response
2. You tap to approve (or quick-edit first)

That's it. No logging into a dashboard. No switching apps. No staring at a blank text field trying to figure out what to say.

With ReplyOnTheFly, this is exactly how it works:

• Your Google Business Profile is monitored around the clock
• The moment a new review appears, you get an email with the full review text and an AI-written response that references the reviewer's specific comments
• You approve with one tap, or make a quick edit first
• The response posts to Google automatically

The AI adjusts tone based on the star rating. A 1-star response is empathetic and solution-focused. A 5-star response is warm and appreciative. Every reply sounds like you wrote it because you control the tone and custom instructions.

The free plan includes unlimited AI-generated drafts, real-time monitoring, and 5 direct posts to Google per month. That covers the majority of small businesses. The Pro plan adds unlimited direct posts and fully hands-free auto-posting for higher-volume businesses.

Common Notification Problems (and Fixes)

Even with everything set up, things can go wrong. Here are the most common issues and how to fix them.

If you're managing multiple locations, Google's native notifications become even less practical. Each location needs its own setup, and there's no centralized notification dashboard. For multi-location review management, a dedicated tool is essentially a requirement.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I turn on Google review notifications?

Open the Google Business Profile app on your phone, tap your profile icon, go to Notification settings, and make sure Reviews is toggled on. For email notifications, sign in to your Google Business Profile at business.google.com, go to Settings, then Notifications, and enable the reviews email toggle. You need to do both separately since push and email notifications have independent settings.

Why am I not getting Google review notifications?

The most common reasons are disabled notifications in the Google Business Profile app, a muted email category in Gmail, or notification permissions turned off at the device level. Check all three. Also verify you are signed into the correct Google account that owns or manages the business listing. If you have multiple managers, only accounts with notification settings enabled will receive alerts.

How quickly does Google notify you of new reviews?

Google's native notifications are inconsistent. Push notifications through the Google Business Profile app typically arrive within minutes to a few hours. Email notifications can take anywhere from 30 minutes to over 24 hours, and some reviews are never emailed at all. For reliable real-time alerts, businesses use dedicated review monitoring tools that check for new reviews every few minutes.

Can I get Google review notifications sent to multiple people?

With Google's native system, each manager must individually enable their own notifications through the GBP app or email settings. There is no way to set up a shared notification list. Dedicated review monitoring tools like ReplyOnTheFly solve this by letting you add multiple notification recipients for the same business, so your entire team stays in the loop.

What is the best way to get notified about new Google reviews?

The most reliable method is using a dedicated review monitoring tool that pairs notification with response. Tools like ReplyOnTheFly monitor your Google Business Profile around the clock and email you the moment a new review appears, along with an AI-drafted response you can approve with one tap. This eliminates the notification gap where you know about a review but still need to log in somewhere to respond.

Conclusion

Google review notifications are free to set up and take less than five minutes. But the native options, push alerts and email, have well-documented reliability issues. If you're serious about responding to every review quickly, layer a dedicated monitoring tool on top.

Key Takeaways:

• Enable both push notifications (Google Maps app) and email alerts as your baseline
• Google's email notifications are inconsistent and may miss reviews entirely
• The real bottleneck isn't notification. It's the gap between getting alerted and posting a response
• Email-first tools that bundle notification with a draft response collapse the workflow to a single step
• For multi-location businesses, a centralized tool is essential

The fastest-responding businesses aren't the ones with the most notification channels turned on. They're the ones with the shortest distance between "new review received" and "response posted." Closing that gap is what separates a notification setup from a review response system.

---

Ready to Get Notified and Respond in One Step?

Stop checking for reviews manually. ReplyOnTheFly monitors your Google Business Profile 24/7 and emails you the moment a new review appears, complete with an AI-written response ready to approve.

Start Free - No Credit Card Required

• Real-time monitoring, around the clock
• AI-drafted responses for every review
• Approve with one tap from your inbox