For many years, SEC-registered advisers treated client testimonials as essentially off limits. That changed when the updated Marketing Rule's compliance date arrived in November 2022. Advisers now have more room to use testimonials, endorsements, and online reviews.

That change is real, but it is easy to misunderstand. The rule did not simply open the door and leave it there. It brought disclosure requirements, documentation obligations, oversight duties, and substantiation questions with it. Those requirements are easy to miss when the review lives on Google instead of on a page the firm built.

Fewer than 10% of SEC-registered advisers report using online reviews or testimonials, according to Kitces.1 For the firms that do use them, Google reviews are often where the hard questions begin.

When a Review Becomes an Advertisement

A Google review is not automatically an advertisement under the SEC Marketing Rule. The better question is whether the adviser has become connected to the review in a way that makes the content attributable to the firm. The SEC's adopting release discusses two relevant concepts: entanglement and adoption2.

Entanglement is about the adviser's role in creating or shaping the review. Giving clients the same general opportunity to leave candid feedback, such as including a link to the firm's Google Business Profile in a newsletter, is different from asking only happy clients, suggesting what they should say, or steering them toward favorable language.

Once the adviser starts shaping the review, the review may be treated less like independent third-party speech and more like the adviser's own communication. At that point, the Marketing Rule's disclosure and compliance requirements may apply.

Adoption is about what the adviser does after the review exists. If a firm pulls a favorable Google review from its Business Profile and places it on its website, the firm has put that third-party statement to work for itself. The review is no longer merely sitting on Google. It is being used in the firm's own marketing.

This distinction matters. A firm can have reviews on a public Google profile without every review becoming a Marketing Rule problem. The risk changes when the firm selects, republishes, frames, or relies on those reviews without the disclosures the rule requires.

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The Disclosures Firms Often Miss

When a testimonial becomes an advertisement, the Marketing Rule requires clear and prominent disclosures under § 275.206(4)-1(b)(1)3. The SEC's Division of Examinations has already identified advisers falling short in this area4.

  1. Client status. The advertisement must disclose whether the person giving the testimonial is a current client. If the person is a former client or a non-client, the analysis can change. Many firms display quotes without making the speaker's relationship to the firm clear.
  2. Compensation. If the reviewer received cash, a gift card, a referral credit, reduced fees, or anything else of value, that compensation must be disclosed. If there was no compensation, saying so plainly may avoid confusion.
  3. Material conflicts of interest. If the person giving the testimonial has a relationship that could affect the statement, the firm should not leave readers to guess. Family relationships, business relationships, referral arrangements, and other sources of bias can matter.

Those are only the baseline disclosures. The rule also addresses the material terms of compensation arrangements and other material conflicts. Prominence matters too. A testimonial in large type with a small, pale disclosure at the bottom of the page is not a balanced presentation. Exam staff has specifically noted disclosures that were too small, too faint, or too far away from the testimonial they were meant to qualify.

The Paraphrase Problem

One easy mistake is using testimonial language without realizing it. A firm might write: "Our clients often tell us they finally feel confident about their retirement plan." The adviser may think of that as ordinary value-proposition language.

But phrases like "our clients say," "clients tell us," and "the feedback we hear" attribute a positive experience to clients. That can begin to look like an implicit testimonial. Even if a particular sentence does not clearly trigger the testimonial-disclosure requirements, it may still raise substantiation and fair-balance questions. Can the firm support the claim? Does the page leave a reasonable reader with a misleading impression? The risk is not limited to quoted reviews. Paraphrased client praise can create its own problem.

Responses Can Create Risk Too

In many industries, responding to every Google review is normal. For SEC-registered advisers, that instinct needs more care.

A public response can sometimes make the firm look as if it is endorsing or approving the review's content. That risk is especially sensitive when the response engages with the substance of what the client said. A negative review can also tempt a firm into revealing information or arguing facts in public that should be handled privately.

There is no single sentence that makes every response safe. As a general matter, a brief neutral acknowledgment is less risky than a detailed public response that repeats, confirms, disputes, or builds on the client's claims. For negative reviews, direct contact is usually the more careful path.

What Examiners Are Finding

The SEC's Division of Examinations has repeatedly flagged testimonials and endorsements as an area where advisers make preventable mistakes4. The recurring issues are ordinary:

  • Missing client-status disclosures. Testimonials appear without saying who provided them or whether the person is a client.
  • Incomplete compensation disclosures. Gifts, referral rewards, or promoter payments are not disclosed clearly.
  • Disclosures that are not prominent enough. Required language is buried in footers, rendered in smaller type, or separated from the review.
  • Third-party reviews reused without the required context. A review pulled from Google becomes part of the firm's website without the disclosures that should travel with it.
  • No written agreement where one is required. Compensated testimonials and endorsements can require a written agreement describing the scope of activity and compensation terms.
  • Endorsements treated as ordinary praise. A statement from a non-client, referral partner, or other third party can still qualify as an endorsement even if the firm does not call it one.

These are workflow failures, which is why they are worth taking seriously.

Reviews Can Help, But They Need Controls

None of this means advisers should ignore Google reviews. Reviews can matter to how prospects find and evaluate firms1. Reviews of financial advisers also skew heavily positive: 92% are five-star1, compared with 80% across all industries. With 165,000 monthly Google searches for "financial adviser," a strong review profile can be a meaningful part of online visibility.

The better lesson is that testimonials should not be treated as casual marketing copy. Firms need to know when a review becomes an advertisement, what disclosures should accompany it, whether Form ADV and policies need to reflect the practice, and whether older website language already creates testimonial, adoption, or substantiation issues.

The Marketing Rule made testimonials possible for advisers in a new way. It did not make them simple. Reviews work best when the compliance process is already in place before the firm starts collecting, quoting, or responding to them.

Citations

  1. Michael Kitces — Financial Advisor Google Reviews: SEC Marketing Rule Testimonials & Advertisements
  2. SEC Adopting Release No. IA-5653 — Investment Adviser Marketing (Dec. 2020)
  3. 17 CFR § 275.206(4)-1 — Investment Adviser Marketing, eCFR
  4. SEC Division of Examinations Risk Alert — Additional Observations Regarding Advisers' Compliance with the Advisers Act Marketing Rule (Dec. 2025)