Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Cheers Reviews, Inc. ("Cheers," "we," "our," or "us") is a Delaware corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California. We operate a customer acquisition platform that helps local service businesses, including single-location operators and multi-location brands, generate and manage customer reviews, monitor and improve their visibility across AI-powered search platforms, and grow their online presence.

This Privacy Policy describes how we collect, use, disclose, and protect personal information when you use our platform, website, mobile applications, NFC review badge products, professional services, and related services (collectively, the "Services"), and when you interact with our marketing and sales, for example by responding to one of our ads, meeting our team at an event, or talking with us on a call. It also describes your rights with respect to that information and how to exercise them.

By using our Services, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with its terms, please discontinue use of the Services.

2. Information We Collect

2.1 Information you provide directly

We collect information you provide when you create an account, use our Services, or communicate with us, including:

• Account information: Name, email address, password, and role within your organization.
• Business information: Company name, business address, phone number, number of locations, industry type, and authorization credentials for accounts you connect to Cheers (such as Google Business Profile, connected via OAuth).
• Payment information: Billing name, address, and payment card details. Payment card data is transmitted directly to and stored by our payment processor, Stripe. We do not store full card numbers on our systems.
• Communications: Records of your interactions with our team, including emails, text messages, chat logs, feedback submissions, and recordings, transcripts, and notes of calls and meetings.
• Demo and AI Visibility Grader submissions: When you request a demo or use our free AI Visibility Grader, we collect the contact and business information you submit, such as your name, work email, phone number, company website, role, number of locations, goals, timeline, and an optional monthly budget range for the work. Grader business details may also be looked up through the Google Places API.
• Advertising lead forms: If you respond to one of our ads with a sign-up form hosted by the ad platform, such as a Facebook or Instagram lead form, the platform sends us the information you entered, such as your name, email address, phone number, and business details.
• Contact details you share in person: When you give us your contact details directly, for example at a conference, trade show, or meeting, we record your name, business, role, email address, phone number, and notes from our conversation.
• Free tools and other forms: When you use our free tools, such as the Google review link generator or Ask Cheers, we collect what you enter, which can include your name, phone number, business details, and questions.
• Job applications: If you apply to work at Cheers, we collect your application details, resume, and answers, and use them to evaluate your application.

2.2 Information collected automatically

When you access or use our Services, we automatically collect certain information, including:

• Usage data: Pages and features accessed, actions taken within the platform, search queries, timestamps of activity, and session duration.
• Device and browser information: Browser type and version, operating system, device type, screen resolution, and language preferences.
• Log data: IP address, referring URLs, access times, and error logs.
• Cookies and similar technologies: We use cookies, local storage, and similar technologies to maintain sessions, remember preferences, and analyze usage. Section 11 describes these in detail.

2.3 Information from connected platforms and public sources

We receive information from third-party sources in connection with the Services:

• Google services you connect: When you authorize Cheers via Google OAuth, we may access your Google Business Profile data (profile information, photos, posts, and customer reviews) and, if you connect them, your Google Search Console and Google Analytics data (search performance and site traffic metrics). Section 6 describes how we handle Google user data.
• Review and discussion platforms: We collect and aggregate publicly available review data (including review text, ratings, timestamps, and reviewer display names as they appear publicly) from platforms such as Google, Yelp, Facebook, Tripadvisor, Trustpilot, the Better Business Bureau, and other public review and discussion sites, to provide consolidated review monitoring and reporting.
• Licensed data providers: We obtain search results, AI answer data, business listing data, and review content from established commercial data providers where direct platform access is not available.
• Google Places API: We use the Google Places API to look up and validate business names and locations, including when processing AI Visibility Grader submissions.
• Business contact and research sources: To find and contact businesses that may benefit from our Services, we obtain business contact details, such as name, job title, company, work email address, and phone number, from commercial business-data providers, from our CRM provider's enrichment features, from publicly available sources such as company websites and professional profiles, and from event attendee directories.

2.4 Information about your employees

If your business uses our review collection and attribution tools, we process information about your employees on your behalf:

• Profile information: Employee name, job title, and photo, and, if your business adds them, work email address, phone number, badge number, and links, as provided by your business when setting up badges and attribution.
• Attribution data: Which reviews and customer interactions are associated with which employee, used for performance tracking and recognition.
• Public profiles: When a customer taps an employee's badge, the customer may be shown a profile page displaying that employee's name, photo, title, and review links, and, unless your business turns it off, a downloadable contact card with the employee's email address and phone number. Businesses control which employees have badges and what information appears.
• Employee accounts: If your business invites employees to sign in, each employee can see their own reviews and performance and the team leaderboard.

Businesses using these features are responsible for providing appropriate notice to their employees about the collection, use, and public display of this information.

2.5 Information about your customers

In providing the Services to your business, we process limited information about your customers:

• Badge and link interactions: When a customer taps an NFC badge or follows a review link, we record the badge or link identifier, the associated business location, the destination, and a timestamp. We do not require customers to identify themselves to use a badge. These pages also use the product analytics described in Section 11.
• Feedback submissions: If a customer submits feedback through a Cheers-powered form, we collect the information they choose to provide, which may include their name, contact details, and feedback content.
• Public review content: Reviews your customers post publicly on third-party platforms, as described in Section 2.3.

3. How We Use AI

A core function of our platform involves assessing and improving how your business appears on AI-powered platforms. This requires transmitting certain business data to third-party AI providers:

• AI visibility monitoring: We check whether and how your business appears in AI-generated answers on platforms including ChatGPT (OpenAI), Google Gemini, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity. To do this, we run the questions we track for your business, along with your business name, location, and relevant market context, on those platforms, either through their APIs or through licensed data providers that run the questions on the platforms' public websites and return the answers.
• AI-powered analysis and generation: We use commercial AI models from providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google to analyze review data, score and categorize reviews, generate suggested review responses, transcribe voice recordings you make in the platform, answer questions in the Cheers Advisor, and produce reports, action plans, and content. Review content (including reviewer display names as they appear publicly), business information, and performance data from the platforms you connect may be transmitted to these providers for this purpose.
• Sales and support: We also use AI models to research and qualify businesses that may benefit from our Services, to summarize calls and meetings, and to help our team prepare follow-ups.

When we send review content or data from the platforms you connect to AI providers for analysis and generation, we use their commercial API offerings, under terms that do not permit them to use that data to train their foundation models. Monitoring questions run on a platform's public website are handled under that platform's own terms; they contain the questions we track and business information, not the reviews or account data you share with us.

AI-generated content is provided as a starting point for your review. You decide what gets published; Cheers does not guarantee the accuracy of AI-generated content.

4. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to:

• Deliver the Services: Create and manage your account, provide access to platform features, process transactions, fulfill badge orders, and deliver the services you have purchased.
• Manage reviews: Aggregate, display, and analyze reviews from connected platforms; generate suggested responses; and post content you approve to your connected profiles.
• Monitor AI visibility: Assess how your business is represented across AI-powered search and assistant platforms, and generate reports and recommendations to improve that visibility.
• Attribute performance: Connect review-generation activity to specific employees and locations, enabling performance tracking for your business.
• Communicate with you: Respond to support requests, send transactional notifications (receipts, alerts, service updates), and send product updates and marketing emails. You can stop marketing emails at any time by using an unsubscribe link where one is provided, by replying to ask us to stop, or by emailing info@cheers.tech.
• Respond to sales inquiries: Review the business context, goals, and optional budget range you submit so we can prepare for and follow up on a demo request.
• Reach businesses that may benefit from Cheers: Contact businesses by email, phone, text message, and LinkedIn, and follow up on ad responses and conversations at events.
• Advertise Cheers: Show you ads for Cheers on other platforms, keep current customers out of ads meant for new prospects, and measure whether our ads work, as described in Section 11.
• Improve the product: Analyze usage patterns, identify bugs, conduct research, and improve the functionality and experience of our Services.
• Provide benchmarking: Produce aggregated benchmarking and competitive insights as part of our reporting features. Individual business data is not shared with other customers.
• Meet legal obligations: Comply with applicable laws, enforce our Terms and Conditions, and protect the rights and safety of Cheers and our users.

5. When We Share Information

We do not sell your personal information. We share information in the following circumstances:

• Service providers: We use a limited set of vetted vendors to operate our business, including providers of cloud hosting and database infrastructure, email delivery, customer relationship management (CRM), team messaging, calling and texting, call recording and note-taking, scheduling, customer support tooling, and shipping carriers and fulfillment services for badge orders (which receive the recipient name, shipping address, and phone number needed to deliver your order).
• Payment processing: Payments are processed by Stripe, which receives the billing information necessary to process transactions on our behalf.
• AI providers and data vendors: As described in Section 3, business information and review data may be transmitted to AI model providers and licensed data providers in connection with AI-powered features.
• Analytics and measurement providers: As described in Section 11, usage and conversion event data may be shared with our analytics and advertising-measurement providers.
• Advertising platforms: As described in Section 11, we share customer information with advertising platforms to serve relevant ads online.
• Marketing agencies: Agencies that run our advertising may receive details about people who responded to those ads, such as contact information and whether the inquiry turned into a sales conversation, so they can measure and improve the campaigns.
• Platforms you connect: When posting review responses or content on your behalf, we transmit the approved content to the applicable platform (for example, Google Business Profile via its API).
• Legal requirements: We may disclose information if required by law, court order, or governmental authority, or when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, your safety or the safety of others, or to investigate fraud.
• Business transfers: In a merger, acquisition, reorganization, or sale of all or substantially all of our assets, your information may be transferred to the acquiring entity. We will provide notice before your information becomes subject to a materially different privacy policy.

We require service providers that process personal information on our behalf to protect it appropriately and to use it only for the purposes we specify. A description of our current sub-processor categories is available on request at info@cheers.tech.

6. Google User Data

Cheers' use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

In particular:

• We use Google user data (including Google Business Profile, Google Search Console, and Google Analytics data you authorize) only to provide and improve the user-facing features of the Services you have connected and the managed services you engage us for: displaying your reviews and performance data, generating suggested responses and reports, and posting content you approve or ask us to manage.
• We do not use Google user data for advertising, and we do not sell it.
• We do not transfer Google user data to third parties except as necessary to provide the features you have requested, to comply with applicable law, or as part of a merger or acquisition with notice to you.
• Cheers staff access your Google user data to deliver the services you have engaged us for, such as reviewing your search performance, preparing reports, and publishing posts or review responses on your behalf. Otherwise, human access is limited to cases where you have given permission, where it is necessary for security or to comply with law, or where it is aggregated for internal operations.

You can disconnect Google from your Cheers dashboard, and you can revoke Cheers' access to your Google data at any time from your Google account permissions page.

7. Data Security

We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect personal information against unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction. These measures include encryption of data in transit and at rest, role-based access controls, logging of security-sensitive actions such as account connections, and periodic internal security reviews. Access to personal information within Cheers is limited to personnel who require it to perform their job functions.

No method of transmission or storage is completely secure. While we work hard to protect your information, we cannot guarantee absolute security. If a data breach affects your rights, we will notify you and the applicable authorities as required by law.

8. Data Retention

We retain personal information for as long as it is needed to provide the Services, comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements. As general guidelines:

• Account and business data is retained while your account is active. If your account closes, we may keep it for a period so service can be restarted. When you ask us to delete it, we delete or anonymize personal information within a reasonable period, except where retention is required for legal, tax, or regulatory purposes.
• Visibility and review history is retained while your account is active to enable longitudinal trend analysis and benchmarking.
• Payment records are retained for at least seven years to comply with financial recordkeeping requirements.
• Interaction and analytics data is periodically reviewed, and data that is no longer needed is deleted or aggregated.
• Sales and marketing records, such as inquiry details, emails, and call recordings, are retained while they are useful to our relationship with you. You can ask us to delete them at any time.

You may request deletion of your personal information at any time, subject to the retention obligations described above. Sections 9 and 10 describe how to submit a request.

9. Your California Privacy Rights

If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), grants you specific rights regarding your personal information.

9.1 Your rights

• Right to know: You may request that we disclose the categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you, the sources, the purposes of collection, and the categories of third parties with whom we share it.
• Right to delete: You may request that we delete personal information we have collected from you, subject to certain exceptions.
• Right to correct: You may request correction of inaccurate personal information.
• Right to opt out of sale or sharing: We do not sell personal information. Two of our advertising activities, described in Section 11, may be considered "sharing" under California law: our advertising-measurement tools, and sharing customer information with advertising platforms to serve relevant ads. You may opt out of both at any time by emailing info@cheers.tech with the subject line "Do Not Share," and you can also use cookie controls in your browser.
• Right to limit use of sensitive personal information: To the extent we collect sensitive personal information, you may limit its use to purposes permitted by law.
• Right to non-discrimination: We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights.

9.2 How to submit a request

To submit a request, contact us at info@cheers.tech or by mail at the address in Section 16. You may designate an authorized agent to submit a request on your behalf.

Before responding, we are required to verify your identity, and we will ask only for the information needed to do so. We respond to verified requests within 45 days; if we need more time, we will notify you and may extend the period by an additional 45 days as permitted by law.

10. Your Rights Everywhere

Regardless of where you live, we extend the same core rights to everyone: you may request access to the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, object to certain processing, and withdraw consent where processing is based on consent. Contact us at info@cheers.tech and we will respond within the timeframe required by applicable law. We may need to verify your identity before processing your request.

If you believe we have not adequately addressed your privacy concerns, you may lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority in your jurisdiction.

11. Cookies and Analytics

We use cookies and similar technologies on our website and platform to keep you signed in, remember preferences, and understand how the Services are used. They fall into four categories:

• Essential: Required for the platform to function: authentication, session management, security, and fraud prevention. These cannot be disabled without impairing the Services.
• Product analytics: We use PostHog to understand how people use our website and platform. On the public website, PostHog records page visits and exits; form and grader activity; GEO Academy article views, reading progress, link clicks, and CTA clicks; and paid-landing attribution such as the page path, landing-page version, UTM campaign fields, and whether an OpenAI click reference is present. On the public website, automatic click capture, session replay, heatmaps, and surveys are disabled. In our signed-in platform and on the review and badge pages that open from a Cheers badge or link, PostHog also records clicks and page activity automatically. We also use Google Analytics to measure website traffic, and Ahrefs Web Analytics to measure aggregated website traffic without cookies or persistent identifiers.
• Advertising measurement: We use conversion measurement from Google and OpenAI to understand whether our advertising leads to actions on our site, such as demo requests. These tools may set a first-party attribution cookie and send conversion event data, such as an advertising click identifier, event time, and transaction identifier, to the respective provider for campaign reporting. When a sales conversation that started from a Google ad click progresses, for example when the business becomes a customer, we may report that outcome to Google with the same click identifier. Our lead forms do not send email addresses or phone numbers to advertising providers for contact matching when you submit them. We use this measurement to evaluate and improve our own campaigns. We do not sell your personal information, and Section 9 describes how to opt out.
• Relevant ads: We share customer information with third parties that perform services on our behalf, including serving relevant ads online. To opt out, email info@cheers.tech with the subject line "Do Not Share."
• Preferences: Used to remember settings such as display options.

You can control cookies through your browser settings, including refusing new cookies and deleting existing ones. Disabling cookies may affect the functionality of the Services.

12. Children's Privacy

Our Services are intended for businesses and their authorized personnel and are not directed to individuals under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe we have inadvertently collected information from a minor, contact us at info@cheers.tech and we will delete it promptly.

13. Visitors Outside the United States

Cheers is headquartered in the United States, and our Services are operated from the United States. If you use the Services from another country, your information will be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States, where data protection laws may differ from those in your jurisdiction. Where required by applicable law, we rely on appropriate safeguards for these transfers.

14. Data Processing Agreements

Customers who require a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) for their compliance obligations may request one at info@cheers.tech. We will work with you to execute a DPA that reflects the processing activities involved in your use of the Services.

15. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, the Services, or applicable law. When we make material changes, we will post the updated policy on this page, update the "Last updated" date, and, where required by law or where appropriate, notify you by email or through the platform. Your continued use of the Services after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

16. Contact Us

If you have questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or our data practices, contact us at:

• Email: info@cheers.tech
• Mail: Cheers Reviews, Inc., 610 22nd Street, San Francisco, CA 94107

We respond to all privacy inquiries within a reasonable timeframe and no later than required by applicable law.