How to remove a Google review that breaks the rules (and what to do about the ones that don’t)

Google does not remove a review because it is negative, one-sided or unfair. It removes reviews that break its content policies. The whole game is knowing which policy a review breaks and saying so clearly.

Reviews Google will remove

• Fake engagement. Reviews from people who were never customers, from competitors, from employees, or paid for. Hard to prove from the outside, easier if the reviewer’s name matches no customer record and their profile reviews your competitors.
• Off-topic. Rants about politics, a different business, or an experience with a company that merely shares your name.
• Harassment, hate speech, personal information. A review that names your employee and their home street, or attacks a protected characteristic.
• Conflict of interest. A former employee or a competitor reviewing you.
• Impersonation and spam. Duplicate reviews across locations, links, phone numbers.

Reviews Google will not remove

A real customer who had a bad day. A customer who misunderstood a quote. A review that is wrong about the facts but not about anything Google polices. These stay, and the only honest answers are a good response and more real reviews.

How to report one properly

1. Open the review in Google Maps or your Business Profile, choose Report review, and pick the policy it breaks. Pick the right one: “off-topic” for a review about a different business, “conflict of interest” for an ex-employee.
2. Use the Reviews Management Tool to check the status and, after a few days, to appeal a rejected report with evidence.
3. In the appeal, write two or three sentences. Name the policy. State the fact that proves it: “This reviewer has never been a customer; we have no record under this name and they reviewed three of our competitors the same day.”
4. For defamatory reviews that cause real losses, a lawyer’s letter to the reviewer, or a court order, changes the outcome. Google honors court orders.

While you wait

Respond publicly, once, calmly, in two or three sentences: you have no record of them as a customer, you take every concern seriously, here is how to reach you. You are writing for the next reader, not for the reviewer.

Then ask ten recent happy customers for a review. A 4.9 with 80 reviews absorbs a fake one-star; a 5.0 with 6 reviews does not.

When to hand it off

If you have more than a couple of these, if they are coordinated, or if the review platform is Yelp, Healthgrades, Avvo or Glassdoor (each has its own process and its own quirks), it is faster to have someone do it who does it every day. We charge per review and only when it comes down.