If you are reading this article, you want to remove one or more Google Reviews from you Google Business Profile.
The main reasons you may want to delete a Google Review:
- Negative reviews from a disgruntled customer
- Negative reviews from a former employee
- You found one or more fake reviews on your Google Business Profile
I created this step by step guide for you, it is easy to follow and customized for different issues with reviews. Choose within the following options:
How to remove a bad/negative customer Google review.
I completely understand how infuriating it is to provide great customer service and the customer goes ahead and gives your business a bad review or didn’t give you the chance to put things right.
If the review is from a real customer, you will have two scenarios:
– The review does not violate Google Review policies
Google will not get involved and will not remove the review. Google statement: “Google doesn’t get involved when businesses and customers disagree about facts, since there’s no reliable way to discern who’s right about a particular customer experience.”
So any disagreements, issues and even the customers are being very unreasonable, Google will not remove them if the reviews do not violate its policies. Also, Google will not remove a review because you don’t recognize the customer name or you don’t like what the reviewer had to say.
What is the best thing to do? Check the Best Defence is a Good Offence Section or you may want to speak with a law firm, if there are grounds to sue (there are examples of successful cases in UK and Australia).
–The customer review violates one or more Google Review policies
Violation of Review policy means:
- It should not be posted just to manipulate a place’s ratings- fake review, post the same review multiple times and for the same place from multiple accounts. To deal with this go to how to remove Fake Reviews
- The review is not relevant to your location/business, sometimes customers get confused and review the wrong place
- General political, social commentary, or personal rants. Like complaining about Face Mask Policies.
- Offensive, Sexually, Explicit, Dangerous and Derogatory content on the comment
- Conflict of Interest – ex-employees bad reviews goes under this
- Privacy concerns, Personal details are disclosed
- Legal issue
If violates the policies, follow these steps to request removal:
How to Remove Customer Google Reviews
- Go to the “Read reviews” on your profile (you need to be login into your Google Business Profile account).
- On the review you want to flag, press on the 3 vertical dots on the right.
- Then press “Report review”.
- A pop-up box will appear and choose the reason to report the review for removal.
- The last step to press “Send report”.
How to remove fake Google Reviews
Unfortunately, fake/spam reviews exist, the sole purpose is to either “destroy” competition business reputation or increase a business reputation.
If you feel/know the review is fake the first step is to flag the review(s).
You have 2 methods at your disposal, but you only need to use one:
How to Flag Fake Reviews on Google Maps
- On your computer, open Google Maps.
- Find your business listing.
- Find the review you’d like to flag.
- Click More » Flag as inappropriate.
How to Flag Fake Reviews on Google Search
- On your computer, go to Google Search.
- Search for “my business” and press on view profile.
- Click on “Read reviews”.
- Find the review you’d like to report.
- Press on the 3 vertical dots.
- Click on “Report review”
- Choose “Spam” and “send report”
What happens next & Check the status of your request
Google will decide in the next 3 days, you can access the Google reviews workflow tool here to check the status and even make an appeal.
If you need to appeal, gather evidence to sustain your case images, links, or other details that back up your claim, for example:
- Are the profiles new accounts/low review count
- Do they have no profile photo
- If they have a profile photo, perform a quick reverse image search to check if it is a genuine image or a stock photo
- If they haven’t made any legitimate reviews before, all reviews in similar niches, left 5 or more reviews in quick succession
- Are all reviews in your local area (town, city) and surroundings or are they dotted around the country/ world
- If all these reviews came overnight
If you need to make an appeal, you should use the text box to make your case and add links:
If they refuse to remove the review, it’s the perfect time to check the “Best Defence is a Good Offence” Section.
I hope this article helped you.
If you need further help, I am here for you. It does not matter if it’s your business or you are a professional that wants help with a client case, you can find more on my Consultancy service page
Important Google Reviews Provisions
First, I must warn you: Removing Google Reviews is very difficult, unfortunately, even professionals struggle with it. Especially if the reviewer only leaves a star rating without commenting. You need try to remove the reviews anyway but don’t get disheartened if you can’t.
Second warning: Don’t pay hundreds/thousands to “Reputation Management Companies” to remove reviews, I know of a case where a business owner paid $6k to remove reviews and they were not removed. Only Google can remove it and in this article I show the best way to get a review removed.
Third Warning: Do not engage with people offering to provide reviews for your business.
First, if your business is caught by Google doing this you can lose all your reviews, even worse, your profile.
Second, the business typically will ask you for more money to keep the reviews and if you don’t they will remove the 5 star reviews and substitute them with 1 star reviews, in other words, extortion. Even if you reply to them with a “no thanks” they can post negative reviews and ask for money to remove the reviews they leave, again, don’t engage with these types of services.
Best Defence against Negative Google Reviews
- Request Google reviews from your customers regularly
- Respond to the negative Google reviews professionally
More articles about Google Reviews and Google My Business:
- Replies to Google Reviews removed – GMB Issue (Resolved)
- Google Business Profile Reviews: Responding to one-third of reviews can increase conversions for local businesses by 80%
- “Write a review” and Review Summary not appearing on a Google My Business Profile (Resolved)
To learn the latest about Google My Business, you should check these articles:
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