How to remove a bad or fake Google review

You can’t delete a review yourself. You can report it, and Google removes it only if it breaks Google’s rules: fake, paid, off-topic, offensive, or from someone with a conflict of interest. A genuine bad review usually stays, and the best answer to it is a calm public reply and more reviews from all your customers.

What Google takes down

Google’s policy for reviews on Maps says contributions should reflect a genuine experience at the business. Reviews that break it include:

• Fake engagement: reviews that are paid for, directly or in kind, or that don’t reflect a real experience.
• Conflict of interest: a competitor reviewing you, an ex-employee, or anyone with a personal or business tie.
• Off-topic: political or social commentary, personal rants, or a review that’s about a different business.
• Offensive or harmful content: harassment, hate speech, obscenity, or personal information.

What Google doesn’t remove: a real customer’s honest bad experience, even an unfair-sounding one. Google’s help page says not to report a review just because you disagree with it or dislike it (Report inappropriate reviews).

How to report a review

1. Open your Business Profile on Google while signed in, and choose Read reviews.
2. Next to the review, select the Report icon (the flag).
3. Pick the reason that matches the policy it breaks, then select Send report. Pick the true reason; “spam” on a real complaint won’t work.

You can also report and follow reports in Google’s Reviews Management Tool, linked from the same help page.

Checking on it, and appealing

Google says checking a report typically takes several days. In the Reviews Management Tool each report shows one of these statuses:

• Decision pending: still being looked at.
• Report reviewed, no policy violation: Google is keeping it. You can appeal once.

To appeal, choose the review from the list of reviews eligible for appeal (up to 10 at a time) and send it. Its status then shows Escalated, and Google emails you the final decision. Each review can be appealed once, so make the appeal specific: which rule it breaks and why, such as “no customer by this name; this person works for a competitor.”

Spotting a fake review

• You have no record of the person, the job or the date.
• It describes a service you don’t offer or a place you don’t serve.
• The account has reviewed many businesses in a short time, often all one or all five stars.
• Several similar bad reviews arrive in a burst, especially after a dispute.

None of these proves it on its own. Report what you can show, and reply publicly in the meantime: “We can’t find any record of this visit. Please call us at [phone] so we can look into it.” Readers then see you’re attentive and the claim is disputed.

What not to do

• Don’t offer money, a discount or a free service to remove or change a review. Google forbids offering incentives for reviews (policy).
• Don’t threaten the reviewer. The FTC’s consumer review rule bans getting reviews removed through groundless legal threats, physical threats or intimidation, and the FTC can seek civil penalties against knowing violators (FTC, August 2024).
• Don’t answer fake bad reviews with fake good ones. Google can remove reviews it finds fake, stop a profile from getting new reviews for a time, and show a warning on it (Google’s fake-review restrictions). The FTC rule bans businesses from creating, buying or selling fake reviews.
• Be careful with “review removal services”. A service can only report a review, as you can.

When it stays

Most bad reviews stay. What changes their effect is what surrounds them: a calm reply (How to respond to a negative review) and a steady flow of recent good reviews. BrightLocal’s 2026 survey found 74% of consumers only care about reviews from the last three months (Local Consumer Review Survey, February 2026; BrightLocal sells review software), so new reviews push an old bad one down in importance. Our guide How to get more Google reviews covers how to ask every customer the right way.

If the review contains something illegal, such as a threat or defamation, Google has a separate legal removal request, and that’s a question for a lawyer, not a reply.

How this guide was made: drafted with AI from how Localkept runs review requests and replies for local businesses, then fact-checked against the sources linked in it on October 30, 2026.