How to Delete a Google Review (and What to Do When You Can’t)

A business cannot delete a review someone else left on its Google Business Profile, full stop. Google controls that review, not the business. What a business CAN do is ask Google to remove one, but only if it actually breaks Google’s own policies, not just because it’s negative or unfair.

What Google will actually remove

Google will take down a review only if it violates its review policies, not simply because a business disagrees with it. Grounds that can work:

• Fake or spam reviews, including ones from someone with no real interaction with the business.
• Conflict of interest, like a review from a current or former employee, or a competitor.
• Off-topic content that has nothing to do with an actual experience at the business.
• Hate speech, harassment, profanity, or explicit threats.
• Reviews about a different location entirely misattributed to the wrong listing.

A merely negative review from a real customer describing a real, if unflattering, experience will not be removed, no matter how unfair it feels. That’s by design: Google’s whole value proposition to searchers is that reviews aren’t curated by the business being reviewed.

How to actually flag one

From the business’s Google Business Profile, open the review, click the three-dot menu, and select “Flag as inappropriate.” Google reviews the flag against its policies and responds, though not always quickly, and not always in the business’s favor even when the flag feels justified.

The real fix: outnumber it, don’t fight it

A single bad review rarely sinks a business’s rating on its own. What sinks a rating is a bad review sitting there with nothing newer and better to balance it out, because most customers never think to leave one unless asked. Trophy Jar asks automatically: the moment a job is done, an invoice is paid, or a deal closes, the customer gets a request by text or email, Trophy Jar’s choice of channel is the customer’s choice. One bad review next to fifty recent good ones barely moves the average, and barely gets noticed by the next person reading them.

Keep good reviews coming in automatically: Automate Google review requests

Common Questions