Remove a negative or unfair review on Google, Trustpilot and more

Almost every Dutch business has Google reviews, and every potential customer sees them. That makes them the reviews we challenge most often in our practice. Removal runs through Google's review policy (predefined grounds), the notice procedure under the Digital Services Act, or the GDPR. The most successful grounds are: fabricated content, no genuine customer relationship, an undisclosed interest, a policy breach (abusive language, personal attacks, external links), and demonstrably being part of a smear campaign.

In smear campaigns we submit a reasoned request backed by evidence of a pattern: a record of account ages, posting frequencies and textual similarities.

1. Open your Business Profile via business.google.com and select Read reviews.
2. Click Report next to the review, choose the reason and submit the report.
3. Track the status in Google's Review management tool. The assessment usually takes a few days.
4. If the review stays up, you can appeal once in the same tool, for up to ten reviews at a time.
5. If the review breaches not only the policy but also the law, for example through defamation or a privacy violation, Google also has a legal removal form: the notice procedure under the Digital Services Act, which we describe below.

A report that names the specific policy that has been breached and includes evidence has a better chance than one that only gives "spam" as the reason. A review you simply dislike is not a ground for Google: Google does not intervene in disagreements between a business and its customers.

Trustpilot has its own review policy and a formal reporting process, with grounds similar to Google's. Trustpilot itself assesses whether a review complies with the policy.

1. Log in to Trustpilot Business and open the review.
2. Select Report and choose one reason: harmful or illegal content, personal information, advertising or promotional content, not based on a genuine experience, or about a different company.
3. The review stays visible while it is being investigated. Only a review reported as harmful or illegal is hidden by Trustpilot for the duration of the investigation.
4. If you report a review as not based on a genuine experience, Trustpilot checks it with its own detection software. If it looks suspicious, Trustpilot takes it offline and asks the reviewer for proof of the experience.
5. You are notified of the outcome. If you disagree, reply to that email, after which you can appeal via the link in the decision email.

A low rating or a review you disagree with is not a valid reason for Trustpilot. Anyone who uses the reporting function for that receives a warning and can lose access to the function.

Travel sites each have their own review system with platform-specific procedures. Booking.com only works with structured reviews from confirmed guests. Tripadvisor and similar platforms accept open submissions, where fraud detection and pattern analysis leave considerable room for removal. For each platform we use the specific reporting route, with additional legal correspondence where needed.

HR platforms call for a specific approach because their reviews concern employer and employee relationships, which involve different interests from customer reviews of a business. Reviews are often anonymous, which makes it harder to identify the reviewer. Removal runs through platform policy (false claims, policy breaches) or through legal arguments.

Klantenvertellen (a Dutch review platform), Yelp, Independer (a Dutch comparison site), Zorgkaart Nederland (a Dutch healthcare review site), sector-specific review sites and international platforms each have their own procedure. Our approach is the same: identify the relevant ground, substantiate it, report through the right route and follow up legally where needed.

Within two weeks, a Dutch retailer received more than thirty one-star reviews on its Google Business Profile, almost all from accounts with no previous review history and with strikingly similar wording. On inspection, the company's records could not link any of the reviewers to a real customer. The suspicion was an orchestrated campaign by a former employee or a competitor.

We submitted a reasoned removal request to Google for breach of the review policy (fabricated content, no genuine customer relationship), documented with a pattern analysis: a record of account ages, frequency spikes and similarities in wording. We also filed a DSA notice and sent a formal demand letter to the suspected instigator, identified through DNS and email research. Google removed a majority of the reviews within four weeks; the campaign stopped after the legal correspondence.

A holding company with several sister companies trading under different names was confronted with the same negative review appearing on five Google profiles at once, word for word, only under a different company name. The reviewer claimed everywhere to have been a customer, but the records showed that a relationship had existed with only one of the five entities.

For four of the five reviews, we submitted removal requests under Google's policy (the review does not relate to this business, no genuine customer relationship). For the fifth, which did relate to the correct entity, a separate factual assessment was made and a different legal route chosen. The four wrongly copied reviews were removed within weeks of a substantiated report; the original was dealt with through another route.

Over a number of years, a service provider with a Google profile received reviews that were in substance about a different company: a business with the same name in another city, or confusion with a company previously deregistered at the same address. The reviews were not negative about our client as such, but they were visible on the profile and undermined the relevance of the genuine reviews.

We submitted structured requests for each of the wrongly placed reviews, identifying the company the review was actually about and explaining the profile confusion. Google's removal procedure for reviews on the wrong profile generally works well when the evidence is included; in this case all of the wrongly placed reviews were removed within a month and the quality of the profile overview was restored.

These examples have been compiled for illustration and do not describe individual client cases. We discuss actual cases on request.