Removing a Google review: when Google takes a review down

Google checks a review against its policy for contributions on Google Maps. A review qualifies for removal if it falls under one of these grounds. In our practice, these succeed most often:

• No genuine experience. The reviewer was never a customer, or the review was bought, rewarded or posted from several accounts belonging to the same person. Google calls this fake engagement.
• Conflict of interest. The review comes from a current or former employee, a competitor, or someone with a personal or business tie to the company.
• Unfounded accusations. A review that accuses the business or an employee of a crime or unethical conduct without basis falls under offensive content.
• Personal information. A review that names someone's private details without consent, such as the name of an employee in a harmful context, a phone number or an address.
• Harassment, hate speech and profanity. Threats, insults and language intended to hurt.
• Off-topic. A review that is not about an experience with the business, but for example about politics, another business or an event in the news.
• Repetition and gibberish. The same text posted repeatedly, or meaningless characters.

Whether a review falls under a ground depends on what you can show for each review. Not finding the account name in your customer records does not prove the reviewer was never a customer, the District Court of Midden-Nederland held in 2025.

Negative reviews are explicitly allowed. Google writes that it allows "content that describes negative experiences in a respectful way". These reviews therefore do not qualify:

• A low rating without explanation. One star without text is an opinion, not a policy breach.
• An opinion you disagree with. "Too expensive", "unfriendly service" or "would not recommend" is allowed, even if you see it differently.
• A complaint that is accurate but harshly worded. Sharp and unkind is not the same as insulting.
• An old review. Age alone is not a ground; a review from five years ago stays up if it complies with the policy.
• A review about a dispute. Google does not intervene in disagreements between a business and its customers. Reviewers who were on the other side of a dispute with you may also share their experience: the District Court of Rotterdam found no fabricated experiences in such reviews in 2025.

The courts draw the same line. In 2026 a car dealer asked the District Court of Zeeland-West-Brabant to have Google remove four negative reviews. The court refused: the reviews were based on genuine customer experiences and contained opinions, not false facts. With such a review, your response is the only thing still in your hands.

Many reviews fall in between. A few examples of how that turns out:

• "Scammers!" Strong words do not automatically make a review unlawful. According to the District Court of Midden-Nederland, the average reader takes "fraud" or "scam" in a review as an expression of dissatisfaction, not as a criminal accusation. It is different when the reviewer presents fraud as a fact without substantiation: the District Court of Rotterdam found such reviews about car dealers unlawful in 2025, while one review with a justified complaint was allowed to stay.
• A review with a first name. "Jan at the desk was curt" is usually a permitted description of an experience. A full name combined with an accusation is not.
• A factual inaccuracy. A wrong amount or an event that never happened does not automatically fall under the policy. If the inaccuracy is demonstrable and harmful, the review can still be unlawful. The bar is high: an oral surgeon had to convince the District Court of The Hague that a patient review was manifestly incorrect, and did not succeed.
• A review by a former employee. Falls under conflict of interest, even if the reviewer writes as a customer.
• The same review on several locations. At the location the reviewer never visited, there is no genuine experience.

Besides its policy, Google assesses reviews against the law. Platforms must have a notice system for this (Article 16 of the Digital Services Act). Reviews that are unlawful qualify: defamation, a demonstrably false accusation, or a privacy violation. That is a different test from the policy, and sometimes a review falls under it while not breaching the policy.

Note: a legal removal often applies only in the Netherlands or the EU, whereas a removal under the policy is worldwide.

If a review names an employee in a harmful context, that employee can also invoke the GDPR.

If Google does nothing with a notice, the court can step in. A daycare centre repeatedly reported four fake reviews without result; they had been copied from other websites and posted under false identities. The District Court of Amsterdam ordered Google to remove the last one and to hand over the reviewers' details. In a case of antisemitic and defamatory reviews, Google also had to disclose the reviewers' identities in 2023.

A wave of 1-star reviews within a few days, from accounts without earlier reviews, often points to fake reviews. Such reviews qualify as fake engagement. A pattern (account ages, timestamps, textual similarities) makes that plausible, but is not enough on its own: in 2025 the District Court of Noord-Nederland rejected a law firm's claim because it did not substantiate for each review why it was fake. A sudden wave of negative reviews can also come from genuine customer experiences.

A special form is extortion: someone posts negative reviews and demands money to remove them. Google has a separate report form for this. Google advises not to pay and not to engage with the demand.

It also works the other way round: a business that posts or buys fake reviews itself risks restrictions on its profile. Google can then block new reviews for a period, undo existing reviews and show visitors a warning that fake reviews have been removed.

A rejection is not the end of the road; persistence often pays off. Many clients come to us after their own reports have been rejected. We then often still get part of the reviews removed by Google itself, at first instance.

What remains after that can go through a complaint to Google (Article 20 of the Digital Services Act) and then to an independent, certified out-of-court dispute settlement body (Article 21). For Google Maps, these are the Appeals Centre Europe and Platform Control. There we often achieve a little more. Google must cooperate and bears the costs if it loses. The courts are the last step.

A first rejection therefore says little about what can ultimately be achieved. How we approach this is described on remove reviews.

Turning off Google reviews is not possible: there is no setting that lets a business disable reviews on its profile. Only the reviewer can edit a review. You may ask a customer to edit a review, for example after the problem has been resolved, but you may not offer anything in return.

In exceptional cases, an entire Business Profile can be removed, including all reviews. That only fits specific situations; see remove reviews.