Every owner has had the review that makes no sense. A one-star from someone who has never been a customer, about a service you don't offer, posted on a day you were closed. It sits at the top of your profile and you can't stop looking at it.
The good news is that platforms do remove fake reviews, and they remove them faster when you bring evidence instead of anger. The bad news is that "I don't agree with this" is not evidence, and a lot of reports fail because that's all they say.
Fake, unfair or just harsh?
Before anything else, sort the review into one of three piles. It saves a lot of wasted effort.
Harsh but real. A real customer had a bad time and said so bluntly. This stays up, and that's how it should be. Reply well and move on. Our guide on responding to negative reviews covers how.
Real person, policy problem. A real customer, but the review breaks the platform's rules. Hate speech, threats, personal details about staff, a review that's really about a competitor, a conflict of interest like a former employee. These can come down.
Not a customer at all. Competitors, bots, someone with a grudge, a review-for-hire job. These are the ones this guide is mostly about.
The signs that tend to give it away
None of these proves anything alone. A few together start to look like a pattern.
- No match in your records. No booking, no order, no appointment under that name or anything close to it around that date.
- Details that don't fit. A dish you don't serve, a staff member who doesn't exist, a branch you don't have, opening hours that are wrong.
- The profile behind it. A brand new account, a stock-photo avatar, or a history of one-star reviews across a whole category in different cities on the same day.
- Clusters. Three or four reviews in a few hours after months of quiet, often similar in length and phrasing.
- Timing. A burst right after a dispute, a news story, a price change or a competitor opening nearby.
- Language that reads generated. Very general complaints, no specifics, oddly balanced sentences. AI-written reviews are getting harder to spot, but they rarely contain the small, boring details real customers include.
Build the evidence before you report
Platforms don't know your business. Your report has to do the thinking for them. Before clicking anything, collect:
- A screenshot of the review with the date, and of the reviewer's profile.
- A note on what you checked: "No booking under this name between 1 and 30 September. We have no location in Leeds."
- Any links to the same reviewer's other reviews if they show a pattern.
- The specific policy the review breaks, in the platform's own words. On Google that's usually "fake engagement", "off-topic", "conflict of interest" or "harassment".
Keep it in a folder. If the first report fails, you'll need it for the appeal.
Reporting on Google
From your Business Profile, find the review, open the three-dot menu and choose to report it. Pick the reason that matches your evidence, not the one that sounds worst.
Google also has a reviews management tool, linked from its help pages, where you can see the status of reviews you've reported and, if a report was turned down, ask once for a second look with extra information. That second look is where your evidence folder pays off.
Expect it to take days, sometimes longer. Reporting the same review over and over doesn't speed it up.
Other platforms
Most of the big sites follow a similar shape: a flag on the review, a reason, a short space for context, then a decision. Yelp, Tripadvisor and Trustpilot each have their own guidelines pages, and quoting the specific rule back to them helps. Yelp also runs automated software that decides which reviews it "recommends", so some suspicious reviews quietly get moved without a report.
While you wait
Reply. Not to argue, but so readers see what's going on.
We can't find any record of this visit, and we don't have a branch in Leeds. If this was meant for us, please get in touch at hello@ourplace.co so we can look into it.
That one line tells every future reader that something doesn't add up, without accusing anyone.
Don't fight fakes with fakes
When a profile gets hit, there's a temptation to balance it out with a few friendly reviews. Please don't. It's exactly what the FTC rule in the US now prohibits, and platforms penalise it. See what the FTC fake review rule bans for the details.
The better answer is more real reviews from real customers, asked for honestly. That's covered in how to get more Google reviews within the rules.
Making your real reviews harder to doubt
There's a flip side to all this. If fakes are everywhere, people start doubting the real ones too, including yours. One answer we've built into Reputfy is to fingerprint each review when it's collected and anchor those fingerprints publicly, so anyone can later check that a review existed on a given date and hasn't been edited. We explain exactly what that proves, and what it doesn't, in what blockchain review verification actually proves.
Fake reviews won't vanish. But with records, patience and a calm reply, most of the obvious ones can be dealt with.
