Glossary of Trustpilot review removal terms

Google's AI-written summary at the top of some search results. Google describes it as an AI-generated snapshot with key information and links to dig deeper. It shows when Google's systems decide that generative AI can be especially helpful. When a buyer searches whether a brand is legit, an AI Overview can draw on review sites. Trustpilot's 2025 annual report says inclusion in Google AI Overviews helped lift its search impressions. A removed review is no longer on the page those systems read.

Covered in Direct answers, written for AI assistants. Source: Find information in faster and easier ways with AI Overviews in Google Search and Annual Report 2025.

Google's free listing for a business with a place or a service area. It is what shows on Google Search and Maps, and it is where Google reviews live. The owner reports a review from the profile, and can add managers who use their own Google accounts. Google does not allow a profile for a business with no physical presence or local service area, and it names online-only businesses as an example. Many online health brands have one anyway, for a clinic, an office or a pharmacy counter.

Covered in Google review removal: what comes down and how. Source: Business and place eligibility.

In Trustpilot's enforcement ladder, the formal notice it sends a business after a warning has not stopped the misuse. Trustpilot calls it the final notice before more severe action, which can include account restrictions and a Consumer Warning. It issued 5 thousand of them in 2024. The same words are used for a lawyer's letter demanding that someone stop an action, which under the FTC's rule must have real legal grounds when it targets a review.

Covered in Trustpilot's enforcement ladder. Source: Action We Take.

A Trustpilot business profile whose owner has registered a free Trustpilot Business account for it. Claiming lets the business reply to reviews, flag reviews that break the guidelines and invite customers. An unclaimed profile still collects reviews, because consumers create profiles, but nobody can reply or flag. If a business deletes its account, the profile returns to unclaimed. Trustpilot does not delete profiles that have reviews.

Covered in Can you delete your Trustpilot profile?. Source: Delete your Trustpilot Business account.

The public page on a Trustpilot profile that shows how the business uses Trustpilot. Readers reach it through the link 'How this company uses Trustpilot'. It shows whether the profile is claimed, whether the company asks for reviews, whether it pays for extra features, how it replies to negative reviews, and its flagging activity for the past 12 months. It is where notices such as 'hasn't invited customers recently' are explained.

Covered in What readers are told about your profile. Source: Transparent Flagging: see how a business is reporting its reviews.

The unit we bill. A removal is confirmed once Trustpilot or Google has taken the review offline and the proof report shows it is gone. Nothing is charged before that, and a review the platform keeps online costs nothing. The price per confirmed removal is $600 in a 20-removal pack, $525 in a 50-removal pack and $475 in a 100-removal pack. A pack is a ceiling, not a commitment: if fewer reviews qualify or come down, the client pays for fewer.

Covered in Pricing: the three packs and how billing works.

A tie between a reviewer and a business that makes the review biased. Google's policy says a conflict of interest may include current or former employment, a contractual or consulting relationship, and other professional or personal ties, such as industry competitors and family. Google removes reviews based on one. Trustpilot reaches the same reviews through its genuine experience rule, which bars employees, owners, their family and competitors from reviewing. The evidence is the tie, not the wording of the review.

Covered in Google review policy: conflict of interest. Source: Prohibited and restricted content.

A notice Trustpilot adds to a profile when it believes consumers should know something about the business, such as significant media attention, a high-risk industry or attention from a regulator. It does not necessarily mean the business misused Trustpilot, which makes it different from a Consumer Warning. Alerts for regulatory scrutiny stay for 12 months or until the regulator removes its own notice. Review removal has no effect on an alert.

Covered in Consumer Warning or Consumer Alert. Source: Trustpilot Consumer Warnings and Alerts.

A United States federal law about contract terms. A company may not use terms that bar or restrict customers from posting honest reviews, penalize them for doing so, or claim ownership of their reviews. It is enforced by the FTC and state attorneys general. It still lets a business remove reviews from its own site that are defamatory, abusive, unrelated or clearly false, or that contain confidential or private information.

Covered in The Consumer Review Fairness Act, explained. Source: Consumer Review Fairness Act: What Businesses Need to Know.

A public notice Trustpilot places at the top of a business profile when the business has misused the platform, for example through fake reviews, biased invitations or abuse of the flagging tool. While it is active the TrustScore is hidden, any paid plan ends, the account drops to minimum features, and Trustpilot stops sharing the rating with search engines. Trustpilot says a warning usually stays for 6 months and is not removed until the misuse has stopped.

Covered in The Trustpilot Consumer Warning. Source: Action We Take.

The Trustpilot team that handles flagged reviews and enforces the guidelines. When a review is flagged, a ticket is created for this team. Trustpilot says it may use automated detection technology, specialists or both to decide whether the review stays online or is taken offline. The team can ask a reviewer to edit a review or to send documents, with 3 days to respond. Its decisions can be appealed once, within 6 months.

Covered in What Trustpilot asks reviewers to send. Source: What happens after businesses flag reviews?.

To remove a page from a search engine's results without removing the page itself. Reputation firms use the word for getting a URL dropped from Google. It is different from review removal, where the platform takes the review down. Trustpilot does something related as a penalty: when it places a Consumer Warning, it stops sharing that business's TrustScore, star rating and review data with search and answer engines.

Covered in The Trustpilot Consumer Warning. Source: Action We Take.

A web address that no longer leads to the content it used to show. In a removal project it is the simplest proof that a review is gone: the review's own link now returns an error page, and anyone can click it to check. Our weekly proof report pairs each dead link with a screenshot taken before removal. Trustpilot moves reviews offline and does not delete them, so a review can return if its author later satisfies Trustpilot.

Covered in How it works: the weekly proof report. Source: What happens after businesses flag reviews?.

A false statement of fact about a person or business that harms their reputation. On Trustpilot it is a sub-reason under 'harmful or illegal', and Trustpilot describes it as content that harms a reputation and leads to significant financial loss. An opinion such as 'I did not like their service' is not defamation, because opinions are not statements of fact. Whether a statement is defamatory in law is a question for a lawyer.

Covered in Flagging or a lawyer?. Source: For which reasons can businesses flag service reviews?.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 United States copyright law. It created the notice-and-takedown system, which lets a copyright owner tell an online service about infringing material so it can be taken down. It does not apply to an ordinary review. A customer's review is the customer's own writing, so the business holds no copyright in it. A takedown notice sent to remove criticism misuses the law. It fits only real copying, such as a review that pastes your copyrighted photos or text.

Covered in Illegal content and the legal removal route. Source: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Trustpilot defines fake reviews as reviews that do not reflect a genuine service or buying experience and are written to mislead, whether positively or negatively. Examples include reviews from review sellers and reviews written to move a TrustScore. Trustpilot says every review is checked by automated detection before it appears, and that it removed 4.5 million fake reviews in 2024, 90% of them automatically. Most fake reviews it removes are positive.

Covered in How to document a fake review. Source: Trust Report 2025.

A report from a business or a consumer telling Trustpilot that a review breaks its guidelines. A business flags from its Trustpilot Business account, which is free for any claimed profile. Each flag uses one reason, and Trustpilot assesses only the content highlighted for that reason. A flag cannot be edited or deleted after it is submitted. Only reviews flagged as harmful or illegal are hidden while Trustpilot checks them.

Covered in Trustpilot review removal: the flagging categories. Source: How to flag service reviews from your business account.

Trustpilot's term for using the flagging tool to target reviews for their sentiment and not for real breaches. Its examples are flagging negative reviews that follow the guidelines, flagging the same review repeatedly, flagging a type of content only when it appears in negative reviews, and flagging in bulk over a short period. The response escalates from an educational email to a warning, a cease-and-desist notice, account restrictions and a Consumer Warning.

Covered in The four flagging patterns Trustpilot calls misuse. Source: Action We Take.

One of the five grounds Trustpilot gives businesses for flagging a service review. The review is harmful or illegal, contains personal information, or is advertising or promotional. Or it is not based on a genuine experience, or is about a different business. A review that does not fit one of these stays online, however negative it is. Some reasons require a first step, such as asking the reviewer for information or for an edit.

Covered in Flagging categories and success rates. Source: For which reasons can businesses flag service reviews?.

The common name for the Federal Trade Commission's Trade Regulation Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, 16 CFR Part 465, in effect since October 21, 2024. It bans fake reviews, incentives conditioned on a review's sentiment, undisclosed insider reviews, company-controlled sites posing as independent, review suppression and fake social media indicators. The FTC can seek civil penalties of up to $53,088 per violation, and says the rule covers reputation management companies.

Covered in The FTC Consumer Review Rule and review removal. Source: 16 CFR Part 465: Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials.

Trustpilot's test for who may write a review. A reviewer must be over 18 and have had a recent experience of their own with the business in the past 12 months. A purchase is not required: browsing a website, a phone call, an email exchange or a chat all count. Owners, employees, their immediate family, competitors and anyone offered an incentive are not eligible. Trustpilot generally does not check genuine experience for reviews more than a year old.

Covered in What Trustpilot will and will not remove. Source: Who can write a review and when?.

A review written in return for something of value, such as a discount, promo code, prize draw entry, refund, free product or loyalty points. Trustpilot bans incentives for writing, editing or removing a review and removes incentivized reviews. The FTC's Consumer Review Rule separately bans incentives that are conditioned on the review expressing a particular sentiment. Offering a refund on condition that a customer deletes a review falls under both.

Covered in Incentivized reviews: what the rules allow. Source: Guidelines for Businesses.

Trustpilot's term for a flagged review that did not go against its guidelines for the reason the business selected. The percentage of a business's flags that were invalid is shown in public on its Company activity page, alongside how often it flagged and the star ratings of the reviews it flagged. A high invalid share on 1-star reviews suggests that reviews were flagged for being negative.

Covered in Flagging categories and success rates. Source: Transparent Flagging: see how a business is reporting its reviews.

A Trustpilot review label. It means the business asked the customer to write the review through an invitation method that is not fully automated. Examples are a manual file upload, a Business Generated Link and the Invitation Link API. A business cannot flag a review from a customer it invited as not based on a genuine experience. Trustpilot requires invitations to go to everyone in the same neutral way, with no incentives.

Covered in Who you can invite, and how. Source: Trustpilot's review labels.

A plain text file at the root of a website, at /llms.txt, that tells AI agents what the site holds and where. It is a proposal published at llmstxt.org by Jeremy Howard in September 2024, not a formal standard, and no search engine requires it. The file is written in Markdown: a title, a short summary, then lists of links with a line on each. This site publishes one, plus a longer llms-full.txt with the text of every page and its sources.

Covered in Our policy for AI crawlers and assistants. Source: The /llms.txt file, v2.

A non-disclosure agreement: a contract in which someone promises to keep information confidential. It has a narrow place in reviews. A term in a standard customer contract that stops customers from posting honest reviews, or penalizes them for it, is void under the Consumer Review Fairness Act, and using one is unlawful. An NDA signed by an employee or a contractor is a different matter. It can bear on what they may disclose, and their review may also break a platform's conflict of interest rule.

Covered in The Consumer Review Fairness Act. Source: Consumer Review Fairness Act: What Businesses Need to Know.

A review a customer writes without being invited. Trustpilot's label for it is Unprompted review, which also covers reviews that arrive through a basic profile link, a Unique Link or the Review Collector widget. Profiles made up mostly of unprompted reviews tend to skew negative, because unhappy customers go looking for a place to post and satisfied ones rarely do. Trustpilot tells readers when a company has not invited its customers.

Covered in Why uninvited profiles skew negative. Source: Trustpilot's review labels.

Our weekly report to a client, and the record that billing rests on. For every review that came down, it shows a screenshot taken before removal and a check that the review is gone: on Trustpilot, the review's own link, which now returns an error page. For every review the platform kept, it shows the decision. Reviews still being assessed are listed as in review. Every case also sits in one shared sheet, from audit to proof, so a client can check any line.

Covered in How it works: the weekly proof report.

Under HIPAA, information held by a covered entity that relates to a person's health, care or payment for care and that can identify them. The fact that someone is a patient is included. For review work it means two things. A public reply must never confirm that a reviewer is a patient or mention their treatment. Evidence for a flag must never include charts, prescriptions, lab results or intake answers.

Covered in HIPAA-safe replies to 1-star reviews. Source: OCR agreement with a provider that disclosed patient information in response to negative online reviews.

Google's name for reviews that are incentivized or biased. Its policy says they are not allowed and will be removed from Maps. It covers reviews posted because a business offered payment, discounts or free goods. It also covers unusual volumes or patterns of reviews meant to move a place's rating, and reviews based on a conflict of interest. The same policy stops a merchant from discouraging negative reviews or asking only happy customers for reviews.

Covered in Google review policy: conflict of interest. Source: Prohibited and restricted content.

A Trustpilot review label meaning the reviewer followed a link on the business's own website to its Trustpilot profile and wrote the review from there. Redirected reviews do not count toward Google's store ratings. Like every other label, Redirected tells readers how the review was collected. It does not change how much the review counts toward the TrustScore, and it does not stop the business from flagging the review if it breaks a rule.

Covered in The four Trustpilot review labels compared. Source: Trustpilot's review labels.

A tool in the Trustpilot Business account that asks a reviewer for details that help the business identify them and their experience. The reviewer has 3 days to respond and can choose not to. Trustpilot requires a business to use it before flagging a review as not based on a genuine experience. It is the only contact with a reviewer that belongs in a removal project, because it runs through Trustpilot.

Covered in The required first step before a flag. Source: How to flag service reviews from your business account.

A sudden wave of negative reviews, often driven by a news story, a social media post or a coordinated group. Google says it may pause new reviews on a profile after a spike in spam and tell consumers why. Yelp places an Unusual Activity Alert and disables posting. Trustpilot publishes no policy on it at all, and covers only the parts that break its ordinary rules. A wave can also be a real failure that reached many customers at once.

Covered in What to do when your brand is review-bombed. Source: Who can write a review and when?.

Steering happy customers toward a review site and unhappy customers toward a private channel. Trustpilot bans it. Its own example of wording that is not allowed is: 'If you were happy with our services, please review us on Trustpilot. If not, please contact our customer support.' Inviting only customers who are likely to be happy, or inviting only at a stage that satisfied customers reach, counts as the same thing.

Covered in Review gating: why every platform bans it. Source: Best practices for creating review invitations.

The published rules a platform applies to reviews. Google's are part of its Maps user-generated content policy, and the banned categories sit on one page called Prohibited and restricted content. Trustpilot's are its Guidelines for Reviewers and Guidelines for Businesses. A review comes down only when it breaks one of these rules, never because a business dislikes it. A report or a flag has to name the rule. That is why our pages quote each rule in the platform's own words and link to it.

Covered in Google's review policies, one rule at a time. Source: Prohibited and restricted content.

Google's name for the stars and rating that can show with a search result. Google describes it as a short excerpt of a review or a rating from a review website, usually an average of many reviewers' scores. It is driven by Review or AggregateRating structured data on the page. Google does not show it for self-serving reviews. A business that marks up reviews about itself on its own site, directly or through an embedded widget, is not eligible. A Trustpilot profile page can show one, because Trustpilot is a review site.

Covered in The score where sales start to drop. Source: Review snippet (Review, AggregateRating) structured data.

Under section 465.7 of the FTC's Consumer Review Rule, using an unfounded or groundless legal threat, a physical threat, intimidation or a knowingly false public accusation to prevent a review or get it removed. The section also bans presenting the reviews on your own website as most or all reviews when you are hiding some because of their rating. Reporting a review to a platform because it breaks the platform's published rules is not suppression.

Covered in Section 465.7 in plain words. Source: 16 CFR Part 465: Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. § 230. It says a provider of an interactive computer service is not treated as the publisher or speaker of information provided by its users. In practice it means a business generally cannot sue a review platform over what a reviewer wrote. Legal action over a defamatory review has to target the reviewer. This is general information and not legal advice.

Covered in Flagging or a lawyer?. Source: 47 U.S. Code § 230: Protection for private blocking and screening of offensive material.

The stars that can show under a Google text ad. Google now calls them store ratings, and its help page was formerly titled About seller ratings. Google builds the rating from Google Customer Reviews and third-party review partners, and Trustpilot is on its list of sources. Google says a composite rating of 3.5 stars or more is required for text ads. It also says most merchants get a rating after collecting 100 or more eligible reviews within the last 24 months. For an online-only brand, this is how Trustpilot reviews reach Google.

Covered in Google vs Trustpilot review removal: what is different. Source: About store ratings.

A Trustpilot feature that shows the public how a business has used the flagging tool over the past 12 months. It appears on the Company activity page. It shows how often the business flagged, its percentage of invalid cases and the star ratings of the reviews it flagged. It also shows how many flagged reviews stayed online or were removed. It means that careless flagging is visible to customers, competitors and regulators.

Covered in Your public flagging record. Source: Transparent Flagging: see how a business is reporting its reviews.

Trustpilot's overall measure of reviewer satisfaction for a business, on a scale of 1 to 5. It is not a simple average. Trustpilot says the formula uses three factors. Time span: newer reviews weigh more. Frequency: the score is steadier when reviews arrive regularly. And an average that includes 7 neutral reviews worth 3.5 stars, which matter less as real reviews add up. The source of a review and whether the business pays Trustpilot do not affect it. Only a customer's most recent review counts.

Covered in How Trustpilot calculates TrustScore. Source: TrustScore and star rating explained.

A Trustpilot review label meaning the review is tied to a real experience. A review is marked Verified in two cases. The business invited the customer through one of Trustpilot's automated invitation tools, which link the review to a transaction. Or the reviewer sent Trustpilot's Content Integrity Team documents that show a genuine experience. Verified reviews from automatic invitations count toward Google's store ratings. The label does not change how much the review counts toward TrustScore.

Covered in How the Verified label is produced. Source: Trustpilot's review labels.