Google reviews for businesses: the policies, the report tool and the score

Start with the policies

Google removes a review only when it breaks a published policy. Our rule-by-rule guide to Google's review policies has one page for each, with the policy quoted, the evidence that supports a report and examples.

The six policies behind most removals:

• Spam and fake content: reviews with no real experience behind them, paid reviews, and one person with many accounts.
• Conflict of interest: current and former staff, competitors, family and contractors.
• Off-topic reviews: politics, news and rants with no experience of the place.
• Another person's personal information: names, numbers, faces and medical details, with the exception for doctors.
• Offensive content, harassment and hate speech: threats, slurs and unsupported claims of crime.
• Advertising and solicitation: links, codes, phone numbers and pitches.

The rest of Google's list:

• Restricted content, which covers offers to sell prescription medicine.
• Impersonation and misinformation.
• Dangerous content, including dosing directions.
• Illegal content and the legal removal route.
• Sexually explicit content.
• Terrorist content.

Reports and appeals

• How to remove a fake Google review, and what Google actually removes. The report, step by step, with the evidence to gather first.
• Google review removal appeals: how the process works. The three statuses, the one appeal, and what to put in it.
• How to report a Google review for conflict of interest, when a competitor or a former employee wrote it.
• How to remove a Google review, start to finish: the report, the Reviews management tool, the appeal and what happens after.
• How to report a Google review: the three routes Google documents, and what makes a report work.
• Can you delete Google reviews? The blunt answer, and what a business can do instead.
• Google review management tools against review removal: what Google's own tool does, and what no tool does.
• Birdeye alternatives and Podium alternatives: what each review tool publishes about itself, and what none of them can remove.
• Google Business Profile support: the routes Google documents, and the phone number it does not publish.

What stays online

• Why Google keeps most 1-star reviews. Google's own limits, and what to do about a review that stays.
• Why a Google review disappeared or is not showing. Google's own reasons, and which of them a business can do anything about.
• Replying to 1-star reviews without exposing patient information. The same limits apply to a Google reply.
• How to reply to a 1-star Google review, with four templates that confirm nothing about the reviewer.
• How to get more Google reviews without breaking the rule on incentives.
• Your Google review link: how to find it, the QR code, where to put it, and what you may not offer for a review.
• What happens if you buy Google reviews: the policy, the penalties and the FTC rule.

Your Business Profile

• Google Business Profile verification: the methods Google offers, how long each takes, and why you cannot choose.
• Google Business Profile suspended: the appeal, the evidence it takes, and the turnaround Google never publishes.

Asking, and showing

• How to ask for reviews on any platform, with four templates and the rules each one has to survive.
• Google review widget: what Google's terms allow you to put on your own site, and what they do not.
• Google seller ratings: the stars on ads and Shopping, where they come from, and how they differ from profile reviews.

Google and Trustpilot

• Google vs Trustpilot review removal: what is different. Reports, first steps, appeals, scores and public records, side by side.
• Trustpilot or Google reviews for a DTC health brand. Which platform matters more for an online health brand, and why.
• The Trustpilot hub, for the other half of the work.

The service

We remove Google reviews that break Google's policies, and you pay per confirmed removal. The main Google review removal page covers what comes down, how reports run and what it costs. The qualification tool checks one review against the policies in a few questions.

We keep this hub current

Every Google page on this site shows the date it was last checked against Google's own pages. When Google changes a policy, we update the page and note the change.