Can a bad Google review be traced?

What you can see is what the reviewer has made public: the name on their Google account, their profile photo and, if their profile is public, their other reviews and photos. The name can be anything, so a profile called J Smith tells you little on its own.

That public profile is often enough to answer the useful question, which is whether the reviewer was ever a customer. Compare the name, the date and any job details with your bookings, invoices and messages. A profile that reviewed businesses all over the country in a single week, or has never reviewed anything before, tells its own story, and you can include that in your report to Google.

To make someone reveal who is behind an account, a UK court can grant a Norwich Pharmacal order against a third party that was involved in the wrong. The bar is high. You need an arguable wrong, such as defamation or malicious falsehood, a realistic prospect of bringing a claim, and the court weighs the reviewer's rights as well. In Davidoff v Google in 2023, the High Court refused to order Google to identify the people behind Gmail accounts used to post anonymous reviews on another site, because Google was only a witness rather than involved in the wrongdoing.

Even a successful order may only produce an email address or account details, and turning those into a named person can take further steps. With legal costs on top, tracing is usually kept for serious, sustained campaigns that are costing serious money, not a single one-star review.

Be wary of playing detective. Guessing who wrote a review and confronting them, or naming them in your reply, can cause more trouble than the review did, especially if you guess wrong. Report it, reply calmly, and take legal advice if the damage is serious.