How to get a negative Google review removed?

Businesses cannot delete reviews, and Google does not remove a review because it is unfair, exaggerated or bad for trade. Removal happens only when a review breaks the content policies: fake or paid-for reviews, reviews from someone with no genuine experience of the business, reviews aimed at the wrong company, spam, off-topic rants about politics or couriers, abuse, and conflicts of interest such as a competitor or ex-employee posting.

The route is the reviews management tool inside your Business Profile. Flag the review, choose the policy ground, and give the clearest factual case you can, for example no booking, invoice or correspondence matching the reviewer's name. Decisions typically take from a few days to a few weeks, and a refusal can be appealed once with additional evidence.

Since Google signed undertakings with the UK's Competition and Markets Authority in January 2025, its processes for investigating fake and suspicious review activity have tightened, so a well-evidenced report of a genuinely fake review has a better chance today than it did a few years ago.

While the report is pending, reply publicly. A calm answer that states your record, corrects any facts and offers a direct way to resolve it does two jobs: it limits the damage with every future reader, and it demonstrates good faith. Never threaten legal action in a reply, it reads worse than the review.

If the review is genuinely defamatory, meaning it states provably false facts that cause serious harm, a solicitor's letter to the reviewer is a route that exists, but for most small businesses the cost and escalation rarely beat the alternative: report what breaks the rules, answer what does not, and out-earn the rest with new reviews.