Google reviews have a huge impact on any local business's success, both in terms of its visibility in local search and when it comes to generating leads and foot traffic and influencing customers' purchase decisions.
Why? Because Google Business Profile reviews are a direct ranking factor for local search rankings, and customers are far more likely to choose businesses with a high number of reviews and a high average review score (4 stars or better) over their competitors.
Because of the importance of Google reviews, getting just one negative review on Google Business Profile can have an outsized impact on a business's position in local search results and its ability to generate and convert leads.
And, since customers who have negative experiences are more likely to leave reviews than those who have positive ones, due to the heightened emotional responses involved, it's easy for a business's reviews to go downhill fast then it's an uphill battle to increase your overall review score by incremental amounts (0.1 stars).
Because of this, many business owners and local SEO professionals would like to know how to remove negative Google Reviews, but the answer's not that simple.
So, we put together this comprehensive guide covering everything you need to know about Google Review removal to help you manage your reputation more efficiently on Google Business Profile.
Can You Remove Negative Google Reviews?
Before we go any further, it's important to make it clear that businesses cannot delete bad reviews on Google just because they want to. After all, this would defeat the primary purpose of customer reviews to provide other potential customers with honest, user-generated information about businesses to help them decide where to spend their hard-earned money.
That being said, there are a couple of ways businesses can get Google reviews removed to restore their reputations and rankings:
- Get the customer to delete a bad Google Review
- Ask Google to remove Google Reviews from your Business Profile
How To Get a Google Review Removed by the Customer
Many negative Google reviews are a result of easily resolvable issues. For example, maybe the business was short-staffed one day, resulting in slow service, or maybe there was just a misunderstanding that caused another type of issue.
While many customers understand that one bad experience is not necessarily representative of an entire business, there are many others that have strong emotional responses to negative customer service and experiences, and these are the ones most likely to leave a bad review on Google.
While a business itself can't do anything to remove a legitimate Google review, be it bad or good, reviewers themselves can delete any of their own Google reviews.
So, how exactly do you get disgruntled customers to delete bad reviews on Google? The key is to communicate with them professionally and genuinely, apologizing for the issue and trying to resolve it or compensating them for it in some way that makes them reconsider their negative review.
Ideally, this would lead to the customer deleting their bad Google review and maybe even leaving a new positive review, having a strong positive effect on your overall review score.
There are a couple of tactics you can use to communicate with a customer about a negative review and try to get them to remove it, starting with responding to their review.
Remove a Negative Google Review by Responding
The first thing you need to do to try and get a customer to delete a bad Google review is respond directly to the negative review, which you should be doing anyways for all reviews, both positive and negative.
When you respond to reviews on Google, always remain professional and polite getting confrontational with the customer has no benefit, and can even hurt your business's reputation further, since potential customers can see your responses and make judgements about your business and its customer service based on them.
Thank the customer for their feedback, apologize for the issue, and state what steps you are taking to fix the root of the problem and avoid similar issues in the future. Whatever you do, do not try to place any blame on the customer, as this won't get you anywhere positive.
By accepting full responsibility for the issue and taking accountability for the actions of your staff and business, you demonstrate a commitment to providing excellent customer service and learning from feedback to improve your business.
When a customer who has left a negative review as an emotional response to a negative experience sees this and thinks about their review, they may simply decide to remove it on their own.
However, for even better chances of getting customers to remove their negative reviews, you may want to try contacting them directly.
Contact Customers Directly To Delete Bad Google Reviews
Whenever you respond to bad reviews on Google, it's also a good idea to provide a way for the customer to contact your business directly, so you can hear their feedback in more detail and have a chance to make it right with them. For example, you might ask them to call or message you so you can discuss and resolve the issue in private.
You're likely to find that even the most upset customers appreciate it when a business reaches out to them to try and compensate them for a negative experience, so many people will contact you when you ask them to in your review responses.
But, if a negative reviewer is unresponsive and their bad review remains on Google, you may also decide to try and contact them directly.
While this isn't always going to be possible (or a good idea, if it's clear that the reviewer is particularly aggressive or unreasonable), you might be able to find contact information for reviewers by comparing their Google profile names with customer information available from things like reservation or appointment histories or sales records.
If you are able to contact negative reviewers this way, remember to be super respectful of their time and thank them graciously for their feedback, making it clear that you are contacting them to see if you can make up for the bad experience they had in any way.
You might try to rectify the situation by offering them a discount on their next visit or purchase and asking them to give you business another shot, which gives you a chance to provide them with a better interaction with your business that can change their opinion about it.
For example, if you are trying to remove a Google review for a restaurant, you could invite the customer to come back and enjoy a meal at 50% off. This type of offer requires a minimal investment for the business, but can give you a chance to completely change the customer's mind about it.
If the customer accepts and goes back a second time and has a good experience, they may delete the negative review and maybe even replace it with a positive one, helping your business recover its reputation and improving its local SEO. Who knows, you might even turn them into a loyal customer based on the new positive experience!
Keep in mind that you cannot directly incentivize customers to leave positive reviews. The idea is to just get someone who previously left a bad review to give your business another chance. Then, do everything you can to ensure they have a positive experience this time, but allow the customer to make their own decision about whether to remove a bad review they left and potentially write a new positive one.
Turn Customer Feedback Into Strategy!
How To Remove a Google Review by Reporting It
Now that you know how to remove negative reviews from Google by engaging with the reviewers, let's look at the other potential solution: reporting reviews to Google itself to get them deleted.
Note that Google only removes reviews that are inappropriate or fake, so you should only report a bad review to Google if it violates Google's content policies.
Here are a few examples of reviews you can report to Google to get removed:
- Reviews clearly based on fake experiences with the business
- Similar reviews posted from multiple accounts to negatively affect the business's score
- Reviews posted by people impersonating others
- Reviews containing potentially harmful misinformation
- Reviews based on a conflict of interest (e.g., competitors leaving negative Google reviews)
- Deliberately false or misleading reviews
- Reviews containing harassment, hate speech, offensive content, or personal information
And here are a few examples of when you can't ask Google to remove a negative review:
- You disagree with or dislike a negative review
- The review is based on an actual experience
- There's no violation of Google's content policies
- There's no way to reliably tell who is right about a customer experience
- The review is a third-party hotel review (these must be flagged through the third-party provider)
Steps To Ask for Google Review Removal
If a negative Google review you want to remove falls into one of the allowable scenarios for removal mentioned above, you can follow these steps to report it and ask Google to take it down:
- Log in to and go to the reviews section of your Google Business Profile in Google Maps or Google Search.
- Find the review you want to report and select "Report review."
- Choose the type of violation you want to report the review for.
Alternatively, you can flag multiple bad reviews at once using Google's Reviews Management Tool:
- Confirm the email address you use to manage your Google Business Profile.
- Choose your business, then select "Report a new review for removal."
- Flag each review you want to report, choose the appropriate category in the following tab, then click "Submit."
Regardless of the method you choose, Google will take some time to look at your case and determine whether or not it meets the criteria for review removal. You can check on the status of any reviews you've flagged for removal in the Reviews Management Tool.
If Google happens to deny any of your bad review removal requests, you have one chance to appeal them, and you can appeal your case for removal for up to 10 reviews at once.
What If You're Unable To Delete Bad Reviews on Google?
In some cases, you are just going to have to live with the fact that a business you manage has a bad review on Google but there's still a way to get something positive out of bad reviews. It's called sentiment analysis.
Sentiment analysis involves analyzing all of a business's reviews to gather customer feedback and understand overall sentiment, pulling out key points from negative feedback to implement changes to improve the business's service and offerings and leaning into positive feedback to emphasize a business's strengths.
While it won't help you get rid of negative Google reviews that already exist, sentiment analysis can ultimately increase your rate of positive reviews and avoid negative reviews, incrementally increasing your total number of reviews and overall review score over time.
In the long run, getting more positive reviews will both improve your local search rankings and lead to more business, which in turn helps you keep generating good reviews, creating a cycle of positive feedback and local SEO success.
How Can You Do Sentiment Analysis for Google Reviews?
Performing sentiment analysis the traditional way requires manually reading and taking notes on a business's existing reviews. But, while this might be easy enough to do for businesses with only a handful of reviews, it can be prohibitively time consuming for businesses with hundreds or even thousands of Google reviews.
However, there's a new way to do sentiment analysis for Google Reviews faster than ever before: Local Falcon's AI Reviews Analysis tool.
The AI Reviews Analysis tool instantly looks at all of your business's reviews, as well as those of its top competitors, generating a thorough Reviews Analysis Report containing AI-powered sentiment analysis for all the Google reviews in a matter of seconds.
The Reviews Analysis Report contains key metrics that you'll only find in Local Falcon, providing deep insights into your business's overall review performance. Not only that, but the report also offers in-depth insights into specific customer feedback, related to everything from a business's customer service and communication to the quality of its products or services.
Based on the AI review analysis, the report also provides actionable suggestions for optimizing a business to improve its future reviews and avoid further negative reviews, ultimately helping the business improve its reputation and local SEO.
Local Falcon's Reviews Analysis Reports can even potentially help you identify opportunities to get negative Google reviews removed by highlighting reviews that you haven't responded to yet, allowing you to go back and respond to or directly contact customers to try and get them to change their sentiment about your business.
FAQs on Removing Google Reviews
Can businesses remove Google reviews?
The short answer is no, businesses cannot remove reviews from Google only the reviewers themselves can delete the reviews they leave for any reason. However, businesses may be able to influence customers to delete bad Google reviews by engaging with them to solve their problem and rectify the situation.
How can I remove a Google review by engaging with the customer?
Respond to the negative review politely and professionally, taking full accountability for the situation that resulted in the bad review and explaining specific actions you are taking to correct the issue(s).
You can also try getting in touch with the customer directly to try and solve the problem they had and get them to give your business a second chance, giving you an opportunity to provide them with a more positive experience that could change their opinion about your business.
There's no guarantee that either of these methods will get a customer to delete a bad Google review, but sometimes it does work, and may even result in a new positive review replacing the negative one.
Can Google remove reviews?
Yes, in some cases Google will remove a review for violating one of its content policies. Businesses or individuals can report bad reviews to Google to try and get them removed for a violation, but you cannot ask Google to remove a review simply because you don't like it or agree with the customer.
When does Google remove reviews?
Google may remove reviews from Google Business Profiles under several circumstances, especially if they violate Google's review policies. Here are some of the main reasons why Google might remove a review:
- Spam and Fake Content: Reviews that are deemed to be fake, generated by bots, or part of a spam campaign can be removed. This includes reviews that are clearly not written by genuine customers.
- Offensive Language: Reviews containing offensive, abusive, or inappropriate language may be taken down.
- Conflicts of Interest: Reviews written by individuals with a conflict of interest, such as current or former employees of the business, competitors, or the business owner themselves, are subject to removal.
- Irrelevant Content: Reviews that do not pertain to the actual experience of the customer or are unrelated to the business, such as political or social commentary, may be removed.
- Illegal Content: Reviews that contain or promote illegal content, including hate speech, harassment, threats, and sexually explicit material, are likely to be removed.
- Impersonation: Reviews posted by individuals pretending to be someone else, including public figures, are not allowed.
- Promotional Content: Reviews that include promotional or commercial content, such as advertisements or links to other websites, can be removed.
- Conflict of Interest: Reviews that are written by the business owner, employees, or anyone with a vested interest in the business can be flagged and removed.
- Offensive and Inappropriate Content: Reviews that contain offensive language, hate speech, personal attacks, or any other inappropriate content are likely to be removed.
- Privacy Violations: Reviews that disclose personal information, such as full names, addresses, or phone numbers, without consent can be removed to protect privacy.
- Prohibited and Restricted Content: Reviews that include content that violates Google's policies on prohibited and restricted content, such as violent or dangerous content, will be removed.
- Duplicate Content: Reviews that are duplicated across multiple accounts or profiles may be removed.
If a business owner or user believes a review violates Google's policies, they can flag the review for Google to evaluate. Google will then review the flagged content and decide whether it should be removed based on their guidelines.
How can I offset bad reviews on Google?
It's not always possible to get rid of negative Google reviews, so you'll just have to make up for them by getting more positive reviews.
The exact number of good reviews you need to get to offset a single bad review depends on several factors, including how many reviews you have and your overall review score. It might take 10, 15, 20, or even 30+ 5-star reviews to cancel out a single 1-star review. You can use the calculator below to see how many positive reviews you need to increase your average review score to the next level.
In order to get more positive reviews to offset negative ones, we recommend performing high-speed sentiment analysis using Local Falcon's AI Reviews Analysis tool, which provides strategic, AI-powered recommendations for managing your online reputation, improving customer sentiment, and outranking competitors in local search.
Final Words
Managing your Google reviews effectively is crucial for maintaining a positive online reputation and boosting your local SEO performance.
While it's not always possible to remove negative Google reviews, understanding how to address and respond to them can mitigate their impact.
Engaging with reviewers, resolving issues, and demonstrating exceptional customer service can often turn a negative review into a positive experience. In cases where reviews violate Google's content policies, reporting them for removal is a viable option.
Additionally, performing sentiment analysis, specifically using Local Falcon's lightning-fast AI Reviews Analysis tool, can provide valuable insights into customer feedback and help you make informed improvements to your business to reduce negative reviews and increase positive reviews on Google.
By focusing on these Google review removal and reputation management strategies, you can maintain a high review score, attract more customers, and sustain your business's success in the highly competitive local search marketplace.