27 September 2026 · 5 min read · Oscar Markham
What to do about a fake or malicious review
A review from somebody who was never a customer is infuriating and it is not the emergency it feels like. Google does remove a proportion of them, slowly and inconsistently, and there are things that help and things that make it worse.
Work out which kind it is
A fake review from a competitor, a case of mistaken identity where somebody has reviewed the wrong business, or a genuine customer being unfair. Those need completely different responses.
Mistaken identity is the easiest to resolve and surprisingly common where two businesses share a similar name in the same county.
What Google will remove
Reviews containing abuse, profanity, personal information or obvious spam. Reviews from a competitor where there is evidence. Reviews clearly about a different business.
What it will generally not remove is a genuine customer being harsh or unreasonable. 'This is unfair' is not a policy violation, however true it is.
- Report it once through the profile, with the specific policy it breaches
- Keep a screenshot in case it changes
- Reply publicly, calmly, without disputing facts
- Do not contact the reviewer privately to pressure them
- Do not ask staff or family to post reviews to bury it
Reply as if the reviewer is not reading
They are not the audience. Everybody deciding whether to ring you is. A short, calm reply that does not dispute or accuse reads far better than a detailed rebuttal.
If you genuinely have no record of them, saying so once and neutrally — that you can find no record of this job and would like to look into it — is both true and effective.
The real defence is volume
One bad review among six is damage. One among sixty is invisible and even faintly reassuring, because a business with no criticism at all looks curated.
If a review has hurt you, the answer is not the appeal. It is asking the next twenty happy customers, which most businesses have never systematically done.
Written by Oscar Markham, founder of Dublin Growth Digital. We run lead generation for Irish estate agents and trades, reported every Friday in enquiries and booked work.