GMB Review Removal Guidelines
When you’re running a business, how often have you thought about how to remove reviews from Google my business? Well, if you haven’t yet, it’s time. Having bad reviews on your page can severely hurt your company and cause a decrease in revenue.
Without a customer review management plan in place, a string of negative reviews may drive nearly everyone away from your firm. So, what can you do? Is it possible to get rid of bad reviews on Google?
In a short answer, yes, Google reviews can be removed. The longer answer is more complex and delicate than that. In this guide, we’ll show you the importance of auditing your competitor’s GMB from time to time and how to remove bad reviews using four different methods. You’ll know exactly how to improve your business’s reputation on the world’s most popular search engine by the end of the article!
Removing Inappropriate Google Reviews
Inappropriate reviews can include those that are obscene, racist or discriminatory in nature. They may also contain personal information about a client who never agreed to be identified by name.
According to Google these are subjects that violate their content policy:
- Spam and fake content
- Off-topic
- Restricted content
- Illegal content
- Terrorist content
- Sexually explicit content
- Offensive content
- Dangerous and derogatory content
- Impersonation
- Conflict of interest
If you are 100% sure one of the reviews you want to have removed violates this policy, you can flag these reviews from your account.
Here’s the step-by-step process for requesting an inappropriate review to be deleted from Google:
Desktop Computer
- Sign in to Google My Business.
- Open the listing you want to manage and click Reviews.
- Click More, then click Flag as inappropriate.
Phone or Tablet
- Open the My Business app.
- Tap Customers, then tap Reviews.
- Tap More, then tap Flag review.
Google Maps
- Open Google Maps on your computer.
- Navigate to your business listing.
- Locate the review you want to remove.
- Click More, then click Flag as inappropriate.
Ask Clients For Support
To modify or delete a negative Google review of your Business.
Learning how to deal with negative reviews might take some effort (and energy), but this technique for removing poor client feedback from your company is well worth the time and effort.
If you succeed, you’ll have gotten rid of a bad review while also converting a consumer from a liability into a possible lifelong brand advocate.
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to make the most of a bad review:
When you come across a negative review on Google Reviews, consider the consumer’s perspective for a moment.
Consider the following: What exactly are they complaining about, and is it something that you can correct now that you know about it?
After you’ve determined that the review isn’t fraudulent or inappropriate, the second stage is to write a response to the consumer’s feedback directly on Google.
Although people have diverse ideas about what to say, the overall idea is the same.
- The first step is to recognize and name the customer’s issue. For example: “It appears that you had a difficult time with the product you bought.”
- Second, tell them how you feel about it. “I would be annoyed, too, if this happened to me,” for example.
- Finally, make sure you can and will remedy the problem as soon as possible. For example: “I would love the opportunity to make this right. Please let us know the best way to get you a working product.
The third and last stage is to wait for a response (once again, be patient…). You should hear back from the customer and may start a discussion about what went wrong and how to repair the relationship.
When you’ve resolved the problem with them, you may politely request that they modify or remove their negative Google review. It’s unlikely they’ll refuse your polite request if you’ve been successful thus far.
If they still refuse to take down the review, you may flag it for Google to evaluate; even if it isn’t removed, the comments section will demonstrate that you — as the business owner — made every effort to correct the problem as soon as you were aware of it. This can often speak louder than a positive review alone!
@GoogleSmallBiz Help
You can Tweet @GoogleSmallBiz about the negative Google review of your business, and ask if they can remove it.
If you’ve exhausted the preceding two techniques and nothing appears to be working, there’s always Twitter as a the third option!
Let’s assume you’ve already labeled the review as incorrect, but you didn’t hear back; perhaps you even notified them several times and nothing happened. Perhaps you also responded to the reviewer yourself, but they never replied to your statement.
When you’ve completed your due diligence, complaining to Google on a public forum can’t hurt. People may see what replies Google gets there, so it’s in their best interests to address those issues as soon they appear.
However, tweeting @Google isn’t your best bet. Instead, tweet about your situation to
@GoogleSmallBiz. Follow them as well, so they can Direct Message you in return about your problem.
If you have any images to share, include them in your tweet or DM (along with a short explanation and a link) to Google’s Small Business department. This may assist them in gaining a clearer picture of the situation and addressing it promptly and directly.
File a Legal Removal Request
for the Bad Review of Your Business
There’s one more alternative for getting rid of bad Google reviews of your company, but it will only apply to a selected number of situations. If the content is unlawful, individuals have the option of formally requesting its removal.
In certain circumstances, things that have been posted about your business on the internet may be defamatory if they are untrue. In the situation of your company, this might apply to any harm that may come to you or your brand as a result of false statements published online. Which is illegal in the United States or Thailand for example.
To report an unlawful review, go to the Content Removal Tool and select Google My Business. On the next several screens, Google will ask you questions regarding the review and your complaint about specific content.
Google notes that “a copy of each legal notice we receive may be sent to the Lumen project for publication and annotation.” They go on to say, “We may also send the original notice to the alleged infringer or, if we have reason to suspect the validity of your complaint, to the rights holder. We may also publish similar information from your notice to our Transparency Report.”
In other words, Google takes these allegations very seriously for good reason. If you submit one of these reports, you might be accusing illegal activity or misconduct, so Google has to be sure that they follow the proper procedure from beginning to end.
Finally, keep in mind that if you have multiple complaints to submit through this system, each one must be completed separately “for each Google service where the material is displayed.”
Negative Reviews SEO
The Impact of Negative Reviews on Your Google Ranking
A question was posed to Google’s John Mueller about whether or not the search engine will lower your rankings in ranking if you have an unhappy customer. The short answer is no, but there are more factors that can affect this decision so before you sigh with relief all day long understand what else happens here!
1) Online reviews are a huge part of consumers’ decision-making process. Positive reviews can help you increase sales, enhance ranking on search engines and boost profitability while negative feedback will have detrimental effects regardless if it’s small or large company same with recent statistics below.
2)Research has shown that the right balance between negative and positive reviews can actually help you increase your credibility as they affect in a long term way potential customers’ search for companies online. More brand searches equals higher rankings; those clicks lead toward more engagement signals which means better visibility of your GMB listing. Research shows that consumers like to see a mixture of good, moderate and bad when trying to determine if businesses are trustworthy. If you have more than one type for this reason alone it makes sense why they will be willing spend time on our site which increases rank within search engines in long run.
3) Negative reviews are an opportunity to build relationships with customers and provide you more accurate picture of your business. You’ll know what problems exist, allowing for quick solutions that improve the experience overall! What kind of feedback could motivate a company’s growth?
When it comes down negative review- not all hope is lost in this situation as they also contain valuable information about areas where improvement could be made or opportunities present themselves. By getting input from these dissatisfied patrons we can make changes on how our service operates based off their suggestions which will ultimately lead them back into loving us once again.
4) Reviews have the power to make or break your business. Reviews can have a huge impact on your conversion rate. Audit the reviews of competitors and see what their average number is, as well as how many times keywords like “bad” or good appear in there to get an idea for where you should focus more time when optimizing your review generation strategy. The length of time spent on a single page and overall session duration is critical when you’re aiming to improve SEO.
5) To improve your site’s ranking on Google, you need to ensure that the entire traffic flow is tracked from GMB. Page depth is determined by how many clicks it takes before reaching a page and this can have an impact with SEO performance because of how quickly google crawls pages. Pages without enough crawl time tend not rank well while others who are crawled often but low internal pagerank do even worse since they don’t get as much organic visitors which means less visibility.
6) Monitoring your location’s place topics section and overall sentiment can help you identify underperforming locations so that the right actions are taken. To stay on top of customer service, we recommend monitoring all aspects within a business through multilocation GMB analytics.
7) Your ranking is constantly changing. With our free local search tracking tool, you can see where your listing stands against other nearby shops and make necessary changes to improve its standing in order for it not be lost among competitors- track regularly or audit when needed based on proximity across several locations of interest.
Bottom Line
The four options for removing Google reviews about your company are as follows:
- If the content is violating Google content policy, flag it as such.
- If you can resolve the customer’s problem, they may delete or modify their review.
- If these don’t work, you can always tweet to Google’s small business team.
- If the content is unlawful or defamatory, you can submit a formal legal request to Google asking it to remove it.
A bad review should not be a cause for worry at the end of the day, especially when your customer review management system is generating a far higher amount of good reviews to outweigh it. Google offers numerous options for resolving potential problems in a timely manner.
Happy Crush!
SEO Lover, my motto is Action Over Words.
