A Can question

Can an SEO company remove negative reviews?

3 min read Cites 3 sources

Not a genuine review that someone is simply unhappy about. Only the platform can remove a review, and on Google it does so only for reviews that break its policies. What an SEO company can do is report reviews that do break those policies, follow the report through to appeal, help you respond well to the rest, and help you earn more reviews from real customers. Some tactics for making reviews disappear are not only against platform rules but, in the United States, against a federal rule on consumer reviews.

What Google will remove

Google’s help page on reporting inappropriate reviews on your Business Profile says that any review can be reported but only those that break Google’s policies are eligible for removal, and that Google does not take sides in disagreements between businesses and customers. Google’s Maps content policy covers reviews that are not based on a real experience, were paid for, were posted from several accounts by one person, are off-topic, or are offensive; a review that is critical but honest falls under none of these.

The process has more steps than a single report. You flag the review from your Business Profile and choose the reason; Google notes that “Review evaluation typically takes several days.” Its Reviews Management Tool shows the status, including whether the report was reviewed and no violation was found. If so, you can submit a one-time appeal, selecting up to 10 reviews at a time, and the result arrives by email. A company handling this for you should keep a record of what was reported, why, and what Google decided, rather than reporting the same review again and again.

Google’s page also points businesses targeted by an extortion scam involving negative reviews to a separate way of reporting the incident, which a company should use instead of negotiating with whoever is behind it.

What the law does not allow

The Federal Trade Commission’s rule on consumer reviews and testimonials, published in the Federal Register in August 2024 with an effective date of October 21, 2024, includes a section on review suppression. It makes it unfair or deceptive for anyone to use “an unfounded or groundless legal threat, a physical threat, intimidation, or a public false accusation” in response to a consumer review in an attempt to stop the review from being written or to have it removed, where the accusation is made knowing it is false or with reckless disregard for whether it is true. The same rule also covers buying positive or negative reviews and a business implying that the reviews shown on its own website or platform are all or most of those submitted when reviews are being held back because of their ratings or negative sentiment.

For your SEO company, this rules out pressure campaigns against reviewers, threatening letters without a real legal basis, and paying reviewers for a changed, more positive review. A company that offers guaranteed removal of negative reviews should be asked exactly how it does it. This is general information, not legal advice; if a review is false and damaging, a lawyer can review whether there is a legal remedy and how to pursue it without crossing that line.

What actually helps

Four things work within the rules. Report reviews that break policy, with the reason stated plainly. Reply to criticism calmly, with facts and an offer to resolve the problem; the reply appears publicly alongside the review. Ask every real customer for a review through the same process, so your profile reflects your customers as a whole rather than the few who were unhappy. And fix the problem the review describes, since an honest negative review can point at something the next customer may run into too.

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