The short answer is no, not in the way many business owners hope. An SEO company cannot simply delete a genuine negative review you received from a real customer. No agency has a back-door button for that, and any company that promises to make real reviews disappear is making a claim it cannot keep. Reviews on platforms like Google and Yelp belong to the platform and the person who wrote them, not to your business or your agency.
What a legitimate SEO or reputation company can do is work within the rules each platform sets. That is a meaningful difference, and it is worth understanding before you hire anyone to help.
What a company can legitimately do
The first legitimate option is flagging reviews that break platform rules. Google and Yelp both remove reviews that violate their content policies, but they do not remove a review just because it is negative, harsh, or old. A review qualifies for removal only when it breaks specific rules. On Google, that includes reviews not based on a real experience, paid or incentivized reviews, reviews posted from multiple accounts by one person, reviews left by a competitor to damage your business, and spam or off-topic content. Yelp applies similar standards and also removes reviews that contain hate speech, threats, or harassment.
When a review appears to break these rules, a company can flag it through the platform’s reporting tools and select the violation category. The platform then decides. It may remove the review, leave it in place, or escalate the case. Typical review times run a few business days, and there is no guarantee of removal. The agency’s role here is to identify genuine violations and submit a clear report, not to control the outcome.
The second legitimate option is responding to reviews professionally. A calm, specific, public reply to a negative review shows future customers that you take feedback seriously. This does not remove the review, but it changes how readers interpret it.
The third option is encouraging more genuine reviews from satisfied customers. A single one-star review carries far less weight when it sits among many honest, positive ones. Note that platforms have tightened the rules here. Google now prohibits practices such as review gating, where you only ask happy customers for reviews, along with review kiosks at reception and staff review quotas. A trustworthy company will ask every customer fairly and will never buy or incentivize reviews, since fake or paid reviews are exactly what platforms remove.
The fourth and most important option is addressing the root issues. If several reviews mention the same problem, the lasting fix is to correct that problem in your business. Reputation work that ignores the underlying cause only delays the next negative review.
Watch for these red flags
Be cautious of any company that guarantees it can erase real negative reviews, claims a special relationship with Google or Yelp that lets it delete content, or offers to pay the platform for removal. Yelp does not allow businesses or partners to pay for review removal, and Google does not either. Some operators use manipulative tactics such as mass-flagging legitimate reviews with false violation reports. This can backfire. Platforms can restrict a business profile for repeated abuse, which may limit your ability to respond to reviews or place a consumer alert on your listing.
You should also avoid any company that pressures or pays the original reviewer to take a review down. Both platforms forbid this, and it can damage trust if it becomes public.
The honest takeaway
An SEO or reputation company cannot delete genuine negative reviews, and it should never claim otherwise. What it can do is flag rule-breaking reviews for the platform to judge, help you respond well, support a steady flow of honest reviews, and guide you in fixing the problems behind the complaints. Hire a company that explains these limits clearly. The ones that promise to erase your reviews are the ones to walk away from.