A Competitor or Ex-Employee Left a Fake Review — What to Do
Reviews from a competitor, former employee, or someone who was never a customer can break Google’s conflict-of-interest policy. Here is how to handle it calmly and effectively.
When a review smells like it came from a competitor, a disgruntled ex-employee, or someone who was never your customer, it can fall under Google's conflict-of-interest policy — one of the categories Google does act on.
Don't reply in anger
The worst move is a public, accusatory reply. It signals "drama" to every future customer reading your profile, and it does nothing to get the review removed. Keep any public response short, calm, and professional — or skip the reply and go straight to reporting.
Build the case instead
- Note why you believe it's a conflict of interest. "We have no record of this customer," "this names a former employee," "this matches a competitor" — keep it factual.
- Report it in your Google Business Profile. Open the review, use the three-dot menu, choose Report review, and pick Low quality information — a competitor or non-customer review reads as off-topic to Google's reporter. (Google's menu no longer has a "conflict of interest" option; the current reasons are Low quality information, Profanity, Harmful, Bullying or harassment, Discrimination or hate speech, Personal information, and Not helpful.)
- Preserve the details — a screenshot, the date, the reviewer name as shown — in case you escalate later.
What Revora does here
Revora's Suspicious Review Case Builder lets you capture your own note about who you suspect and why (kept as your statement, not Revora's conclusion), flags the likely policy category, and produces a neutral removal request you can submit. It will never label a reviewer or claim to know who wrote a review — that's not something anyone can prove from the outside.
A note on what NOT to do
Do not buy reviews, offer refunds for taking a review down, or post your own reviews to "balance it out." Those tactics violate Google's policies and risk your whole profile — exactly the outcome you're trying to avoid.