Fake negative reviews on your business: what to do
You open your Google profile and there is a new one-star review from someone you have never heard of, describing a visit that never happened. Then a second one, and a third. Maybe it is a competitor, an ex, a former employee, or someone you cannot name at all. Whoever it is, it feels personal, because your name and your livelihood are on the line, and every day the reviews sit there, a customer may be reading them. You are not overreacting, and there is a calm, orderly way to handle it.
Save everything before you report anything
Reviews can disappear the moment a platform removes them or the poster deletes them, and once they are gone you lose the evidence. Before you flag a single review, take full-page screenshots that show the reviewer’s name, the date, the star rating, the text, and the URL. Copy the link to each review and the reviewer’s profile. Keep a simple log of the date and time you first saw each one, and note anything that suggests it is not a real customer: no matching order or appointment, details that are wrong about your business, several reviews arriving within minutes of each other, or wording that repeats across accounts. Our guide to preserving evidence in the first 24 hours covers how to do this cleanly.
Check whether the person was a real customer
Before calling a review fake, search your own records for the reviewer’s name, email, phone number, or a matching date. Sometimes a real customer had a bad experience, and the better response is a short, polite public reply and an offer to talk offline. A review that is simply harsh or unfair, but from a real customer, is usually not something a platform will remove. A review that describes an event that never happened, comes from someone with no connection to your business, or is part of a burst of coordinated posts is a different matter, and that is the kind worth reporting.
Report it through the platform’s own process
Every major platform has a way to flag reviews that break its rules. On Google, you can flag a review from your Business Profile as a policy violation, and Google’s fake engagement and conflict-of-interest policies are the ones that most often apply. Yelp, Facebook, and the Better Business Bureau each have their own report forms. Be specific and factual when you write the report: say what the review claims, why it cannot be true, and attach what you have saved. Short and plain tends to work better than angry and long. Reports can take days, and some are declined the first time, so it is reasonable to submit again with added detail if you have it.
What the FTC rule does and doesn’t do
The FTC’s rule on consumer reviews and testimonials, in effect since late 2024, bans businesses from writing, buying, or selling fake reviews, and lets the agency pursue civil penalties. It is aimed mainly at companies that manufacture or trade in fake reviews, which can include a competitor posting fake negative reviews about you. It is not a way for an individual to force a removal, and the FTC does not resolve disputes one by one. Still, you can report suspected fake-review activity at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, where it adds to the pattern regulators watch.
When it is part of something larger
Sometimes the reviews are one piece of a wider campaign. If the same person keeps returning with fresh accounts, our post on what to do when someone keeps making new accounts explains how to document and respond to that pattern. If the reviews state outright falsehoods that damage your reputation, this guide on false posts covers your options, including when it makes sense to speak with an attorney about defamation. If the reviews are paired with threats, a demand for payment to take them down, or personal information about you, treat that as more serious and keep every message. A request for money in exchange for removing reviews is extortion, and you should not pay it.
Keep your good reviews coming
The best defense over time is a steady stream of real feedback. A handful of fake reviews carries much less weight against dozens of genuine ones, so it is fine to ask satisfied customers to share their experience, as long as you never pay for or script reviews. Reply to the false ones once, calmly, saying you cannot find a record of this customer and inviting them to contact you directly. Readers tend to notice a measured tone.
If this has been going on for a while and you want help figuring out who is behind it, GCCI can look at the pattern privately for a flat fee, with no pressure to proceed.
— Gus