Google almost never removes negative reviews, but there are exceptions, such as coordinated negative review attacks, conflicts of interest, profanity and discrimination.
One option is a review removal service.
Negative Review Removal Services:
We work with a reputable vendor to remove recent undesirable negative reviews. It’s free to try to remove them and successful review removal is $1,000 per review. Not all negative reviews may be removed.
Contact us today to learn more about this service.
For all other situations, or to try removing reviews yourself, see the rest of this guide.
Flagging Inappropriate Reviews for Removal:
Any user can flag a review as inappropriate. If the review contains profanity or discrimination, Google will gladly remove itfor your quickly for free.
This tactic rarely works for undesirable reviews, regardless of them being from legitimate users or not.
To flag an inappropriate review for removal, someone with access to the Google Business Profile needs to log in to the GBP at https://business.google.com/, go to the “Reviews” section, then flag a review as inappropriate. This is where you get to select why you are reporting the review.
The removal process varies depending on the reason why you’d like the review removed.
Here are the reasons Google WILL remove a negative review:
- Off topic. If someone leaves a review for your law firm which says “don’t order the hot dogs here” you should be able to simply report the review in Google Business Profile.
- Spam. A spam review Google will take action on will basically be an advertisement for something. It happens.
- Conflict of Interest. Recently, a law firm contacted us after an Ex-Employee left. They left a negative review. While this is technically against Google review policy and they claim they will remove it, they won’t. What happens here is you flag the review for removal and then you never here from Google again. Your request goes into a black hole of 1s and 0s. If you fight hard enough you “might” be able to get the review removed using the tactics mentioned above in the coordinated review attack section. Otherwise, it’s best to just move forward with obtaining more positive reviews.
- Profanity. If someone leaves a review with swear words or mentions violence, Google will take it down.
- Bullying or Harassment. Google claims this is against their policy but getting reviews removed for this depends on what the review says and is subjective.
- Discrimination or Hate Speech. Google will remove reviews which contain this.
- Personal Information. This again is against Google policy and they may or may not enforce it.
- Legal Issues. Court orders and other legal issues can also get reviews removed. For more on these please refer to this page: Removing content from Google.
Coordinated Negative Review Attacks:
We once helped an international law firm who had received hundreds of negative reviews. The reviews were left by angry reddit users who coordinated the attack publicly because they were upset about a class action lawsuit against a fairly well known redditor (reddit user).
To remove a large quantity of negative reviews against your law firm you will need to have documented evidence of the attack. If the negative reviews were planned out publicly on reddit, Facebook or another site, you will have concrete evidence.
Next you will want to craft a short and sweet message to send to Google Business Profile support. They rarely respond. If they fail, you can go to Google’s Google Business Profile help forum and nicely ask for assistance. A volunteer with the appropriate credentials can get this escalated for you.
Negative Review Extortion:
Review extortion is not new but there’s been an uptick in 2025. In October 2025, Google released a new way to have these reviews removed. Read about that here: How To Report Negative Review Extortion.
A Few Negative Reviews are OK:
Studies have proven most people expect to see at least 1 negative reviews for every so many positive reviews. One bad review shouldn’t be the end of the world.
If you have received a negative review and it doesn’t fit one of the aforementioned exceptions I would encourage you to focus on getting positive reviews. You might like our recent podcast about getting more reviews for your law firm.