getting hit with fake 1 star reviews from a competitor and google refuses to remove them.

★★★ signal-strong r/smallbusiness · ↑ 176 · 💬 96 · 2026-04-03 · kw: negative review · open on reddit ↗

Tool

Google Business Profile

Issue

Local service business received wave of fake 1-star reviews from competitor with no customer database matches; Google support rejected removal despite spam flags, causing measurable phone call slowdown during busy season.

Cost

unstated (but impact mentioned: 'phone calls slowed down noticeably' during peak business season)

Recommendation

Respond publicly to reviews questioning reviewer identity; request reports from 5+ real people; report to FTC under Consumer Review Fairness Act (amended 2024); escalate beyond automated support

Date context

2026-04-03; Consumer Review Fairness Act amended 2024; commenter experienced incident in 2024

extracted with

anthropic/claude-haiku-4.5 · 2026-05-08

Body

I run a local service business and out of nowhere we just got hit with a wave of one star reviews. none of the names are in our customer database and they all vaguely mention a better alternative in town which makes it super obvious it's a competitor paying for negative reviews. i flagged all of them as spam and opened a ticket with google business profile support but they just sent back an automated email saying the reviews don't violate their policies. how are local businesses supposed to survive this if google won't even enforce their own rules?

Top comments (7)

[score=1] AutoModerator

**Friendly Reminder** r/smallbusiness is a question and answer subreddit. Ask a question about starting, owning, and growing a small business and the community answers. Posts that violate the rules listed in the sidebar will be removed. **Please do not conduct market research on our community.** We are not your focus group and asking us about our pain points, needs, what is hardest about X, etc. is not asking about how small business works or for real help with running your small business. These posts are subject to removal and given the community's disgust with the constant spamming of these posts you might just destroy your brand and contaminate your company search results. Seeing this message does not mean your post was automatically removed. If you asked about pain points or are directly or indirectly promoting a product please remove your post. Come back to post an honest question or give a knowledgeable response to someone else's question and leave your company name in your own profile. We can tell if you know what you're doing and the community can reach out if they need to. **We welcome honest question posts, especially from newcomers.** Thank you for your post. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/smallbusiness) if you have any questions or concerns.*

[score=79] freecodeio

you have to report them fast from 5+ real people, ask your staff, and give them a small bonus if your staff asks people they know

[score=180] jonoslicer

I run a home services company and this happened to us in 2024 at the beginning of our busy season. 17 1-star reviews with no words in a 24hr period, almost every account had no other reviews or history. We flagged them, had friends and family flag them, sent many complaints to Google, and watched agonizingly as phone calls slowed down noticeably. Luckily our outcome was Google pulling the reviews. They removed every review, although it took about 4 sleepless days and a lot of effort. Good luck, I hope you have a quick resolution. For me, it was a low point of my small business career.

[score=111] ironicmirror

This happened to me a couple of times, and I would go on Google and respond "bob, I'm sorry you feel that way but are you sure you are referring to the proper business? I don't see your name or anything like it in our database, but your feedback is important to us please give me a call at 555-555-5555, and I will personally try to rectify the situation"

[score=17] 69DETONATOR69

Google is a bitch company that doesn’t even investigate individual cases. Same happened to me. A random user named “Trav” (very uncommon for our parts of the world) with a profile picture of 3D text saying “Trav” (heh, how creative), which was created 2 days before posting, left a one star review in English saying bullshit. I reported it and provided Google all the infos. Instantly removed. A week later the same user added the same review, now in local language (obvious Google translated one) and 2 stars instead of 1. Google refused to remove and even my appeals connecting it to the previous case were declined. This was the moment when I completely stopped believing anything I see on Google reviews. Nowadays you can buy a botnet on the darknet to flood someone’s reviews with negative (or positive as a matter of fact as well) reviews to destroy someone or look legit. EDIT: typos corrected

[score=25] Common-Sense-9595

This is super frustrating and if you can't prove they violate their T/C's then I recommend you just respond to them in a firm but respectful way. People are very aware of other people playing games messing with review sites. If you'd like me to write an example for you, I'd be happy too but I need some details. PS: This is not fee based, there is no fee for the free example and no obligation of any kind. I'm just trying to help you. Hope that makes sense!

[score=8] Crotalus

Be sure that they are from a competitor, and reply to all of them with this fact. If you have a buffer of better reviews, this can even be good for you in the long run, and bad for them. Report it still of course, but respond as if you are talking to future readers of the review rather than the reviewer. You can also now report this to the FTC. The Consumer Review Fairness Act was ammended in 2024 and makes malicious reviews like this a big mistake for an ignorant competitor.