A one-star review on your Google Business Profile feels personal, and it’s public. The natural reaction is to get it deleted. In most cases you can’t, and trying the wrong way can make things worse.
This guide explains which reviews Google will remove and how to report them, how to reply to the ones that stay without breaching Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act, what to do about fake or malicious reviews, and why buying positive reviews to drown out bad ones is now a regulatory risk in Singapore.
Key takeaways
- You can’t delete someone else’s review. Only the reviewer can. Google removes reviews only when they break its content policies, not because they’re negative or unfair.
- Report through your Business Profile or the Reviews Management Tool. Google says evaluation typically takes several days, and you can appeal once.
- Reply to every negative review, briefly and calmly. Your reply is for future customers more than for the reviewer.
- Never include a customer’s personal data in a reply. Singapore’s PDPC has found a business in breach of the PDPA for exactly this.
- Don’t buy reviews. In September 2026, Singapore’s consumer regulator required 45 businesses that bought fake reviews to publish public apologies for six months.
- The real fix is more genuine reviews. Ask every customer, not just the happy ones.
Can you delete a Google review?
No. A business can’t delete a review left by someone else. Only the person who wrote it can edit or delete it.
What you can do is report a review that breaks Google’s policies. If Google agrees, it removes the review. Google is explicit that it “doesn’t get involved in conflict between businesses and customers”, and asks businesses not to report a review “just because you disagree with it or dislike it”.
So the first question for any negative review is not “how do I remove this?” but “does this actually break Google’s rules?”
Which reviews Google will remove
Google’s policies for content on Maps prohibit several categories. These are the ones businesses most often run into:
|
Policy category |
What it covers |
Example |
|
Fake engagement |
Reviews that don’t reflect a genuine experience |
A review from someone who was never a customer, or one of a burst of identical one-star reviews |
|
Conflict of interest |
Reviews from competitors, current or former employees, or the owner |
A competitor reviewing your business, or an ex-employee reviewing their old workplace |
|
Off-topic |
Content not about an experience at the place |
Political rants, comments about a different business, complaints about a news story |
|
Harassment and hate speech |
Threats, bullying or attacks on people |
A review insulting a named staff member’s appearance or race |
|
Personal information |
Sharing someone’s private details |
A review that posts a staff member’s phone number or home address |
|
Offensive or explicit content |
Profanity, sexually explicit or violent content |
|
|
Advertising and solicitation |
Promotions, contact details or links |
A review promoting another business |
|
Impersonation |
Posting as someone else |
Source: Google Maps user contributed content policy.
What Google will not remove: honest complaints, even harsh ones. A customer who says your service was slow, your prices were high or your staff were rude is describing their experience. That’s allowed, even if you disagree with it.
How to report a review
There are two routes. Both lead to the same review process, described in Google’s help article on reporting inappropriate reviews.
From your Business Profile
- Open your Business Profile on Google.
- Select Read reviews.
- Next to the review, select the Report icon.
- Choose the reason that best fits the policy it breaks.
- Select Send report.
From the Reviews Management Tool
Google’s Reviews Management Tool lets you report reviews and track their status in one place.
- Open the tool and sign in with the account that manages your Business Profile.
- Select your business, then Report a new review for removal.
- Select Report next to the review, choose a reason and submit.
Checking the status and appealing
In the same tool, each report shows one of three statuses:
|
Status |
What it means |
What you can do |
|
Decision pending |
Google hasn’t evaluated it yet |
Wait. Google says evaluation typically takes several days |
|
Report reviewed: no policy violation |
Google decided the review stays |
Appeal once, with more detail |
|
Escalated: check your email for updates |
Your appeal is being reviewed |
Wait for the email with the final decision |
You can appeal up to 10 reviews at a time, and each review can only be appealed once. Make the appeal count.
How to improve your chances
- Pick the right reason. Reporting a fake review as “profanity” won’t work. Match the review to the policy it breaks.
- Bring evidence to the appeal. If the reviewer was never a customer, say how you know: no booking, no transaction and no record under that name on that date. If a burst of reviews arrived on the same day from new accounts, say so.
- Don’t report in bulk out of frustration. Reporting every negative review makes it harder to be taken seriously on the ones that genuinely break the rules.
- Report the reviewer’s profile if it’s clearly a fake account. In the Google Maps app, open the review, tap the reviewer’s name, then More → Report.
How to reply to a negative review
Most negative reviews will stay up. Your reply is how you turn them from a liability into evidence that you care. Google notes that “helpful and positive replies to reviews can show that you’re responsive to your customers”, and the reviewer is notified when you reply.
Remember who you’re really writing for: the next customer reading the review before deciding whether to contact you.
Five rules for every reply
- Reply within one or two working days. A fast, calm reply shows the business is attentive.
- Thank them and acknowledge the experience. You don’t have to agree to acknowledge that they were unhappy.
- Be specific and brief. Three to five sentences. Long defensive replies look worse than the review.
- Take the details offline. Invite them to contact a named role, not a personal number, through your official channel.
- Never include their personal data. More on this below, because it is a legal issue in Singapore.
Reply templates
Adapt these to your voice. Don’t paste the same reply under every review: readers notice, and it looks automated.
A genuine service failure
Thank you for telling us about this, and we’re sorry your appointment ran so late. That’s not the experience we want anyone to have. We’ve reviewed our scheduling for weekend sessions as a result. If you’re open to it, please contact our customer care team at [official email] so we can make this right.
A misunderstanding about price or policy
Thanks for your feedback. We understand the final bill was higher than you expected. Our quotation includes a separate line for after-hours call-outs, and we can see we didn’t explain that clearly enough on the day. We’d be glad to go through the invoice with you. Please reach our team at [official email].
A review you believe isn’t from a customer
Thank you for your review. We take every comment seriously, but we can’t find any record of a visit or order matching this description. If we’ve missed something, please contact us at [official email] with your booking details so we can look into it.
Keep this one neutral. Don’t accuse the reviewer of lying, and don’t reveal anything you do or don’t know about them. Report the review to Google separately if it breaks a policy.
An abusive review that names staff
We don’t accept abuse directed at our team, and we’ve reported this review to Google. If you had a genuine problem with our service, please contact us at [official email] and we’ll look into it properly.
What not to do
- Don’t argue point by point in public.
- Don’t offer refunds or discounts in exchange for removing or changing the review. Offering incentives to change reviews runs against Google’s policies, and it rarely stays private.
- Don’t reveal what you know about them. No address, phone number, order details, appointment history or medical information.
- Don’t reply in anger. You can edit or delete your reply later, but screenshots last.
The PDPA trap: what one Singapore business learned
In June 2023, Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC) published its decision in Tipros ([2023] SGPDPC 7). It’s the clearest example of how replying to a review can become a legal problem.
What happened: a customer gave a one-star Google review to a refrigerator repair business, complaining that the fridge broke down two weeks after repair and that the business wanted S$80 to check it again. The business replied promptly. Its reply included the customer’s residential address and mobile number. The PDPC also found 13 other replies on the same Google page that disclosed other customers’ personal data in a similar way.
What the PDPC decided: the business had breached the Purpose Limitation Obligation under section 18(a) of the PDPA. It was directed to remove the customer’s address and phone number from its reply, to review the 13 other replies and remove any personal data that wasn’t reasonable or proportionate, and to do so within 30 days.
The useful part for every business: the PDPC did not say you can’t reply to reviews. It said the opposite. When someone criticises you on a public platform, you’re “fully entitled to respond on the same platform in a proportionate and reasonable manner”, and sometimes relevant facts are needed for the explanation to make sense. The business’s problem was that the complaint was about service quality, so the customer’s address and phone number added nothing to its explanation.
The practical rule: reply to the complaint, not to the person. If a fact isn’t needed to explain your side, leave it out. When in doubt, take it to a private channel.
Fake and malicious reviews
Sometimes a review is plainly not genuine: a competitor, a former employee, or a sudden wave of one-star reviews from accounts with no history.
What to do
- Document everything. Screenshot the reviews, the reviewer profiles and the dates. Note any pattern, such as reviews arriving within hours of each other.
- Report each review under the matching policy, usually fake engagement or conflict of interest.
- Appeal once with evidence if the report is rejected.
- Reply neutrally using the “can’t find a record” template above.
- Get legal advice for serious cases. If a review makes false statements of fact that damage your business, Singapore law offers routes beyond Google’s process, including defamation claims and orders under the Protection from Harassment Act relating to false statements. From 29 June 2026, the new Online Safety Commission also handles certain online harms, such as harassment and doxxing, which may be relevant if reviews target your staff personally. A lawyer can advise which, if any, applies.
Don’t fight bad reviews with fake good ones
When a business is hit by negative reviews, buying positive ones can look like a quick fix. In Singapore it is now an enforcement priority.
On 30 September 2026, the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCS) announced action against a fake review provider and 45 businesses that bought its services, ranging from restaurants to hair salons. The provider used generative AI to write reviews with local details and deliberate imperfections, recruited paid posters through Telegram, and even offered replacements for reviews that platforms removed. The businesses undertook to stop, to remove the fake reviews, and to publish a public apology for six months on their websites, social media accounts and premises. CCS said it was continuing to investigate other businesses.
This wasn’t the first case. In 2025, CCS took action against a car detailing firm for posting AI-generated fake reviews on Sgcarmart.
Google’s own policies also prohibit fake engagement, incentivised reviews, and review gating: discouraging negative reviews or “selectively” asking only happy customers to leave one.
The real fix: more genuine reviews
A single negative review hurts most when it sits among a handful of others. Among a hundred recent, genuine reviews it barely registers. Reviews also matter for visibility: Google’s guide to improving your local ranking says prominence in local results is partly based on “how many reviews you have”, and that “more reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking”.
How to get more, within the rules:
- Ask every customer, not only the ones you think are happy. Asking selectively is review gating.
- Ask at the right moment: after a completed job, a delivered order or a resolved support ticket.
- Make it easy. Google lets you share a review request link or QR code from your Business Profile. Put it on receipts, follow-up emails, WhatsApp messages and the counter.
- Never offer incentives for reviews, not even a small discount.
- Reply to positive reviews too. It shows the profile is actively managed.
For the rest of your profile, see our Google Business Profile optimisation checklist, and our guide to local SEO.
When to get help
Consider outside help if:
- you’re receiving several suspicious reviews a week,
- a review makes serious false allegations about your business or staff,
- your rating has dropped enough to affect enquiries, or
- you have no process for asking customers for reviews.
Our local SEO team can set up a review request process, manage your Business Profile and monitor new reviews. We also set up Google Business Profiles for businesses starting from scratch. For legal action, speak to a lawyer.
Frequently asked questions
Can I remove a bad Google review from my business?
Not directly. Only the reviewer can delete their review. You can report a review that breaks Google’s content policies, and Google removes it if it agrees. Negative but honest reviews stay up.
How long does Google take to remove a reported review?
Google says evaluation typically takes several days. You can check the status in the Reviews Management Tool and appeal once if the review is kept.
Can I pay a company to remove Google reviews?
No legitimate company can remove reviews that don’t break Google’s policies. Services that promise guaranteed removal either report reviews on your behalf, which you can do yourself for free, or use methods that may break Google’s rules. Be cautious.
What should I say when replying to a negative review?
Thank the reviewer, acknowledge their experience, explain briefly if there’s a genuine misunderstanding, and invite them to contact your official channel. Keep it to a few sentences and never include their personal details.
Is it illegal to include a customer’s details in a review reply in Singapore?
It can breach the PDPA. In Tipros (2023), the PDPC found a business in breach for including a customer’s home address and mobile number in a reply to a Google review, because those details weren’t needed to respond to a complaint about service quality.
Can I ask customers to change or remove a negative review?
You can resolve their problem and let them decide whether to update the review. Don’t offer refunds, discounts or gifts in exchange for changing or removing it.
Is buying Google reviews illegal in Singapore?
Buying fake reviews is treated as an unfair practice by Singapore’s consumer regulator. In September 2026, CCS required 45 businesses that bought fake reviews to stop, remove them and publish public apologies for six months. It also breaks Google’s policies.
Do negative reviews affect my Google ranking?
Google says the number of reviews and positive ratings can help local ranking. A few negative reviews among many genuine ones have limited effect. A low overall rating and few reviews will hold you back.
