A Competitor Is Leaving You Fake Reviews. What Now?
Four one-star reviews in a fortnight. No names you recognise, no jobs you can place, and one of them complains about a service you have never offered.
You know who it is. Half the trade in your borough knows who it is. What you probably do not know is how little that certainty is worth once you try to act on it.
There is a documented process, and there is UK law banning exactly this. Both are weaker than they sound.
The short version
- Google's policy bans posting content on a competitor's business to undermine it, in those exact words. Proving it is the hard part.
- Report, then hold back your single appeal. It is the only place you get to explain anything.
- Removal often fails. Nobody publishes a success rate, so anyone quoting you one is inventing it.
- Fake reviews became a banned practice in UK law in April 2025, but the right to sue belongs to consumers, not to you.
- Neither the CMA nor Trading Standards will take up your individual case.
Is it actually fake, or a customer you have forgotten?
Rule out the boring explanation first. A review is not fake because the person never paid, never booked, or has the details wrong. It is fake only if the experience never happened. The CMA's Fake Reviews Guidance of April 2025 is blunt about this.
Paragraph 2.7 says a review is not fake "because it relates to experiences that have not been paid for or completed by the reviewer", nor "just because the trader who it is about does not like or agree with it". So the bloke you quoted in March and never heard from again can review you.
Your problem is still a recognised category. Paragraph 2.6 notes that "fake negative reviews are often written with the intention of undermining a product or trader in the eyes of consumers".
The signs that mean something
None of these prove anything alone. Together they build a picture.
Several reviews landing inside a few days after a quiet year. No matching job, invoice or quote in your records. Wording so generic it would fit any trade. A reviewer account with one contribution, or with reviews scattered across an area you have never worked. Complaints about a service you do not offer.
Write down which you actually have. If the answer is "none, but I just know", you are about to waste a fortnight on a report that will fail.
If it turns out to be a real customer after all, reply to it like any other bad review.
What Google's own rules say about competitors
More than most tradespeople expect. Google names this behaviour directly rather than leaving you to argue it by analogy. The gap is not in the rules. It is in what you can evidence, because Google will not take your word for who wrote something.
Under fake engagement, Google's prohibited and restricted content policy says merchants and users must not "post content on a competitor's place or business to undermine that business' or product's reputation". The rating manipulation section bans content "based on a conflict of interest", and the UK page spells out what that covers: "such as industry competitors, familial relationships, etc."
| What happened | The ground to report under |
|---|---|
| A review of a job that never took place | Fake engagement, not based on a real experience |
| A known rival, or their staff, reviewing you | Conflict of interest |
| A cluster of one-stars appearing together | Rating manipulation, unusual volumes or patterns |
| The same complaint from several accounts | Content posted from multiple accounts by one person |
That last row is verbatim policy. If you are being hit from three profiles at once, it is the clause that fits.
How to report it properly
Open your Business Profile, select Read reviews, choose Report next to the review, pick the reason from the table above and send. Google's reporting guidance says "review evaluation typically takes several days", tracked in the Reviews Management Tool. Reports come back as decision pending, reviewed with no policy violation, or escalated.
Report the account, not just the review
Almost nobody uses this step, and for a competitor campaign it matters more than the individual flags. Google documents a separate route for reporting the profile behind the reviews, in the Maps mobile app only: tap Business, then Reviews, tap the reviewer's name, then More and Report.
One review looks like an unhappy customer. An account with four one-stars across four firms in the same trade and postcode looks like something else.
Your one appeal is where you finally get to explain
The flag is a radio button with no free text. Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky noted in her January 2025 guide that you are "telling Google you believe there is a policy violation without being able to give them any context. So, oftentimes, you will see the review was not removed."
The appeal is different. Google documents a one-time appeal from the Reviews Management Tool under "Appeal eligible reviews", covering up to ten reviews at once, and it opens a real form.
You get one. Do not spend it in a temper on the day you find them.
Does reporting actually work?
Often it does not, and you should plan for that. Nobody credible publishes a success rate for merchant removal requests. Sterling Sky puts it plainly: "Google does not always remove all of the reviews that you believe should be removed."
Timescales are unreliable too. Google says several days, Sterling Sky says typically three business days, but "some businesses have reported that this status can remain unchanged for weeks or even months".
The odds are worse than they look, and it is not laziness at Google. Almost all removal happens automatically, before anyone sees the review. In its April 2026 update on protecting businesses on Maps, Google reported that during 2025 it "blocked or removed over 292 million policy-violating reviews" and removed over 13 million fake Business Profiles.
Read what that means. A fake review sitting on your profile is one the filter has already assessed and decided to keep. Your report asks Google to overturn a judgement it has effectively already made, without letting you say why.
What evidence to gather, and where it gets read
Gather it before you report anything, because reviews and reviewer accounts get edited and deleted. Google publishes an evidence list for one scenario only, extortion, but it is the best template available for any fake review.
It asks for dated screenshots showing "the date, time and the sender's contact information", "direct links to all reviews", and any "names, usernames, email addresses, phone numbers or social media profiles" involved.
Copy that list. Screenshot the reviews and the reviewer's other contributions, export your job records, write the timeline, then draft your appeal from it. Nothing else here gives you a hearing.
If someone is demanding money
That is a different animal with its own door. Google defines negative review extortion scams as a spike in one and two-star reviews followed by someone "demanding money, goods or services in exchange for removing" them, and its instruction is flat: "Do not engage with or pay the malicious individuals."
Use the merchant extortion report form. Google states it is "exclusively for cases where you've been directly subjected to an extortion attempt", so a rival quietly leaving fakes with no demand attached does not qualify.
Where you stand under UK law
Your competitor is breaking the law, and that law gives you no way to enforce it. Since 6 April 2025, submitting or commissioning a fake review has been a banned practice under Schedule 20 of the DMCC Act 2024, listed among practices "in all circumstances considered unfair". No effect on consumers needs proving.
Now the part the legal marketing pages leave out. Rights of redress under the DMCC sit in Part 4 of the Act, and section 232 gives them to a consumer. A trader cannot bring that claim. The ban is enforced publicly or not at all.
One clause points at Google rather than your rival. Paragraph 13(3) makes it a banned practice to publish reviews "without taking such reasonable and proportionate steps as are necessary" to prevent and remove fake ones. Google's UK removal behaviour is a regulatory obligation, not a favour.
It cuts both ways, which explains Google's caution. The CMA warns publishers at paragraph 8.16 that "removing a negative review that was genuinely created may mislead consumers as much as publishing a fake positive review". Squeezed from both sides, Google leaves things up.
Will the CMA or Trading Standards do anything?
Almost certainly not for your case. Both routes are free and worth using if you have a genuine pattern, because enforcement is intelligence-led. Neither is a remedy. Expect nothing back and you will not be disappointed.
The CMA's own complaints guidance says it "cannot respond substantively to each one", and that if nothing arrives beyond an acknowledgement within six weeks, "then it is likely that we do not think there is a realistic prospect of us investigating".
Trading Standards is stricter on access. The Citizens Advice consumer service is the front door, its advisers pass complaints on, and "you can't do this yourself". It is built for consumers reporting traders, not one trade reporting a rival.
What the CMA's deal with Google actually gets you
Less than the headlines suggested. One commitment in the January 2025 undertakings helps a victim: people who repeatedly post "fake or misleading reviews for UK businesses (positive or negative)" will have their reviews deleted and be banned from posting, wherever they live. That needs a pattern across profiles, not one hit on yours.
The rest is aimed elsewhere. The headline sanctions target businesses inflating their own ratings, and the improved reporting function is specified for consumers. If Google does catch a business, profile restrictions follow: no new reviews for a period, existing ones unpublished, and a warning shown "to let consumers know that fake reviews were removed".
Which is the real argument against retaliating. Those penalties land on the profile that benefits. Buy positives or send mates after your rival, and the warning banner ends up on your listing.
When Google says no
You stop fighting the review and start burying it. Reply once, briefly and calmly, for the next reader rather than the reviewer, then collect genuine reviews faster than anyone can fake them. Unglamorous, and the only part of this you fully control.
Recency does the work. BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, a panel of 1,002 US adults published in February 2026, found 74% of consumers prioritise reviews from the last three months. Four fakes from March matter far less against twenty genuine reviews since.
The legal route is narrow. In Samuels t/a Samuels & Co Solicitors v Henry [2024] EWHC 2898 (KB), reported by Brett Wilson LLP in March 2025, a solicitor sued over three Google reviews and lost. Not on the words. On failing to prove who wrote them, against a sworn denial.
Suing an anonymous account means a court disclosure order first, then a claim that must clear section 1 of the Defamation Act 2013, which requires a trading business to show serious financial loss, within one year. England and Wales, and a description of the law rather than advice.
Is it worth paying someone to remove them?
Treat any guaranteed removal rate as fiction. The tell is the promise. Reporting properly, evidencing it and using your appeal well is the real job, and it is an evening's work. Promising to get reviews taken down is selling a decision that was never theirs to make.
What to do this week
- Check your records first. Match every review against invoices, quotes and your call log. Anything you cannot rule out is not a fake yet.
- Screenshot everything today. Accounts get deleted and your evidence goes with them.
- Report each review under the ground that genuinely fits, not the one that feels strongest.
- Report the account in the Maps app if one profile is behind several reviews.
- Hold your appeal back until the full picture is written down. You get one, covering up to ten reviews.
- Reply publicly, once, briefly. The next customer will never know who was telling the truth.
- Ask your last twenty genuine customers for a review. Nothing you do about the fakes will move your profile as fast.
At Business Opt we have watched trades lose a fortnight to a removal request that was never going to succeed, while the reviews that would have drowned it out went unasked for.
The fakes are somebody else's crime. Your rankings are still your problem.