How To Delete A Google Review

In today’s context, working hard isn’t enough to keep up your brand’s image or growth. Even till date, customers play an integral role in the process. Especially when they write a certain review, it can determine which path your brand will go next. This is because word-of-mouth is still one of the most effective marketing strategies. 

More so than positive reviews, people look for and tend to believe negative reviews more. This can lead to critical damage to your business. It would be just easy to delete such reviews, especially when it’s common for anonymous people to post fake or spam reviews. 

So, if you’d like to learn how to delete a customer’s review or if you want to delete a review you had written, this article is for you. 

Key Facts About Online Reviews

Here are some quick interesting facts about online reviews. 

• 98% of users read online reviews before shopping from local businesses. 
• 67% of users are willing to give a positive review. However, 40% of users are more likely to leave a negative review. 
• 89% of users are more likely to continue purchasing a product/service from a business if they respond to all its reviews. 
• 57% of users are less likely to continue using a business that gives no response to the reviews. 
• 62% of users are positive they’ve witnessed a fake review for a local business in 2021. 

How Does a Bad Review Affect a Business?

According to Igniyte’s recent survey a single negative review can cause companies to possibly lose 22% of business. Let’s look at some other consequences.

• Loss of potential customers, meaning loss of income
• Weaker brand image and value 
• Company growth will temporarily come to a halt.
• Difficulty adding more positive reviews 
• Difficulty crawling up on search engines

How to Delete a Google Review?

If you want to delete a review you had left for a business, you can follow these steps on mobile:

1. Go to the Google Maps app. 
2. Tap on the Contribute option. 
   
3. Scroll down and tap on the See your reviews option. 
4. Select a review you want to delete and tap on More. 
5. You can either choose Edit review or Delete review. Then, you can follow the on-screen instructions. 

Similarly, you can delete a Google review on PC in these ways:

1. Go to Google Maps and click on the Menu icon. 
2. Click on Your Contributions and then go to Reviews. 
   
3. Click on the More option beside the review you want to delete. 
4. Now, click on either Edit review or Delete review. 

How to Delete Bad Reviews From Google My Business?

The sad truth is that you can only delete a review if you were the one who wrote it. From a business owner standpoint, you cannot remove a customer’s review. This is because Google wants to maintain the integrity of its features. 

But, there are still a few workarounds for this problem. Let’s take a closer look. 

Report the Review if Inappropriate

Although you can’t delete a review directly, you can flag it as inappropriate. Doing so will send a request to Google to take down the review. Here’s how you can do it.

1. Go to Google Maps. 
2. Locate the review you want to report. 
3. Then, click on More that’s next to the review. Click on Flag as inappropriate. 
   
4. Give your reasoning for reporting the review and submit it. 

However, it’s best to be mindful that this method may not work most of the time. There are a set of Google’s policies for reviews. 

Google will only remove a particular review if it breaks one or more of the said policies. Google doesn’t remove reviews that are simply constructive criticism. Here are a few examples of the types of reviews that are against Google’s review policies and are sure to be removed. 

• Offensive reviews 
• Spam content
• Restricted content
• Sexually explicit content
• Content involving harassment
• Hateful content
• Content involving personal information
• Terrorist content and more

Request the Customer to Edit or Delete Review 

A professional way to resolve this issue is by directly contacting the customer. If there are a few complaints in the review, we’ll need to give answers firmly. 

Firstly, take some time to consider what concerns the customer has mentioned. Check if the raised problems are valid or not. You may also check the cause of the problems with your business partners and teammates. For example, the customer might’ve had a bad experience or the customer might’ve received the wrong product.

Similarly, it’s important to make sure the tone of our response is informative and friendly. Here are a few tips you can apply when replying to the customer: 

1. Start by mentioning that you recognize the problem and the weight of its impact. 
2. You can add a few valid causes for the problem if possible. 
3. Mention that you’d like to fix the situation along with some incentives, like a discount code, a free product/service, exchange, or such. 
4. Finally, you can request them to edit or delete their negative review. 

What to Do if Google Doesn’t Remove a Bad Review? 

If you’re not seeing any positive signs of getting the review removed, you can contact Google Support for Business. If you’re a small business owner, you can book an appointment with Google Small Business Advisors. 

Are Negative Reviews All That Bad?

Although negative reviews can have its consequences, they are not the end of the world. So, don’t let them discourage you. Besides the reviews, what’s more, important is how you respond. Other new potential customers will also take notice of your response. So, if you have a welcoming response, new consumers are likely to be appreciative of your honesty and care.