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It is never good news to have fake reviews posted about your business. Aside from ruining your credibility and reputation, fake reviews on Google can also affect your business negatively by driving customers away and discouraging them from doing business with you. If you find that you have fake reviews on Google, don’t panic as you can fix it although you might need the help of an attorney or a reputation manager. 

Damage Control

Some business owners, upon finding out that there are fake reviews on Google about their company, might have the impulse to go straight to Google’s office and demand to have the review deleted. While this may seem like a good idea to some, this isn’t actually the smartest step to take as you will only end up making a fool out of yourself. To be able to minimize the damage that may arise from a fake review, the first step you can take that doesn’t require an attorney or a court order is to mark the review as spam and then file a complaint to the website where the review can be found. If the content is clearly violating the terms of the website or if you can prove to the website publisher that the content of the review is false, then the review will immediately be removed. In case the publisher refuses to remove the fake review, you will have to take the legal approach. 

Legal Approach to Fake Reviews

If you have tried to contact the website publisher regarding the fake review to no avail, the next best thing to do would be hire an attorney to help you file a lawsuit in local court. Doing so is the only way fake reviews on Google about your business can be removed. Google usually ignores requests to remove reviews because 1) they are not actually liable for it, and 2) they are very resolute when it comes to following first amendment rights of their users which includes the right to privacy. However, even Google would find it difficult to ignore a court ruling stating that the review is defamatory and needs to be removed from their website. It is also through filing a lawsuit that you will be able to get a court order to send a subpoena to Google which may be necessary if you do not know the identity of the person writing the fake review about your business.

Google’s Stand on Defamation Issues

Business owners complaining about fake reviews on Google should know that the website cannot be held liable in this matter. Google is protected by the Communications Decency Act as they are only the 3^rd party re-publisher of the review and not the actual writer of the review. Google and other similar websites will not bother to respond to your complaints if it did not go through legal proceedings in the court as they still have legal obligations as much as they want to protect the company and the users. Even if they do respond to the subpoena, you can only expect Google to give limited information.