Can you remove a negative Yelp review?

Yes, but only Yelp can remove a Yelp review, and it does so only when the review breaks Yelp’s Content Guidelines. A business owner cannot delete one, and advertising on Yelp does not change that. To remove a Yelp review, claim your page on Yelp for Business, report the review under the guideline it breaks, and give evidence. Our Yelp review removal page lists each guideline and the exact report steps.

Two parties can delete a Yelp review: Yelp’s User Operations team and the person who wrote it. Of about 22 million reviews posted in 2025, Yelp’s software recommended 70% and did not recommend 17%. Yelp’s moderators removed 11%, and reviewers removed 2% themselves (Yelp’s 2025 Trust and Safety Report).

A review that is not recommended is not removed. It stays readable through a link at the bottom of your Yelp page, but it does not count toward your star rating or review count. A report does not move it, and Yelp says no employee can override the software.

Yelp does not take sides in factual disputes, so a review you say is false usually stays up. If you win a final court order that explains why a review is defamatory, Yelp asks you to contact Support. A court order alone cannot force Yelp to act: in Hassell v. Bird (2 July 2018), the California Supreme Court held that Section 230 barred an order directing Yelp, which was not a party to the case, to remove the reviews. Read whether you can sue over a fake review before you start a case.

After Yelp removes a review, a Google search for your business can still show the old text from your Yelp page until Google reads the page again. You can ask Google to refresh that result with its Refresh outdated content request, the same step described for removed Reddit posts.

We file the Yelp reviews you choose. Send the links in the chat, because our monitoring and Review Auto-filer read Google profiles only. Your account manager confirms the price and the terms with you before anything is filed, and you pay for the ones that come down. No one can guarantee a Yelp review comes down, because Yelp makes the final decision on each one. We never contact the reviewer.