How do you know a bad review is not genuine?

TrustReviews does not decide whether a review is genuine before it is filed. In the TrustOS portal you see every review on your Google Business Profile rated 3 stars or less. Every 1-star review is selected by default, and you can leave any out before you accept the terms. Our filing team files each one with the platform under its own policy, and the platform decides. A review that breaks no rule usually stays up and shows as Could not be removed. You pay for the ones that come down.

Google’s test is its Maps user-generated content policy, not how much a review hurts. Google defines a genuine experience as one “at or with the place” being reviewed. A review comes down when it breaks a named rule: Fake engagement, Rating manipulation (which covers a conflict of interest, such as a competitor or former employee), Off-topic, Offensive content or Personal information. An honest account of a bad visit breaks none of them.

So genuine and removable are two separate questions. A real customer can still break a rule, for example by posting an employee’s medical details or accusing staff of a crime with nothing to support it. Google can remove that review even though the visit happened. A fake review can stay up if nothing shows Google that it is fake.

You hold the evidence Google cannot see. Check each selected review against your bookings, invoices, call logs or job list for the period it describes. Strong signs are details that do not fit your business, a public link between the reviewer and a competitor or former employee, and the same text posted twice. Our guide to spotting fake Google reviews rates each sign by strength.

Some signs that feel suspicious are normal. Across 306,017 reviews on 1,106 Google profiles we monitor (TrustReviews data, October 2026), one-star reviews were 2.6 times longer than five-star ones, and 13.8% of one-star reviews had no text. These profiles belong to businesses that came to a removal company, so they are not a random sample of Google. A long, angry review from someone in your records is a real customer, and Google’s report page asks owners not to report a review only because they disagree with it. Reply to it instead, and see who decides what a fair review is.