In the United States, the reviewer’s opinions are protected by the First Amendment, the right to freedom of speech. This means, you can’t stop people from rating your business online and making these public. By the same token, you have no right to simply delete an unfavorable critique.
This changes, though, when the Google review in question meets one of these offences, among others:
- Spam and fake content: Your content should reflect your genuine experience at the location.
- Offensive content: Google will remove content that contains obscene, profane, or offensive language or gestures.
- Dangerous and derogatory content: This is content that threatens, advocates harm, harasses, intimidates, bullies, or incites hatred.
Reviews that fall under these categories are not protected by the First Amendment, and can be taken down when flagged in order to comply with Google policies or legal obligations. Google only gets involved when merchants and customers agree on facts, as otherwise there is no reliable way to discern who’s right about the customer experience. That’s why, when it comes to negative reviews, it’s always important to determine whether the reviewer was at all a customer or a business partner. So: Check your transactions and other business records to see if you can determine whether or not the negative review is fake.
Often, the problem is determining between a false allegation or offensive comment and a legitimate critique that’s protected by freedom of speech. A subjective review, for example, that states “The atmosphere in the restaurant wasn’t comfortable, because of the red lighting” could be regarded as fake, if there are no lamps with red lighting installed in the establishment. On the other hand, a polemic and exaggerated review that states “Service was useless and incompetent” could be inadmissible as long as the reviewer justifies this, for example by adding “He had no knowledge of technical terms and wasn’t capable of providing a clear answer to my question even after repeated attempts.”
While Germany’s Federal Supreme Court even decided in March 2016 that one-star ratings without reviews undercut the rights of the reviewed business – as these don’t prove any kind of contact between the author and the business – in the US it is not so cut and dry as to whether one-star ratings violate Google’s guidelines. Because Google doesn’t know who your customers are, arguing that the reviewer wasn’t a customer isn’t an acceptable reason, since Google allows anonymous usernames. The other reason why it’s difficult to have Google delete a negative rating is because you don’t have to be a customer to leave a review; reviewers need to have had a “customer experience” which could entail a phone conversation or just an email that didn’t receive a fast enough reply.