01
Identify the surface.
Source page, search result, service profile, broker page, or official boundary are treated as separate boundary questions.
NEGATIVE REVIEW REMOVAL
Business reputation — removal
Reviews come down on grounds, not on grievance.
A review is reportable when it breaks a platform rule — fake, incentivized, written by a competitor or former employee, abusive, or about a different business entirely. It is not reportable for being harsh or bad for trade. We work the first kind, we never contact the reviewer, and we will tell you when what you have is the second kind.
This page is education, not legal advice. We are a removal agency, not a law firm; for advice on your specific situation, consult an attorney — or start with the written boundary check and we'll tell you honestly what your case needs.
Client-record review
Boundary first, then decide.
Non-intimate reputation matters can start with a private boundary check. Source fit, visibility limits, price, and stop limits are written before work is accepted.
Boundary assessmentWritten boundaryNo guarantees
02
Name the boundary.
Policy, legal boundary, privacy option, official referral, or visibility work is labeled before work begins.
03
Write the boundary.
Eligible work is defined item by item, with stop limits and search-fallback items separated.
04
Verify the outcome.
Removal, de-listing, suppression, and follow-up checks are reported as different outcomes.
Authorization readiness receipt
A quote should read like a boundary file.
Before AboutUs work, the record should name the item, what surface can act, what basis fits, and what is only visibility work.
Locator or surface namedSET
Basis written before authorizationSET
Visibility limits labeledSET
Refund term tied to written boundarySET
ITEM
What is being pursued.
The file separates source pages, search results, broker profiles, mirrors, and excluded records without publishing the work order.
BASIS
Why this basis applies.
Policy, privacy, state record rule, DMCA, or legal referral is named before work begins.
OUTCOME
What success would mean.
Source change, visibility work, follow-up checks, and stop limits stay separate in the written boundary.
TERMS
What happens if it does not fit.
Items AboutUs cannot responsibly accept are declined, referred, or handled under the acceptance review terms.
Assessment decision packet
What gets decided before money changes hands.
The first useful answer is not a sales pitch. It should separate route boundaries, source status, search exposure, excluded items, and anything that belongs with public authorities or outside help.
Official boundary check
Official tools, platform reports, and safety referrals are named before AboutUs work when they fit the situation.
Fit / limit split
Items are sorted into written boundaries before a service agreement: what can be reviewed, what is excluded, and what needs a safer route.
Evidence record
The client record holds the private proof summary so the public page does not become the operating file.
No card-first handoff
Eligible AboutUs work gets written intended outcomes and refund terms. Sensitive matters do not start with upload or checkout.
00 — POLICY BASIS RECORD
Before you pay
Policy grounds, or nothing.
Platforms remove reviews that break their rules. They do not remove reviews for being harsh, unfair, or bad for business. Sorting your review by which rule it actually breaks — and admitting when it breaks none — is what separates a report that works from one that wastes your single appeal.
AboutUs is a removal agency, not a law firm. We never contact the reviewer, and we do not take on truthful reviews from real customers.
FAKEGROUND
It is not from a real experience.
A competitor, a bot, a review-for-hire, or someone who was never a customer. This is the strongest ground there is, and it turns on evidence rather than on how unfair the review feels.
See the evidenceCONFLICTGROUND
The writer had an undisclosed interest.
A current or former employee, a competitor, or someone paid or incentivized to post. Platforms enforce this directly when the connection can be shown.
Check the groundCONTENTGROUND
It breaks a content rule outright.
Threats, slurs, harassment, sexual content, or personal information about a named employee. These are judged on the content itself, not on the underlying dispute.
See the ruleOFF-TOPICGROUND
It is not about this business at all.
The wrong location, the wrong company, a rant about an unrelated policy, or a review posted to the wrong listing entirely.
Compare groundsSignal
Public boundary
Client record
Boundary
R01
A competitor left a one-star review
Public boundary
Conflict of interest, when the connection can actually be shown rather than assumed.
Client record
What links the account to a competitor goes in the client record.
Boundary
A suspicion is not evidence, and a weak report can be rejected and burn the appeal.
R02
The reviewer was never a customer
Public boundary
The fake-content ground: platforms require a review to be based on a real experience.
Client record
Booking, sales, or visitor records that show no matching customer.
Boundary
Proving a negative is difficult; the record has to be genuinely searchable.
R03
A former employee is posting as a customer
Public boundary
Conflict of interest, and this is one of the grounds that most reliably lands.
Client record
Employment dates and what identifies the account.
Boundary
An employee's honest account of working there is a different thing and is not this.
R04
It names and attacks a staff member
Public boundary
Harassment and personal-information rules, judged on the content itself.
Client record
The passage and what it exposes about the named person.
Boundary
The rest of the review can survive even when the attacking passage does not.
R05
It is about a different branch or business
Public boundary
Off-topic or wrong-listing, which is one of the cleanest grounds available.
Client record
What in the text shows it belongs somewhere else.
Boundary
Usually straightforward, and usually the fastest of these to resolve.
R06
A real customer had a genuinely bad experience
Public boundary
None. This is not a policy violation, and it is not something we work on.
Client record
Nothing to file. Responding publicly and well is the actual remedy.
Boundary
Declined before work begins. Reporting a truthful review has no policy ground, and pressuring a reviewer to delete one is the conduct the FTC rule targets.
If the ground is still unclear, use client-record review before paying. A useful quote names the review, the rule it breaks, the evidence, and the refund term.
Client-record reviewWHAT WE REFUSE
The line we do not cross.
On every other kind of removal the risk is failing to take something down. Here the risk runs the other way, and it lands on you. Using legal threats, intimidation, or false accusations to push a reviewer into deleting a review is treated by the Federal Trade Commission as an unfair and deceptive practice in its own right, carrying penalties for each violation. Buying or arranging reviews sits in the same rule.
So the refusals below are not caution. They are the product. A service that quietly does these things is handing its client the liability while keeping the fee.
What we do
- Assess whether a platform policy ground genuinely exists — and say no when it does not
- Assemble the evidence that ground needs: employment dates, sales records, account links, or the passage that breaks a content rule
- Report the item on the specific rule it breaks, through the platform's own process
- Prepare the single appeal most platforms allow, where the first report is declined
- Tell you when responding publicly is the better move than reporting
What we do not
- Contact the reviewer in any way, for any reason
- Send legal threats, demand letters, or anything designed to frighten someone into deleting a review
- Offer or arrange money in exchange for a review coming down
- Report a truthful review from a real customer, at any price
- Write, buy, or arrange positive reviews to bury a negative one
- Mass-flag items without grounds — that can put a public warning on your own listing
- Promise a review will come down, or advertise a removal percentage
HOW IT WORKS
Reported on the rule it breaks.
A report succeeds when it hands the platform the specific rule and the evidence for it, rather than an argument about fairness. A former employee posting as a customer is a conflict of interest and needs employment dates. A reviewer who was never a customer is fake content and needs records that show no matching visit or sale. A passage naming and attacking a staff member is a content violation and needs nothing beyond the passage itself.
Reports are anonymous to the reviewer, and most platforms allow one appeal if the first decision goes against you — which is exactly why a weak report is expensive. Timing varies by platform. Aggregate outcomes across eligible cases; individual results vary per your written service agreement.
PLATFORMS
They do not behave the same.
Google runs a reporting and appeal process against a published list of content policies, and removes hundreds of millions of policy- violating reviews a year — the grounds are real, and so is the enforcement against businesses that abuse them.
Yelp is different and deserves a plain answer: it does not remove reviews on request. It acts on its own guidelines, and separately its software may move a review into a not-recommended section, where it is hidden from the listing and excluded from the rating without being deleted. Trustpilot states directly that it does not remove reviews for being critical or unfair, and it places a public consumer warning on businesses that misuse flagging. That last part is why volume-flagging is a way to damage your own listing.
PRICING
One item, one written price.
One review, search result, or listing is $1,250. Every order gets a 48-hour acceptance review first — and if no policy ground genuinely exists, you are refunded before any work begins. That refusal is a real and frequent outcome on this product, not fine print. Reviewed items carry a written outcome and refund term. Aggregate outcomes across eligible cases; individual results vary per your written service agreement.
Common questions
Straight answers.
- Can you remove a bad review?
- We can report a review when it breaks a platform rule — when it is fake or not based on a real experience, when the writer had an undisclosed interest such as being a competitor or a former employee, when it contains threats, harassment, or personal information, or when it is about a different business entirely. We cannot and will not touch a genuine customer's honest negative review. That is not a limitation we are working around: there is no policy ground to report it, and the tactics used to make one disappear anyway — threatening the reviewer, paying for its removal, or filing false claims — are what the FTC rule prohibits.
- Do you contact the reviewer?
- Never. Not to ask, not to negotiate, and certainly not to threaten. Using legal threats or intimidation to get a review taken down is treated by the Federal Trade Commission as an unfair and deceptive practice in its own right, with penalties per violation. Reports go to the platform, on the rule the review breaks, and platforms do not disclose who reported a review.
- How much does it cost?
- One review, search result, or listing is $1,250. Every order gets a 48-hour acceptance review first, and if no policy ground genuinely exists you are refunded before any work begins — which is a real outcome here, not a formality. Reviewed items carry a written outcome and refund term. Aggregate outcomes across eligible cases; individual results vary per your written service agreement.
- Can you get reviews removed from Yelp?
- Yelp does not remove reviews on request, and it is worth being blunt about that. It removes content that breaks its own guidelines, and separately its software may filter a review into a not-recommended section — where it is hidden from the main listing but not deleted, and does not count toward the rating. Anyone selling you Yelp review deletion as a routine service is describing something Yelp does not do.
- Why not just flag everything negative and see what sticks?
- Because it can cost you more than it wins. Platforms track reporting behaviour, and at least one major review site publicly places a consumer warning on businesses it finds abusing the flagging process. A volume approach also spends the one appeal most platforms allow. We would rather report two items with real grounds than ten without.
- Can you write positive reviews to push it down?
- No. Writing, buying, or arranging reviews is deceptive, is against every major platform's rules, and is specifically targeted by the FTC's consumer-review rule. If your listing needs to look better, the honest routes are earning real reviews and responding well to the ones you have.
Written boundary
Policy grounds, or nothing.
A review is reportable when it breaks a platform rule — fake, incentivized, conflicted, or off-topic. A real customer's honest bad experience is not, at any price. Which one yours is gets decided before you are charged.
Client-record review · Written boundary · No blanket guarantees
BOUNDARY
Itemized boundary
URLs, search results, platforms, and search-fallback items are separated before any paid decision.
TERMS
Written outcome
AboutUs work names the intended outcome and refund term. De-listing, suppression, and follow-up are not called source removal.
TRUST
Authorization gate
If the boundary is fuzzy, pause before authorization. The trust page explains the checks that should exist first.
Open authorization gate