How do you tell if a Google review is fake?

Start with your own records, not with the wording

Before reading the review closely at all, search the reviewer's name across your booking system, invoices, POS and email. Search partial spellings and first names too. If nobody by that name exists in any system, that is the strongest single fact you will find, and a filing can describe exactly that search.

The reverse matters just as much. If you do find them, the reviewer was a real customer, however unfair the review reads, and the question becomes whether it breaks a rule rather than whether it is fake. Establishing that early points any filing at the right clause.

Signals in the text

None of these is conclusive alone. They compound: the more of them line up, the more there is for a filing to describe.

• No verifiable specifics, no date, no service, no staff name, no price
• Superlatives with nothing behind them: 'worst experience ever', 'total scam', with no account of what happened
• Framed as advice to other readers rather than a description of a visit
• Mentions a service, product or location you do not have
• Reads as an argument about your business rather than an account of using it
• Trade jargon a customer would have no reason to know

Signals in the account

The reviewer's profile is public and is often more revealing than the review. Open it before you file anything.

• One lifetime contribution, and it is the review of you
• Several reviews left within minutes, across businesses in different parts of a city
• A run of one-stars for businesses in one trade and a five-star for one of them
• Generic display name paired with a stock avatar
• Account created within days of the review

Where owners get it wrong

The most common mistake is treating unfairness as evidence of fakery. A customer who misremembers, exaggerates, blames you for something outside your control, or is simply rude is still a customer, and their review is protected. Filing on it wastes your time and, filed repeatedly, damages your standing.

The second mistake is certainty about identity. Owners are often sure they know who wrote it. Even when that instinct is right, it is not evidence anyone else can check, and a filing built on it reads as a grudge. Stick to what a stranger could verify.