Off-topic content
The reviewer may well have been a customer, but the review isn't about your business. It's about the car park, the shopping centre, the manufacturer, or a different location entirely.
See Google's full content policy“Only post content that is based on your experience or questions about experiences at a specific location. We don’t allow content which contains general, political, or social commentary or personal rants.”
Qualifies for removal
- Review is about parking, the building, or a neighbouring tenant you don't control
- Review is about a manufacturer's recall or a lender's credit decision, not the business
- Review was clearly meant for a different location of the same brand
- Review is about Google, a delivery app, or a different platform
- Review is a general life rant unrelated to the business
Does NOT qualify
- Detailed complaint about the actual service experience (on-topic)
- Complaint about something you do control, like your own staff or your own pricing
Evidence that clears this clause
Whoever reads your report can see the review, the reviewer's public profile and your listing. Nothing else. Anything that lives only in your own systems has to be described, not assumed.
- The review is about the building, the car park, or a neighbouring business
- It is about a different branch, or a business with a similar name
- It is political or social commentary with no account of using your service
- It complains about Google, a delivery platform, or a third party rather than about you
The mistake that gets this rejected
Reporting it as fake. Off-topic is a claim about the content, which is visible; fake is a claim about the reviewer's intent, which is not. The off-topic clause is simpler to argue exactly because it needs no inference.
Questions about this clause
A customer reviewed us over a delivery app's mistake. Does that count?
It can. If the complaint is entirely about the delivery platform's handling and not about your food or service, it is not about your business.
What about a review of the shopping centre we're inside?
Same clause, and one of the more straightforward versions of it. Parking, the building and neighbouring tenants are not your listing.
Want this policy applied to your reviews?
Run the free audit and we'll score every review on your listing against this policy and the others. No card, no signup to see the report. A removal is $150 to $250 per review, billed only when Google actually removes it.
All of them in one place: the policy reference · check a review against it · Google review policy violations explained · remove fake Google reviews · straight answers · by industry
Free tools
Check a single review against every clause at once, or work out what a removal would actually do to your star average. Both run in your browser, with no account.
The other content-policy categories
A review can break more than one clause at once, and a filing names the clause with the cleanest evidence rather than all of them.
How this plays out in your trade
The same policy clause gets abused differently depending on the business. These pages set out the attack pattern trade by trade.
Short answers about filing
Filing against this clause, start to finish
Knowing which clause a review breaks is the first half. These cover the filing itself, and what a rejection actually means.