Free tool · no signup
Google review policy checker
Paste a review. See which of Google’s published content-policy clauses its wording may break, and what a report has to say to be actionable.
Have more than one review to weigh up? The free audit runs this same reading across every review on your Google listing and tells you what it found on each one. No card, and no account to see the report. A removal, if you want one filed, is $150 to $250 per review and charged only after Google takes it down.
The category you pick decides the report
When an owner reports a review, Google asks them to pick a reason from a short list, and the report is read against the reason picked. Pick Off-topic for a review that is really a conflict of interest and the report asks whether the review is about your business. It is, so the report points at no violation. The review broke a rule. It was reported under the wrong one.
That is the gap this tool exists to close. It reads the text against every published clause at once and tells you which one the wording actually supports, so the report you file names the rule Google can check rather than the one that feels most unfair.
It matters more than it sounds. After a decline, Google’s appeal step takes a written argument and one attachment, and it returns no reasoning when it says no. Re-sending the same wording under the same category gives Google nothing new to weigh, so the first filing should name the right rule.
Every bad review falls into one of three piles
The checker sorts into the same three the audit does. The sort is a reading, and Google makes the final call.
Tier 1 · the clearest match
The breach is visible in the review itself. A link to another business, a phone number, a slur, a political rant, an address. Whoever reads the report can confirm it without leaving the page, which is what makes these the simplest to argue.
Tier 2 · real, but you have to prove it
An ex-employee, a competitor, someone who was never a customer, a bare one star from an account with no history. There is a clause to name, but the fact that proves it lives in your systems or on the reviewer’s profile, not in the words. These turn on how precisely the report describes something Google can go and check.
Tier 3 · protected
A real customer describing a real visit. Harsh, one-sided, unfair, wrong about the details. Google’s policy does not reach a genuine account. Whether a given review is one takes more than its words: the reviewer’s profile, the timing and the rest of the listing all count, and that is what the audit reads.
What a text box cannot see
Publishing the limits of a tool is not a disclaimer, it is the difference between a tool and a lead magnet. Reading one review in isolation misses signals that can show a review was never genuine:
- The same text posted under two or more reviewer accounts, which is invisible from one review.
- A reviewer profile with no other contributions, or one whose entire history is one-star reviews of businesses in a single industry.
- A cluster of reviews arriving inside the same hour, after months of nothing.
- A review that describes a location, a service or a price you have never offered, which only reads as wrong if you know the listing.
- Whether the person ever appears in your own booking, till or patient records.
Those need the whole listing, which is what the free audit reads. The box above is for a first reading of the one review in front of you.
Free audit. $150 to $250 per review. Nothing if it stays up. See pricing
Questions about the checker
Is the Google review policy checker free?
Yes, and there is no account, no email gate and no usage limit. The check runs in your own browser, so the review text never reaches a server at all.
Does a match mean Google will remove the review?
No. A match means the review appears to break a clause Google publishes, which is what makes a report worth filing. Evidence is what carries it from there, and a clean policy match filed with vague evidence gives Google nothing to check. Google makes the final call.
What if nothing matches?
Then nothing in the words alone matches a published clause. That is a reading of the text, not of the review: a reviewer account with no history, the same wording under two accounts, or a run of reviews arriving together can be argued under Google's fake engagement policy, and none of those shows in the text. The free audit reads them across the whole listing.
Can it tell if a review is fake?
Not from text alone. What it reads is whether the text breaks a rule. The signals that actually indicate a fabricated review live outside the text: the same wording posted under two accounts, a reviewer profile with no other history, a cluster of reviews arriving in the same hour. Those need the full listing, which is what the free audit reads.
Why does the star rating change the result?
Because the same word means opposite things at one star and five. "They gave me a free upgrade" on a five-star review describes an incentivised exchange, which is what Google's rule on incentivised and biased reviews covers. The word "free" in a one-star complaint can be someone saying they were promised something free and then charged. An earlier version of this engine flagged the second one, which is exactly the kind of overclaim that gets a filing rejected.
Do you store what I paste in?
There is nothing to store. The page ships the rules to your browser and runs them there. No request is made, so there is no review text on our side to keep or lose.
Using this on your own site
The checker is free to link to and free to reference. If you run a trade association page, a forum answer or a resource list for local business owners, point people straight at repushield.app/tools/google-review-policy-checker. No attribution required and nothing behind an email form.
Related policy clauses
Each one is a rule Google publishes, with the quoted policy text, what qualifies, and the mistake that gets it rejected.
Straight answers to the questions around this
Short pages, one question each, written so the answer stands on its own.
How this plays out in your trade
The same clause gets abused differently depending on the business. These pages set out the pattern trade by trade.
Evidence is what carries a filing. Google makes the final call on every removal. How we score reviews.