How to Spot and Report Fake Google Reviews (A UK Guide for Pubs and Restaurants)

You see them before you've finished your coffee. Three one-star reviews on your business in the last twenty-four hours, all from accounts you've never seen, all with the same vague phrasing about rude staff and rubbish food, none of them matching any booking or order in your system. You know they're fake. The problem is what to do about it.

Fake Google reviews are a particular kind of frustrating because the standard advice on responding to negative reviews assumes the reviewer is real and had a real experience. They didn't. The playbook is different, and as of April 2025, the legal landscape in the UK is different too.

There are actually two separate problems hiding under the phrase "fake reviews," and they call for completely different responses. The first is staying on the right side of the rules yourself, because since April 2025 it has been illegal in the UK to commission, buy, or incentivise reviews without disclosing it, and the penalties land on the business that does it. The second, the one that probably brought you here, is what to do when fake or malicious reviews are aimed at you by someone else. This guide covers both, in that order: get your own side straight first, then deal with the attack.

Key Takeaways

• Two different problems sit under "fake reviews": staying compliant yourself, and handling fakes aimed at you. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 governs both, with the consumer rules live from 6 April 2025.
• The fines (up to 10% of annual global turnover for a business, up to £300,000 for an individual) fall on whoever commissions, buys, or posts fake or undisclosed-incentivised reviews. Being on the receiving end of fakes does not put you at risk of them.
• The compliance traps to avoid: incentivising reviews without clear disclosure, review-gating (only chasing happy customers, or hiding the bad ones), and five-star reviews from staff, family, or friends.
• Four patterns signal a review aimed at you is fake: no booking match, coordinated bursts from new accounts, off-topic content, and phrasing that appears in reviews at other businesses.
• Plenty of flagged reviews stay live. When Google does remove one, it usually takes several days. The public reply matters either way.
• For extortion attempts, use Google's Merchant Extortion Report Form and report to Report Fraud in parallel. For a business systematically commissioning fakes, the CMA.

First, Make Sure You're Not the One Breaking the Rules

This part is short, because most responsible owners are already most of the way there. But the law changed under everyone's feet in 2025, and a few habits that were normal and harmless for years are now banned practices. Worth 90 seconds to be sure.

Until April 2025, fake reviews in the UK sat in a regulatory grey zone. That ended when the unfair commercial practices provisions of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCC Act) came into force on 6 April 2025. Fake and misleading reviews are now banned outright, and because they sit on the consumer-protection "blacklist" of practices considered unfair in all circumstances, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) can act without first proving the practice changed a shopper's mind. It enforces directly, with fines of up to 10% of annual global turnover for a business and up to £300,000 for an individual who is an "accessory."

The important thing to hold onto: those penalties are aimed at whoever creates or commissions the fakes. If someone else is attacking your business with fake reviews, you are the victim, not the target of a fine. The rest of this guide is about that situation. But first, the three traps a well-meaning owner can still walk into:

• Incentivising reviews without disclosing it. You are allowed to offer a discount or a prize draw in exchange for a review. What you cannot do is leave the incentive unsaid. The review has to be genuine and clearly labelled as incentivised. A "leave us five stars and get 10% off" card by the till, with nothing disclosed on the resulting review, is now a banned practice.
• Review-gating and hiding the bad ones. Suppressing or deleting genuine negative reviews to flatter your rating is caught by the rules, because it misrepresents your overall standing. Screening customers by how they feel before you ask, so only the happy ones ever get the link, pushes in the same direction and is best avoided. The principle is simple: ask everyone, hide nothing.
• Five-star reviews from staff, family, and friends. A glowing review from someone with an undisclosed connection to the business is a fake review in the eyes of the law, however genuine their enthusiasm. Conflict-of-interest reviews count.

If you want the full version, the CMA has published two guidance documents written for businesses rather than lawyers: CMA208 on fake reviews and CMA207 on unfair commercial practices generally.

That is your own house in order. Now the problem that probably brought you here: what to do when the fake reviews are coming at you.

Four Patterns That Reliably Signal a Fake Review

Some fake reviews are obvious. Most aren't. These four patterns surface in almost every coordinated or single-actor fake-review campaign we see in UK hospitality. Learning to spot them takes about 60 seconds per review once you know what you're looking for.

1. No matching booking or order. Check your reservation system, your till receipts, your bookings spreadsheet. If a reviewer mentions specific details (a name they spoke to, a dish they ordered, a date they visited) and none of those details match anything in your records, that's a flag. Not conclusive on its own (some people don't book), but combined with another pattern below it tells a story.

2. Coordinated bursts from new accounts. Three or more one-star reviews in a 24 to 48 hour window, all from accounts created recently, all with no prior review history, all with similar phrasing or complaints. This is almost always a campaign: a barred regular with friends, a competitor, or a coordinated extortion attempt.

3. Off-topic content. A review of your restaurant that complains about gym equipment, or a review of your pub that's clearly about the cafe two doors down. Reviewer confusion happens, but on the volume of UK hospitality reviews it's also a useful flag for either a mistake or a deliberate misdirection.

4. Phrasing that matches reviews at other businesses. This is the strongest single signal once you know it. Take an unusual phrase from the suspicious review (something like "the manager was incredibly aggressive when I asked for a refund" or "I will be contacting Trading Standards") and search Google for the exact phrase in quotes. If the same wording appears in reviews at three other businesses in your area or sector, you've found a campaign rather than a complaint.

Reporting Fake Reviews to Google (The Actual 2026 Process)

Three minutes, one Google account, one form. The mechanics haven't changed much; what's changed is what Google does with your report. Under the DMCC Act, platforms now carry a positive duty to take reasonable steps to detect and remove fake reviews, so a well-evidenced report is harder to ignore than it was in 2024.

How to flag a single suspicious review:

1. Open Google Maps on a desktop browser, find your business, locate the review.
2. Click the three vertical dots beside the review and choose "Flag as inappropriate."
3. Pick the most relevant category: spam, conflict of interest, off-topic, harassment, or hate speech. Most fake-review cases fit "spam" or "conflict of interest."

Removal isn't guaranteed, and plenty of obvious fakes survive the review. When it does happen, it typically takes several days. Google doesn't tell you the result, so you have to check the review yourself. (Google's own guide to reporting reviews walks through the steps if the interface has shifted since this was written.)

If the first flag doesn't work, you have one more lever: report the review again as the Business Profile owner from inside your Google Business Profile dashboard. Reviews flagged from the owner dashboard tend to get more thorough human review than ones flagged from Google Maps by an anonymous account.

For coordinated bursts, don't flag each review individually as if they're separate complaints. Submit one report to Google explaining the pattern, attach screenshots of the reviewer profiles showing they're all new accounts, and ask Google to review the cluster together.

Doing this monthly takes about half an hour of scrolling, flagging, screenshotting, and tracking what's been removed. This is one of the things Revvy is built to automate. The reviews a machine can judge from their own text get picked up in your Alerts inbox for you: incentivised-review language, competitor-style "go elsewhere instead" phrasing, and anonymous or throwaway-looking low-star accounts. The four patterns above stay with you, since each needs your own records or a human read (booking match, coordinated bursts, off-topic content, and phrasing repeated at other businesses). The Report to Google action is built in, and when Google removes the review, Revvy marks it resolved so you're not the one keeping track. The half hour a month becomes a notification you skim while the kettle boils.

When Google Won't Remove It: The Public Reply Strategy

Plenty of flagged reviews stay live. The public reply you write becomes the only piece of context visible to future customers, and it carries more weight than the review itself in their decision to book or not.

Template for "we have no record of this customer":

"Thank you for the review. We've checked our records for the period this might refer to and aren't able to identify a corresponding visit or booking. If you did visit and feel strongly enough to leave this, we'd genuinely welcome the chance to understand what happened. Please email us at [hello@thecrown.example]."

Template for a coordinated burst (post once, don't reply individually):

"We're aware of a recent pattern of reviews from newly created accounts that don't correspond to any bookings or customer records with us. We're reporting these to Google for review. We'd encourage anyone considering visiting to look at the broader picture of our reviews over time, and thank our regulars who already know what we're about."

Template for an obviously off-topic review:

"Thanks for the review. We're a Sunday-lunch pub in Sheffield, so a complaint about gym equipment may have been intended for a different business. Happy to chat directly if there's been confusion at our end. Please get in touch at [hello@thecrown.example]."

Three principles run through all three templates:

• Plant the flag, don't argue it. "We have checked our records and can't identify any visit matching this review" does more work than "you weren't here" because future readers reach the conclusion themselves.
• Never accuse anyone of being a liar in public. If it's worth pursuing, you may have a private legal route in defamation or malicious falsehood, which sit outside the DMCC Act (the Act is enforced by the CMA, not by you). The public reply isn't where you make that case. Future customers reading the thread tend to side with whoever sounds calmer.
• Keep it under 100 words. Long defensive replies look insecure.

When to Escalate (and How)

Most fake reviews stop at flagging plus a calm public reply. Some don't. Three escalation paths are worth knowing, and from April 2025 they have actual teeth.

1. Google's Merchant Extortion Report Form. If someone has explicitly threatened a one-star review unless you pay them (or send free product, or remove a real review of theirs at another business), this is review extortion and Google takes it seriously. Google's dedicated extortion report form puts your case in a separate queue. Submit it logged into the Google account that manages your Business Profile, and include screenshots of every message, with dates, times, and the demand. Google's response on these is typically faster than standard removal requests.

2. Report Fraud, formerly Action Fraud (UK). If the extortion involves a financial demand, also report to Report Fraud, the UK's national reporting centre for fraud and cyber crime, which replaced Action Fraud in December 2025, at reportfraud.police.uk. In Scotland, report to Police Scotland on 101 instead. Even if you don't get a police investigation, the report becomes part of a wider intelligence picture and can be cross-referenced with similar reports from other businesses.

3. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). The biggest and newest lever. Under the DMCC Act, fake reviews are now banned and the CMA has direct enforcement powers. If you can demonstrate a business has commissioned fake reviews against you (or in favour of itself), or that a platform isn't taking reasonable steps to remove obvious fakes after your reports, the CMA wants to hear from you. Submit through the CMA's online concerns form, and keep an eye on its online consumer reviews case page, which tracks where its enforcement is pointed.

The CMA doesn't usually investigate single fake reviews. They investigate patterns: businesses that systematically commission fakes, platforms that systematically fail to remove obvious ones. Your evidence becomes useful to them when combined with similar reports from other businesses in your sector. To put the scale in context, in one 2025 sweep the CMA reviewed more than 100 businesses' websites and wrote to 54 over potential non-compliance. The regulator is active, not theoretical.

Common Mistakes Owners Make with Fake Reviews

A few patterns that come up often.

Replying defensively. Even when you're certain the review is fake, the moment your reply sounds defensive you've handed the audience two questions instead of one. Now they're wondering both whether the original is real and whether you handle complaints well.

Calling someone a liar in public. Even when they are one. If it's worth pursuing, your private legal routes are defamation and malicious falsehood, which sit outside the DMCC Act (it is enforced by the CMA, not by you). Future customers reading the thread tend to side with the perceived underdog, and an angry business owner accusing a reviewer of lying in public is not the underdog.

Ignoring the pattern. One suspicious review is noise. Three in 24 hours is signal. Several with similar phrasing across multiple businesses in your area is a campaign that warrants reporting to both Google and the CMA. The owners who handle this well are paying attention to the cluster, not the individual review.

Spending more time hunting fakes than serving real customers. The trap that catches the diligent. You can spend hours every week looking for fakes and tracking removals and writing carefully worded replies, all while the genuine reviewers who actually paid you go unreplied. Allocate the time and stop when it's spent.

The Honest Hard Part

You can do all of this. Most pub and restaurant owners, after reading this far, could now confidently spot a fake review, flag it correctly, write a measured public reply, and decide when to escalate. The knowledge isn't the bottleneck.

The bottleneck is doing it consistently. On the morning when six new reviews have landed overnight and three of them look off and you're already late for a delivery and the kitchen has questions about the lunch menu. That's when the corner-cutting starts: skip the careful read, copy-paste a defensive reply, miss the pattern across the cluster.

If you'd rather have the suspicious ones surfaced automatically with the reporting workflow built in, this is what Revvy is built for. The tells a machine can read straight off a review run as detection rules on every new review on your Google Business Profile: incentivised-review language, competitor-style phrasing, and anonymous low-star accounts. The four patterns above stay with you, since they need either your own records or a human eye. The Report to Google action is built into the Alerts inbox, and when Google removes the review, Revvy marks it resolved so you're not tracking the status yourself.

There's a 14-day free trial if you'd like to see how it works against your real review history.