Someone left a Google review on the wrong business. Can it be removed?

It is more common than it sounds, and it is rarely malice. Chains and franchises share a name across dozens of listings and the reviewer picks the first one that appears. Businesses that moved keep an old pin alive. Two firms with similar names sit in the same city. A customer who dealt with a broker or a third-party platform reviews the company whose name they saw rather than the one that did the work.

Shared premises produce their own version: the reviewer is describing the building, the parking, or the business next door, and the listing they picked happens to be yours.

Quote the review against itself. The strongest filings on wrong-business reviews contain almost no argument, because the mismatch does the work.

Report it as off-topic rather than as a fake review. Fake implies a claim about the reviewer's intent that you cannot support and do not need. Off-topic is a claim about the content, and the content is right there in front of whoever reads the case.

Write it in one or two lines: the review mentions X, we do not have X, we have never operated at Y. Where the actual business is obvious, saying so helps — it explains the mix-up and makes the complaint look like a misdirection rather than an attack.

Reply publicly, briefly and warmly. This is the one situation where a reply is close to risk-free, because you are not disputing anyone's experience. Something like: this appears to describe a different business, we have never operated at that address, and we hope it gets resolved. Future readers understand immediately, and the reply carries the explanation even if the removal takes weeks.

If the same mix-up keeps happening, the underlying cause is usually a duplicate or stale listing rather than the reviewers. Cleaning that up stops the next one arriving.