Google policy citation
Promoting a competitor
Reviews that exist primarily to promote a competing business, link to alternatives, or advertise services violate Google's content policy.
What Google says
“Maps user-contributed content is not meant for advertising, promotional, or commercial purposes. We don't allow content that contains: solicitation, contact information that diverts users away from the business reviewed, or promotional links.”See Google's full content policy hub
Qualifies for removal
- →Review says 'go to [competitor].com instead'
- →Review contains a phone number for a different business
- →Review primarily exists to drive traffic elsewhere
Does NOT qualify
- →Customer mentioning they switched to a different provider (just a fact)
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 names another business by name and recommends it
- It contains a phone number, URL, social handle or discount code for someone else
- The account has posted near-identical text on several listings in the same trade
- The wording reads as promotional copy rather than as an account of a visit
The mistake that gets this rejected
Filing this as a fake review. Intent is hard to prove; the promotional content is right there in the text. Quote the promotional line and name the advertising clause, and the case decides itself.
Questions about this clause
What if the review only mentions a competitor in passing?
A comparison inside a genuine account of a visit is normally allowed. The clause bites when the promotion is the point of the review rather than an aside.
Does a link on its own qualify?
An outbound link or contact detail for another business is one of the clearer cases under this clause, because it serves no purpose in a review of you.
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. You're billed only when Google actually removes a review.
The other policy categories
Full breakdown: Google review policy violations explained · remove fake Google reviews · straight answers · by industry
The other content-policy categories
A review often breaks more than one clause at once, and the strongest 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 cover the attack patterns we see most often per trade.