Google reviews should be based on genuine experiences.

Millions of people rely on Google reviews every day to decide where to eat, shop, stay and spend their money. For small businesses, those same reviews can have an enormous impact on reputation, customer confidence and livelihoods. But there is a fundamental problem: it can be extremely difficult to establish whether someone leaving a review has ever genuinely interacted with the business at all.

Fake reviews damage everyone.

Consumers can be misled by artificially inflated ratings and fake positive reviews. At the same time, legitimate businesses can be harmed by malicious or fabricated negative reviews from people they cannot identify as customers.

This petition is not about removing genuine negative reviews or preventing customers from criticising businesses. Customers must always have the right to share an honest experience — good or bad.

We are asking Google to introduce stronger safeguards to establish that reviews represent genuine customer experiences, particularly when the authenticity of a review is disputed.

We are calling on Google to:
1. Introduce stronger verification measures to identify suspicious or potentially fraudulent reviews.
2. Provide a meaningful process for businesses to challenge reviews where there is reasonable doubt that a genuine customer interaction took place.
3. Investigate disputed reviews using available evidence rather than placing the burden entirely on the business.
4. Take stronger action against accounts and networks involved in coordinated or repeated fake-review activity.
5. Protect genuine reviewers — including those leaving legitimate negative feedback — so that honest criticism is never suppressed simply because a business disagrees with it.
6. Improve transparency around how disputed reviews are assessed and why decisions are made.
7. This isn't about giving businesses control over what customers say.

It's about making the review system more trustworthy. A review should represent a genuine experience — whether that experience resulted in five stars or one.

When fake reviews are allowed to influence ratings, consumers lose confidence, honest businesses are disadvantaged and genuine reviewers become harder to distinguish from fraudulent ones. Google has built one of the world's most influential review platforms. With that influence should come effective safeguards against manipulation and abuse.

If you believe Google reviews should come from genuine experiences, please sign this petition and share it with others. Together, we can ask Google to build a review system that consumers and businesses can actually trust.

#StopFakeGoogleReviews