What the policy considers legitimate
A review is legitimate when it reflects a real user experience with the product or service, is factual (even when harsh), and does not breach any policy rule (no defamatory content, no promotion of a competitor, no private contact details, no harassment). An unhappy patient who honestly describes what they went through has the right to leave a harsh review. The practice has the right to reply publicly, full stop.
Grounds for flagging
- Defamatory content or content that violates a third party's privacy.
- Fake review: no record of the patient's visit, content clearly invented.
- Conflict of interest: review left by an employee, a competitor, a family member of the practitioner.
- Spam: same IP, coordinated waves of reviews, copy-paste of the same text.
- Off-topic: content that has nothing to do with the patient experience.
- Promotion of another establishment or service.
The flagging process
Every review, in Google Business Profile, carries a three-dot menu. The flag opens a form in the Google console, where you choose the reason. Google reviews within a few days and notifies the outcome. The removal rate on well-grounded flags is high; on vague flags ('I do not like this review') it is near zero. Precision in your flag is your best ally.
Why Google does not remove every harsh review
Google wants to protect the consumer's freedom of expression. A harsh but factual review stays a useful signal for other patients. The policy only removes reviews that breach a clear rule, not those that hurt. That is why the public reply is your main tool, not the flag.
How Revydo helps
Revydo cannot flag on your behalf — only the listing owner can do that. But Revydo centralises all your reviews, identifies those that could be violations (keywords, repetition pattern, detected conflict of interest), and pre-fills the public reply you will publish. You gain two things: detection, and the ability to reply within the day.