What we remove

Review removal across every major platform

Can you legally remove a Google review in Germany?

Yes — and German law is unusually favourable to businesses on this point. You cannot delete a review simply because it is negative or you disagree with it, but you can require Google to take down a review that is unlawful. In practice, three categories of review are removable: those containing false statements of fact, those amounting to defamatory abuse (Schmähkritik), and those written by someone who never had genuine contact with your business. Because Germany treats reviews as expressions that must respect the general right of personality and the right to an established and operating business, the burden of proving a factual allegation frequently falls on the reviewer — not on you. That is a decisive advantage: many one-star attacks collapse the moment the author is asked to substantiate what they claimed. The difficulty for most business owners is not the law but the execution — knowing which ground applies, gathering the right evidence, and presenting it in the exact form Google and, where necessary, a German court will accept. That is the gap United Press fills.

The German legal grounds we rely on

United Press builds each case on the framework German courts actually use. The general right of personality (allgemeines Persönlichkeitsrecht), together with § 823 BGB (liability for unlawful damage to protected interests including reputation) and § 1004 BGB applied by analogy (the claim for removal and to stop continuing interference), provides the civil backbone for a takedown. Where a review makes a false factual claim that damages commercial trust, § 824 BGB comes into play. In the most serious cases, criminal provisions on insult, defamation and slander (§ 185, § 186 and § 187 StGB) reinforce the position — though we deploy these carefully so a complaint never looks disproportionate. The point is not to threaten, but to show clearly why a review crosses the line from protected opinion into unlawful content. German courts draw a careful line between value judgements, which enjoy broad protection under freedom of expression, and assertions of fact, which must be true. A statement such as “this company committed fraud” is a checkable factual claim; if the reviewer cannot back it up, it is unlawful and must go. We spend real time separating the removable factual allegations in a review from the protected opinion around them, because a precise complaint is far more likely to succeed than a broad one.

The genuine business-contact requirement and BGH case law

The single most powerful argument in Germany is often the simplest: a reviewer must actually have had contact with the business they are rating. The Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) has confirmed repeatedly that a platform must act on a properly substantiated complaint. In VI ZR 34/15 the BGH held that Google’s duty to check is triggered by a concrete complaint about a review, and in VI ZR 1244/20 (2022) the court made clear that a well-substantiated assertion of missing customer contact can oblige Google to investigate rather than simply reject the objection. A later ruling (I ZR 143/23, 2024) even addressed when Google must disclose a reviewer’s identity. We know how to frame a complaint so it meets this “substantiated” standard rather than being brushed aside. In practice this means giving Google a concrete, verifiable objection — for example, that the reviewer’s account, timing or description does not match any record of a customer, patient or client — so the platform’s duty to check is genuinely triggered. A vague “this review is unfair” report is routinely rejected; a substantiated complaint that mirrors the BGH standard is what forces a proper review of the content.

DSGVO, the right to be forgotten and the DSA

Data-protection law adds a second route. Where a Google review processes personal data unlawfully — or exposes specially protected information such as health data — Article 17 DSGVO (the right to erasure, often called the right to be forgotten) can support its removal. Since the EU Digital Services Act took full effect, platforms operating in Germany must also handle complaints about unlawful content promptly and give reasoned decisions, which strengthens the position of a business raising a legitimate objection. United Press assesses every case for both the civil-law and the data-protection angle, then pursues whichever combination gives the fastest, most durable result — always through the correct German legal and platform channels. It is worth stressing what we never do: we do not post fake positive reviews, we do not flood a listing to bury the problem, and we do not use any grey-market tactic that could put your Google Business Profile at risk. Everything is done openly and on the record, so a removal stands up and stays down.

Why review removal now shapes AI search results

Reviews no longer just sit on your Google Business Profile — they feed the answers that AI assistants give about your company. When a prospective customer asks ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Claude or Grok whether your business is reputable, those systems draw on the same public review signals, star ratings and snippets that Google indexes. A cluster of fake or defamatory one-star reviews can quietly become part of an AI-generated summary that reaches customers you never see. Removing the unlawful source reviews cuts off that supply at the root, so the picture these tools present of your German business reflects reality rather than a competitor’s smear campaign.

Who we help across Germany and the DACH region

We work with businesses of every size — from single-location restaurants, clinics, dental and medical practices, law firms and tradespeople to hotel groups, e-commerce brands and multi-branch retailers — across Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and throughout Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Whether you are facing a single anonymous attack review or an organised campaign of fake ratings, the approach is the same: assess it against German law, act through the proper channels, and remove it. And because our promise is no removal, no fee, you carry none of the risk while we restore your reputation.