Guides/Improve your Google rating

How to improve your Google rating. The arithmetic, and the reviews Google removes.

Reviewed by Doug Baker, founder · Updated September 24, 2026 · Policy text snapshot August 2026

Illustration: a street with a small shop under a green awning. Four people stand on the pavement, each posting a one-star review from a phone. Two of the review cards are drawn in red and labelled with what breaks a policy: Never was there, a man in a hooded sweatshirt standing apart from the shop; Rival shop owner, a man in a gray apron outside his own gray-awning shop. At the right, apart from them, two ordinary customers post one-star reviews drawn in plain gray: Waited an hour, a woman with a shopping bag; One star, no words, an older man with a paper bag.
Illustration: two people on the pavement, each posting a one-star review from a phone. At the left, by his own gray-awning shop beside the green one, a man in a gray apron; his review card is drawn in red. At the right, apart from him, a woman with a shopping bag; her review card is drawn in plain gray. Labels: Rival shop owner, Waited an hour.

Four one-stars in one 4.3. Two break a Google policy. Two don't.

Two one-stars in the same 4.3. One breaks a Google policy. One doesn't.

How do you improve your Google rating?

Your Google rating is an average. New reviews put stars into it, and stars come out of it when Google removes a review that breaks one of its policies. Those are the two moves you can work on. The person who wrote a review can also delete it, and that takes its stars out of the average too, but that's their call. Maybe the profile showed 4.6 two years ago and it shows 4.3 now. Or it has sat at 4.3 for a year no matter what you did. Google doesn't take a review down because it pulled your rating down. It takes one down on policy.

What the number is, from Google's help page on review scores.

The review score is the average of all ratings published on Google for that place or business.

Google Business Profile Help, Understand review scores for local places & businesses, section How scores are calculated

Google's review-score page, fetched September 4, 2026. Not in the August 4, 2026 snapshot.

So everything below is plain arithmetic on that sentence. Add up the stars, divide by the number of reviews. A star that goes in changes the answer, and so does a star that comes out.

Run the numbers

Which moves your rating more, a bad review coming down or new five-star reviews?

Whenever your average is above 3, one one-star review coming down moves it more than one new five-star review going in. How much more depends on your numbers, so here it is on a sample profile we made up for this page.

The sample has 38 reviews: 25 five-stars, 6 fours, 3 threes, 1 two, and 3 ones. That adds up to 163 stars. 163 ÷ 38 = 4.29, which rounds to 4.3.

If those three one-star reviews came down, the profile would have 35 reviews and 160 stars. 160 ÷ 35 = 4.57, which rounds to 4.6. Adding 23 new five-stars instead gives 278 stars over 61 reviews, and 278 ÷ 61 = 4.56, which also rounds to 4.6. Three removals or 23 new five-stars, and both round to the same 4.6.

It holds one review at a time, too. Take a single one-star off and it's 162 ÷ 37 = 4.38. Add five new five-stars instead and it's 188 ÷ 43 = 4.37. Both round to 4.4. On this profile, one removal does about what five new five-stars do. The higher your average, the more new five-stars one removal matches. On a profile with a few dozen reviews or more, that's about five near 4.3 and more than twelve near 4.7.

How many new five-stars match one removal? One sample profile

  • As it stands. 25 × 5 + 6 × 4 + 3 × 3 + 1 × 2 + 3 × 1 = 125 + 24 + 9 + 2 + 3 = 163 stars over 38 reviews. 163 ÷ 38 = 4.29, which rounds to 4.3.
  • Three one-stars come down. 163 − 3 = 160 stars over 38 − 3 = 35 reviews. 160 ÷ 35 = 4.57, which rounds to 4.6.
  • 23 new five-stars instead. 163 + 115 = 278 stars over 38 + 23 = 61 reviews. 278 ÷ 61 = 4.56, which rounds to 4.6.
  • One one-star comes down. 162 stars over 37 reviews. 162 ÷ 37 = 4.38, which rounds to 4.4.
  • Five new five-stars instead. 163 + 25 = 188 stars over 43 reviews. 188 ÷ 43 = 4.37, which rounds to 4.4.

That's this profile, not yours, and it doesn't say those three reviews would come down. Whether any review comes down depends on whether it breaks a policy, which is the next section.

The reason is simple. A one-star coming out lifts your average by the gap between your average and one star, spread over the reviews that are left. A five-star going in lifts it by the gap between five and your average, spread over the new total. At 4.29 the first gap is 3.29 and the second is 0.71, so a removal carries more than four times the weight. Both shrink as your review count grows. On a profile with a few hundred reviews, neither one moves the number much by itself.

Here's the same arithmetic on your own numbers.

Run the arithmetic on your own numbers.

If 1 one-star review comes down, 4.3 becomes 4.4.

If you add 1 five-star review, 4.3 becomes 4.3.

Both together, 4.3 becomes 4.4.

Arithmetic on the numbers you typed, nothing more. Whether a review comes down is Google's decision. For a review with at least ten characters of text, the free analysis tells you whether it has grounds for removal.

Asking customers for reviews is a real way to increase your Google rating, and on a profile like this one it takes more of them to move the number. Google has rules about how you ask, and they're in the questions at the bottom of this page.

Does yours qualify?

Which of your bad reviews break a Google policy?

Usually fewer than you'd hope. Google's rules look at who wrote a review and what it says. They don't look at the star count or at how unfair it feels. About six in ten profiles we analyze have no review with grounds for removal. We say so plainly, with a reply playbook attached.

There is one policy that is about your rating itself. Google's glossary defines it this way.

The glossary entry, from Google's Maps user-generated content policy.

Rating manipulation refers to any attempt to directly or indirectly influence the star rating of a place on the map through fake and misleading content.

The rest of the extract

This includes, but is not limited to, soliciting fake reviews, coercing or pressuring customers for specific ratings or reviews, or orchestrating coordinated campaigns to unfairly inflate or deflate a place’s rating.

Google Maps UGC Policy Glossary, section Rating Manipulation

Google's policy text captured August 4, 2026.

Here are four kinds of review that do qualify. Someone who was never at your business. Someone with a stake in your rating, like a competitor, a current or former employee, or a family member. A review about something other than an experience at your location. Or a crime or unethical behavior alleged with nothing behind it. Google calls those fake engagement, rating manipulation, off-topic, and offensive content, and all four are in Google's prohibited and restricted content policy. The rest of the list is Google's review policies, category by category.

Here's how narrow that is. Two one-star reviews say the same thing: the order was wrong and nobody fixed it. One came from a customer who placed that order. The other came from the owner of a competing shop down the street. Google keeps the first, because a bad experience told plainly breaks nothing. The second is a conflict of interest, and the words don't matter. What matters is who wrote it.

A one-star with no words still counts in your average. Google's rules cover ratings as well as written reviews, so a rating alone can break one. But there are no words on it to point to, so we think it gives you almost nothing to argue from. That's why our analysis only gives a verdict to reviews with at least ten characters of text. If you think a review came from someone who was never there, removing fake Google reviews covers how you'd show that from your records. The free analysis tells you which of your reviews have grounds for removal, one verdict per review.

Or have us analyze it

How do you find out which of your reviews have grounds for removal?

Put in your business and we analyze every bad review on the profile against Google's written policies. It's free. Every review of 2★ and below with at least ten characters of text gets a verdict: strong grounds, possible grounds, or no grounds for removal. The analysis counts the shorter ones too, but it doesn't give them a verdict. Where there are grounds, we prepare the appeal and you file it from your own profile. We never submit anything to Google. That's how RatingMinder prepares an appeal.

$249 prepares the appeal for one review. $349 covers every review with grounds from that analysis. Monitoring is $39 a month. All three are priced per Business Profile, not per account, and the full list is on appeal and Monitoring prices.

The review gets removed, or your fee gets refunded. That's the $249. With the $349, the fee stays if one of the reviews it covers comes down. If Google removes none of these reviews, the $349 is refunded. The appeal fee only, never subscriptions. Appeals for reviews with possible grounds are covered too. Here is what the appeal guarantee covers. If you want to know how good the verdicts are before you pay for an appeal, that's how we measure the analysis.

No email. No account. The answer is free either way.

Each review comes back with one of three:

Strong grounds for removalPossible grounds for removalNo grounds for removal

The shop owner sits at a table inside the shop after closing, reading her phone. Above the shop floats a row of six review cards: four with five gold stars, two one-star cards drawn in red.

What doesn't move it

Does replying to a review, flagging it, or waiting change your rating?

Not by themselves. A reply adds no stars. A flag asks Google to look at the review, and its star stays in your average the whole time Google is looking. Waiting sometimes works, but not in a way you can plan on.

A reply is for the next person reading your profile, and that's all it is. It's worth writing. It won't move the number.

A flag is a request, not a removal. Google says you can report any review, but only the ones that break its policies can be removed (Google Business Profile Help). Until Google removes a review, it's still published, so by Google's own definition it's still in your average. If Google looks and keeps it, you get one appeal, and only one. The appeal names a policy, and a mismatch can waste the one appeal by presenting the wrong policy argument. Our read is that the reason you pick when you report should be the argument you'd make at appeal. Here's which report reason to choose, and here's what to know before you use your one appeal per review, ever.

  1. You report it

    Decision pending

    Google hasn't evaluated it yet. Its star is still in your average.

  2. Google keeps it

    Report reviewed - no policy violation

    Still published and still counted. Your one appeal opens.

  3. You appeal

    Escalated - check your email for updates

    The answer comes by email. The star is counted while you wait.

  4. Google removes it

    The review comes off, and its star leaves the average with it.

A reported review stays in your average until Google removes it. Drawn by us, not a screenshot of Google.

When Google does remove a review, it generally removes the whole post even if only one part broke a rule (Google's Maps user-generated content policy).

Waiting is the honest third answer. Some reviews come off with nobody reporting them. Google uses automated spam detection to remove reviews it identifies as spam, and it says the system occasionally removes a legitimate review by mistake (Google Business Profile Help). Reviews removed for policy violations don't come back (About missing or delayed reviews). None of that runs on a schedule you can plan around. If a review went missing and you want to know why, that's why Google reviews disappear.

When there are no grounds

What about the bad reviews that don't break a policy?

They stay, and they stay in your average. That's most bad reviews. A real customer who had a bad visit and said so, even bluntly, hasn't broken anything. Google's policy allows negative experiences described respectfully (Google's prohibited and restricted content policy), and its help page tells owners not to report a review just because they disagree with it (Google Business Profile Help). We won't prepare an appeal for a review like that, and we'll tell you so for free.

So what do you do with them? Reply. It won't take the review down and it won't move your rating by a hundredth of a star. It's written for the person reading your profile next, who sees the one-star and then sees how you answered it. And if the same complaint keeps showing up, that's something about the business, not something about Google.

If you're looking at a review that just landed and you're not sure which kind it is, start with how to remove a bad Google review.

No grounds for removal

When there are no grounds, that's the answer. Also free. The reply playbook comes with it.

How long it takes

How long does it take for your Google rating to change?

Google publishes a few review timings, and two of them are about your question. After a report, it says review evaluation typically takes several days (Google Business Profile Help). After a new review, it says the updated score may take up to 2 weeks. Here's its line.

Google's help page on review scores.

After someone leaves a new review, it may take up to 2 weeks to get an updated review score.

Google Business Profile Help, Understand review scores for local places & businesses, section How scores are calculated

Google publishes no timeline for the appeal, no removal rate, and nothing on when your score updates after a review comes down. So we don't give you a month count, and we don't say how fast your rating will climb. The numbers we do publish come with how many reviews they're based on and the date, and they're on RatingMinder's published outcomes.

Keep watching

How do you know when a new bad review lands?

The analysis is a snapshot of your profile today. Monitoring keeps doing it. We check your reviews daily and analyze each new bad review when we find it, so the alert comes with its verdict already attached. It's $39 a month per Business Profile, and it reads the same reviews the free analysis does: 2★ and below with at least ten characters of text. If you'd rather not pay, you can watch your reviews for free.

If a review just landed, or you're choosing a report reason or writing the appeal, each of those has its own guide. How Google review removal works puts the whole process in one place.

Questions owners ask about their Google rating

  • Can you delete a Google review yourself?

    The control next to a review on your profile is Report. You report it and Google decides, and the person who wrote it can edit or delete it any time (Google's Report or Fix Content help page). If you've wondered about switching reviews off altogether, that's whether Google reviews can be turned off.

  • Is it against Google's rules to ask customers for reviews?

    No. Google allows you to ask real customers to review a real experience. You can't offer anything for it or try to steer the rating or what they write, and there are a few more limits. Google doesn't allow payment, discounts, or free goods or services in exchange for a review, or for changing or removing a negative one. It doesn't allow asking only your happy customers, or discouraging unhappy ones from posting. And it says not to pressure customers into a review while they're at your business, or to give your staff a number of reviews to collect (Google's prohibited and restricted content policy). The FTC's Consumer Review Rule, 16 CFR Part 465, adds its own limits, including on buying reviews and on reviews from your staff and their relatives.

  • Can a service remove Google reviews for you?

    No. Google removes reviews, and the person who wrote a review can delete it. Everyone else, us included, is preparing a request for you to file. What a service can honestly sell is the analysis and the appeal, and you can compare what removal services charge. Our analysis is free. Nothing is behind a call.

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