Remove a Trustpilot review with the evidence rule
Trustpilot is the one platform where you can force the question. Flag a review as lacking a genuine experience and the reviewer has to produce proof, or it comes down.
How do you get a Trustpilot review removed?
A business flags the review from its Trustpilot business account and states which guideline it breaches. Where the flag claims there was no genuine buying or service experience, Trustpilot asks the reviewer for documentation; if they cannot provide it within the deadline, the review is removed. Reviews must also concern an experience within the last 12 months, and harmful, defamatory or personal-data content is removed outright.
The evidence mechanism is why Trustpilot removal rates are higher than Google’s. The burden lands on the reviewer, and a fabricated review usually has nothing behind it.
Grounds that work on Trustpilot
- No genuine experience — the reviewer cannot evidence a purchase or service
- The experience is older than the 12-month window
- The review is about a different company or a misattributed brand
- Personal data: a named employee, contact details, order identifiers
- Defamatory or unlawful allegations stated as fact
- Promotional content, or a review posted in exchange for something
- An obvious conflict of interest — a competitor or former employee
How a Trustpilot case runs
- 1
Assessment
Each review is matched to a specific guideline, and the ones with no grounds are named as such before you pay.
- 2
Flag with reasoning
A flag that cites the guideline and attaches your records is handled very differently from a bare objection.
- 3
The evidence window
Where we flag a missing experience, Trustpilot asks the reviewer to prove it. Many simply do not reply.
- 4
Escalation
A declined flag is taken to Trustpilot’s content integrity team with the full record.
- 5
Proof
A screenshot of the profile without the review, and the TrustScore before and after.
The specifics
- Priced
- Per review, charged only where grounds exist
- Age limit
- Experiences older than 12 months are out of scope for review
- Typical timeline
- 5 to 21 days, including the reviewer’s evidence window
- Counts as delivered
- The review is gone from the public profile, evidenced by a screenshot
What we will not claim
- A documented, genuine customer experience inside the window is not removable.
- We do not post fake positive reviews to bury a real one. It is against every platform’s terms, it is detectable, and a business caught doing it ends up worse off than the review left it.
- Trustpilot penalises businesses that mass-flag without grounds, so we flag selectively and tell you which reviews to leave alone.
- We do not invite customers to review in a way that filters out the unhappy ones — review gating is itself a violation.
Questions
Terms on this page
Last reviewed . Platform policies change; we re-check every page quarterly.