A competitor breaks Google’s rules: how to report it properly — and when not to

Keywords in the business name, a virtual office address, reviews from friends. When a competitor does this, it breaks Google’s rules and can be reported. But it has to be a real violation and an official channel — mass complaints “against everyone around” are not a strategy.

What Google’s rules prohibit

The main points of the guidelines for representing your business on Google:

• Name: only the name the business really uses — no keywords, locations, taglines, phone numbers or URLs. “Car service Prague 9 cheap non-stop” is a typical violation; the profile can be suspended for it.
• Address: P.O. boxes and virtual offices used only for mail don’t qualify. A shared office is fine only with signage, customers received and staff present during opening hours.
• Businesses that go to customers and don’t receive them at the address must hide the address.
• One location, one profile. Duplicate profiles of the same business break the rules.

And for reviews: paid or incentivised reviews, reviews by employees, relatives and competitors, reviews from several accounts of one person are prohibited — as is posting content on a competitor’s place to undermine its reputation.

Before you report others, check the same rules on yourself. They apply to everyone, and a complaint about a competitor won’t help if your own name is stuffed with keywords.

Where to report it

1. Wrong or misleading details — in Maps, on the business choose Suggest an edit → Place is closed or not here and pick the reason (doesn’t exist, misleading). Anyone with a Google account can do it. Steps.
2. Fraudulent name, phone or website — the Business Redressal Complaint Form. It is for misleading information and fraud, not for simple corrections. Give the Maps link, quote the disputed detail and explain which rule it breaks.
3. A suspicious review on someone else’s business — three dots on the review → Report review → reason. After a rejection you get one appeal. Steps. Reviews on your own profile are handled in the reviews management tool.
4. Incentivised reviews — in the Maps app, on the business: Suggest an edit → Report business conduct.

How to write a complaint that stands a chance

• One violation, one complaint. Specifically: what is wrong and which rule it breaks.
• Evidence, not impressions. A photo of the real sign, a link to the business’s website with its real name, an extract from the public register. “These are definitely fake reviews” is not enough.
• Factual tone. You are writing to Google, not to the competitor.
• Expect uncertainty. Google says plainly that it can’t guarantee any action and won’t update you on the status. It gives no timeline.

When not to report

• Google asks you not to report a review just because you disagree with it, and not to report users for content you don’t like that is still factually accurate.
• Not as a tactic. Mass complaints about profiles that follow the rules won’t succeed, waste time, and Google can restore content at any point.
• Careful with false claims about competitors. The Czech Civil Code prohibits unfair competition, including disparagement (zlehčování) — spreading false information about another competitor that may harm them (§ 2976 and § 2984, in Czech). Whether that covers a complaint to Google we don’t judge — we are not lawyers. The simplest rule: report only what you can prove.

What we don’t promise

That Google will act, or when. And even if it does, customers won’t come to you by themselves: the competitor fixes the details and carries on. In the long run your own profile does more — an accurate name, the right category, replies to reviews, real photos.