Glassdoor Review Removal: What the Guidelines Actually Allow
Glassdoor removes employee reviews that break its Community Guidelines, and it's firm about everything else. Employers can't pay to remove reviews. Reviews aren't removed for being old or negative. Glassdoor also declines to accept evidence from parties with a vested interest in getting a negative review taken down.
So your realistic tools are three: flag reviews that actually violate a specific guideline, respond professionally to the rest, and change what future reviews say by changing what happens at work.
The guidelines most likely to apply
Glassdoor's Community Guidelines are long. These are the sections employers most often have grounds to flag under:
- Naming non-executives. Glassdoor allows reviews to name people at the top of a company, such as the C-suite, president, owner, or founder, when the comments are about their work behavior. It doesn't allow negative comments about identifiable people outside that group. A review attacking a named shift supervisor is a strong flag candidate.
- Privacy. Reviews can't reveal another user's or non-executive's identity in an unwanted way, and they can't include contact information.
- Proprietary information. Reviews can't disclose confidential, non-public company information. Glassdoor's examples include merger and acquisition details, source code, customer lists, budgets, and detailed financial results.
- Abuse and safety. Targeted abuse, violent threats, wishes of harm, slurs, and hateful content aren't allowed.
- One review per employer, per year. Each person gets one review per employer per year for each review type, and content should relate to jobs or interviews within the last five years.
- Originality and relevance. Reviews can't be substantially copied from elsewhere, and reviews that only discuss a product or service rather than the workplace are rejected.
- Incentivized or coerced content. This cuts both ways. Glassdoor removes positive reviews when it has evidence employees were paid or pressured to post them.
What Glassdoor won't do
Glassdoor's page on when it removes user content is unusually direct:
- Accept payment. Employers cannot pay to remove reviews, and recruiting clients agree to this in their contracts.
- Remove old reviews. Reviews aren't removed or archived because of their age, though newer reviews weigh more in the overall rating.
- Referee factual disputes. Glassdoor calls itself a neutral forum and doesn't fact-check each statement. It may remove a review if reliable, independent information, such as reporting from a reputable news outlet, makes clear the review is false.
- Weigh your evidence. It declines evidence from parties with a vested interest in removal, and says it doesn't negotiate content decisions.
- Delete your company page. It won't remove a company profile because the company asks. Dissolved companies may be considered case by case.
How to flag a review
Glassdoor's flagging instructions give two routes. From the company profile:
From the Employer Center, select Reviews, click the Flag icon under the review, add your explanation, and click Send. Glassdoor says it responds within 72 business hours, and it limits how often the same content can be flagged. Make the first flag your best one.
- Click the Ellipses icon in the upper right corner of the review.
- Click Report.
- Choose a reason from the drop-down menu.
- If a text box appears, explain why, in 400 characters or less. Only Glassdoor's Trust & Safety team sees it.
- Click Submit.
Writing a flag that has a chance
With 400 characters and a limited number of tries, precision matters more than volume. A few rules of thumb:
- Name one guideline. "Violates the non-executive naming rule" is stronger than a list of five complaints.
- Point to the exact words. Quote the phrase that names the supervisor or reveals the budget figure.
- Leave out the rebuttal. Explaining why the reviewer is wrong about your culture invites Glassdoor's no-factual-disputes answer.
- Don't guess who wrote it. Glassdoor protects anonymity, and speculating about the author doesn't help your case.
Responding as an employer
Most reviews you dislike won't break a rule, which makes your response the main tool. A free employer account lets you respond to reviews and update company information. Glassdoor's guidelines give employers the last word on a review, and they allow employer responses to include contact details and relevant links, such as an ethics hotline. Its rules for responses:
Job seekers read these responses closely. A short reply that acknowledges the concern and explains what's changed does more than a defensive paragraph.
- Be courteous and professional.
- Don't include the name of the person you believe wrote the review.
- Don't threaten the reviewer with legal or other punitive action.
- Expect moderation after posting. A response that breaks the rules may appear briefly before Glassdoor removes it, and you'll get an email if it does.
About paid removal services
Glassdoor states that services claiming a special advantage or guaranteed removal are making untrue, misleading claims, and that there are no special relationships that bypass its moderation. Many such services simply charge for flagging, which you can do yourself for free. Our guide on whether your removal company is committing fraud lists the red flags.
If you believe a review is defamatory, legal remedies are a separate matter from Glassdoor's moderation. Talk to an employment or media attorney. This article is general information, not legal advice.
When outside help makes sense
If one or two reviews clearly break a guideline, flag them yourself. Help makes sense when Glassdoor results dominate searches for your company name and hurt recruiting, or when you need a consistent response program across many locations. Our page for business owners and our review management service explain what that looks like, with no promise of removal.
Want this handled for you? See our review removal service.
