How to Remove a Glassdoor Review (and When You Can’t)

You can’t remove a Glassdoor review yourself, and Glassdoor says employers can’t pay to have reviews taken down. What you can do is flag a review that breaks a specific part of Glassdoor’s Community Guidelines, such as naming a non-executive employee, revealing confidential information or containing harassment. Glassdoor’s moderators decide, and a review that is simply negative almost always stays up.

So the realistic goal is not “get rid of the bad reviews.” It’s “get the reviews that break the rules looked at properly, and answer the rest well.”

What Glassdoor will remove

Glassdoor moderates reviews against its Community Guidelines and Terms of Use. Based on its published help center guidance, these are the grounds that most often lead to a review being taken down:

• Negative comments about identifiable individuals below senior leadership. Glassdoor allows reviews to name people in the most senior roles, such as the CEO, president, owner or founder, and to discuss departments and teams. A review that criticizes a named shift supervisor or an HR coordinator, or describes them so precisely that coworkers would know who is meant, is a strong candidate for removal.
• Confidential or proprietary information. Glassdoor’s guidance lists examples such as source code, customer lists, manufacturing techniques, R&D activities, budgets and projections. Glassdoor also says it may not always agree with an employer about what counts as confidential.
• Harassment, threats and hate speech. Content that threatens people, attacks them for protected characteristics or is abusive rather than descriptive breaks the guidelines.
• Personal information. Private contact details or other identifying information about a person.
• Incentivized or coerced reviews. Glassdoor says it removes content where there is evidence that people were paid, rewarded or pressured into posting. This cuts both ways: it applies to glowing reviews an employer pushed for, too.

What Glassdoor won’t remove

Most negative reviews don’t break any rule. Glassdoor exists to publish employees’ opinions about pay, management, culture and workload, and it won’t take a review down just because it’s harsh, one-sided or unfair in your view.

• Opinions about leadership and culture. “Senior management doesn’t listen and the pay is below market” is exactly the kind of content Glassdoor publishes.
• Reviews you believe are false. You can flag a review as containing false information, but Glassdoor isn’t in a position to investigate what happened inside your company. Its guidance says it may defer to a court on whether content is defamatory, and a court order against the reviewer doesn’t automatically bind Glassdoor to remove it.
• Reviews that break an employee agreement. Glassdoor has said it generally won’t remove content just because it breaches a non-disparagement or confidentiality agreement. In the US, federal labor law protects many workers’ right to discuss pay and working conditions, and broad clauses that try to silence that speech may not be enforceable.
• Reviews from people you think didn’t work there. Glassdoor doesn’t require reviewers to prove employment to you, and it won’t reveal who they are. If the details suggest the person never worked for you, say so in your flag, but expect Glassdoor to weigh that carefully.

How to flag a Glassdoor review, step by step

1. Claim your free employer profile. It gives you access to the Employer Center, where you can see, reply to and flag reviews in one place. Our guide on responding to Glassdoor reviews covers setting it up.
2. Read the review against the Community Guidelines. Find the specific rule it breaks. If you can’t point to one, flagging is unlikely to help, and your time is better spent on a reply.
3. Use the flag or report option. You can report a review from the review itself or from the Employer Center. Choose the reason that matches the breach.
4. Explain the breach in one or two sentences. Quote the exact words that break the rule and name the rule. “The second paragraph names our payroll clerk and criticizes her work; she is not a senior executive” gives a moderator something to act on. “This review is unfair and hurting our hiring” does not.
5. Keep a record. Save a screenshot of the review, the date you flagged it and the reason you gave.

Flag one review per report, and only flag the ones with a real breach. A pile of weak reports doesn’t raise your chances and can make every flag you send look less credible.

What happens after you flag a review

Glassdoor’s help center says flagged content goes to a human moderator for a second look, and it typically replies within a few business days. The outcome is one of two things:

• The review is removed. Glassdoor generally doesn’t publish detailed reasons, partly to protect the reviewer’s anonymity.
• The review stays up. Glassdoor says its content decisions are at its sole discretion and it doesn’t negotiate them.

If a review stays up and you think a clear breach was missed, it’s reasonable to flag it again with a sharper explanation that quotes the exact text. Beyond that, move on to your reply.

Anonymity, subpoenas and legal action

Glassdoor reviews are anonymous, and Glassdoor protects that anonymity firmly. It won’t tell you who wrote a review, and it says it will fight in court, at its own cost, to resist attempts to unmask reviewers.

A court can in some circumstances order a platform to hand over identifying information in a defamation case. In practice, these cases are uncommon, slow and expensive, and they rarely succeed when the review is opinion rather than a provably false statement of fact. A lawsuit against an employee over a workplace review can also draw far more attention to the review than it ever had, and may run into anti-SLAPP laws in some states or labor law protections. Our guide to defamation vs opinion explains the difference that decides most of these cases.

If you believe a review contains a genuinely false and damaging factual claim, talk to an employment or media lawyer before you do anything. Don’t try to work out who wrote it, and never take action against a current employee because you suspect them. That kind of retaliation can create a much bigger legal problem than the review.

A worked example

This is an illustrative scenario, not a real client.

A regional logistics company finds three new one-star reviews in a week. The first says the warehouse is understaffed and overtime is constant. The second says the same, and adds that “Kevin, the night shift lead, screams at people and plays favorites.” The third mentions the company’s largest customer by name and quotes the contract rate the company charges them.

The HR director flags the second review for naming and criticizing a non-executive employee, quoting the sentence about Kevin. She flags the third for disclosing confidential commercial information, quoting the contract rate. She doesn’t flag the first review, because it’s an opinion about staffing that the guidelines allow.

Glassdoor removes the third review. The second stays up, so she flags it once more with the exact sentence quoted, then treats it like the others. The company then posts calm, specific replies to the remaining reviews, acknowledges the overtime issue, and explains the two new hires it has made on the night shift. Over the next few months it encourages current employees to share honest feedback, with no rewards tied to posting and no pressure about what to say.

What to do when a review stays up

For most employers, the reviews that matter can’t be removed. That makes the reply and the wider picture more important than any flag.

• Reply publicly and professionally. Acknowledge the concern, add context once, and describe what has changed. Job seekers read the reply as a signal of how you treat people.
• Fix the pattern. If three reviews mention the same manager or the same scheduling problem, that’s useful information about your workplace.
• Ask for honest reviews, fairly. Invite all current employees to share their experience. Don’t reward only positive reviews, don’t ask only happy staff, and don’t pressure anyone. Glassdoor removes reviews it believes were incentivized or coerced.
• Check other platforms. A former employee who posts on Glassdoor sometimes also leaves a Google review about your business. That falls under different rules, which our guide on former employee Google reviews explains.

If employer reviews are affecting hiring and you’d like help with flagging, replies and a steady plan for improving your profile, see our Glassdoor reputation management page, or our content removal service for policy-violating content across platforms.

Common mistakes

• Flagging every negative review. It wastes time and doesn’t change the outcome for reviews that follow the rules.
• Asking employees to post positive reviews on the spot. Pressure and rewards can lead Glassdoor to remove the positive reviews, and can damage trust internally.
• Trying to identify the reviewer. It rarely works, and acting on a guess can expose you to retaliation claims.
• Arguing in the reply. A defensive employer response is often more damaging than the review itself.
• Relying on a confidentiality agreement. Glassdoor generally won’t remove a review on that basis, and a broad clause may not be enforceable against protected speech.

Frequently asked questions

Can an employer delete a Glassdoor review?

No. Employers can’t delete Glassdoor reviews and Glassdoor says they can’t pay to have them removed. You can flag a review that breaks Glassdoor’s Community Guidelines, and Glassdoor’s moderators decide whether it comes down.

How long does Glassdoor take to review a flagged review?

Glassdoor typically responds to flagged content within a few business days, and its help center gives the current target. More complex cases can take longer, and Glassdoor’s decision is final.

Will Glassdoor remove a review that names an employee?

Often, yes, if the review makes negative comments about an identifiable person below senior leadership. Glassdoor allows reviewers to discuss the most senior leaders, such as the CEO, owner or founder, as well as teams and departments.

Can I find out who wrote a Glassdoor review?

Generally no. Glassdoor protects reviewer anonymity and resists legal attempts to reveal identities. A court order is possible in some defamation cases, but these are uncommon, costly and uncertain, so talk to a lawyer before considering one.

Can a lawyer get a Glassdoor review removed?

A lawyer can advise whether a review contains a potentially defamatory false statement of fact, and a court order may carry weight with Glassdoor. But most negative reviews are protected opinion, and an order against the reviewer doesn’t automatically bind Glassdoor. For most employers, a good reply is the better investment.