You might be forgiven for believing that review websites are a public service that exists to educate consumers and to improve our judgement about our choice of supplier, builder or holiday provider. The truth, which any defamation solicitor who removes reviews for a living will tell you, is that most operators of review websites are interested in their own financial profit, even where it comes at the expense of the good reputation of honest and well established businesses. At the same time, a huge number of business owners, of every shape and size, believe that a false review is something they have to live with, as if it were an act of God. It is not. Here is the law.
Who is the publisher of a review?
The author of the review is the primary publisher and the person against whom a defamation claim lies first. The website operator publishes it too, in law, but Parliament has given operators two protections. Under section 10 of the Defamation Act 2013 a court will not hear a defamation claim against anyone who is not the author, editor or publisher unless it is not reasonably practicable to bring the claim against them, and an anonymous reviewer is often exactly that case. Under section 5 an operator that did not post the review has a defence, which it loses only if the business could not identify the reviewer, sent the operator a proper notice of complaint, and the operator failed to follow the procedure in the Defamation (Operators of Websites) Regulations 2013. Behind both sits the older hosting defence in regulation 19 of the E-Commerce Regulations 2002, which protects a host that acts expeditiously once it knows of unlawful content, and the Court of Appeal’s ruling in Tamiz v Google [2013] EWCA Civ 68 that a host which is told of a defamatory post and leaves it up may become its publisher.
The 48-hour notice
The Regulations are the practical lever. A notice of complaint that gives the business’s name, the review’s location, the words complained of and why they are defamatory starts a clock. The operator has 48 hours to send it to the reviewer; the reviewer has five days to say whether they consent to removal and, if not, whether they will allow their name and address to be passed to the business. A reviewer who does not reply, or who refuses to be identified, loses the review: the operator must take it down within 48 hours or lose its defence. Most anonymous reviewers, faced with the choice between standing behind their words in their own name and having the review removed, choose removal.
Google, Trustpilot and Yelp
The big platforms run their own removal procedures alongside the statutory one, and in practice both are used. Google removes reviews that breach its policies and will act on a court order; Trustpilot has a reporting process and can require a reviewer to substantiate the experience described before the review stays up. Yelp is an American company, protected at home by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and its published position is that it does not take sides in disputes about content. That does not make a Yelp review untouchable: the reviewer is still liable in England if the words are read here, a disclosure order can identify them, and Yelp does act on a judgment. Removing a review from Yelp on the Cohen Davis site sets out the route.
Fake reviews are now unlawful in themselves
Since 6 April 2025 it has been a banned commercial practice under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 to write or commission a fake review, to publish reviews in a misleading way, or to run a review platform without taking reasonable and proportionate steps to detect and remove fake reviews. The Competition and Markets Authority enforces the ban directly, with fines of up to 10 per cent of worldwide turnover, and its guidance to platforms (CMA208) sets out what those steps are. For a business targeted by a fake review this is a second front: a platform that ignores a well-evidenced complaint about a fake review is now on the wrong side of consumer law as well as defamation law.
What works
Deal with the author first, because that is where the law puts the liability and where the review is most easily withdrawn. Use the statutory notice against the operator, in the prescribed form, because it sets a timetable the operator cannot ignore. Keep the evidence of the review and of its effect on the business, since a company must show serious financial loss. And move quickly: the reasons are in Defamation against a company: why you need to act within days.
First published 9 September 2014. Reviewed and updated 28 September 2026.