On a recent holiday in Berlin, Emma Watkins, a marketing assistant working in England, wrote a three-star review of a bar she visited. “It was good, but not amazing, and not what I expected from a senior review, a four-point thing,” he recalls. After returning home, he found that his establishment had been taken under general supervision. “I was confused when they said it was defamatory,” he says. “I did a bit of googling, then I realized what was going on. I gave it a high level of average meaning because I suddenly thought about it.” (Fast company German defamation laws themselves do not name the bar.)
Watkins is not alone in losing faith in reviews of German businesses on Google. For most of the world, Google is more common than Yelp. If you want to find the best tourist attractions, bars or restaurants in a new city outside the US, your first port of call is probably Google Maps.
The system works relatively well. The best restaurants are rewarded with good reviews, while customers can make their own judgments about establishments with a two- or three-star rating. Some (probably, probably?) ghost customers, in other cases, the state court announced its verdict in the structure.
Except this is in Germany, except that almost every restaurant, bar and tourist attraction is questionably excellent. The country seems to be full of four and five star establishments.
An overly permissive defamation system in Germany means any criticism of a work is likely to be deleted by Google’s takedown system. Across all 27 countries in the European Union, 99.97% of Google Maps reviews received for “Defamation” are for businesses located in Germany, official European data shows. Social media is abuzz with complaints that businesses across the country have refused negative reviews. There are German-language sites that advise how to remove negative reviews from Google’s registry. These articles themselves also have ratings which, perhaps unsurprisingly, receive a score of 4.3 out of 5.
This is part of the search engine optimization (SEO) business that often extends to reputation management. Removing negative reviews is not new. But this weaponizes the German defamation system.
“As part of our work to provide reliable information about Google Maps, if it violates our content policy or local laws, it’s not just because a business doesn’t like it,” a stock press release said. Fast company. “Reviewers will be notified if their contributions are removed and they choose to challenge this decision.”
Typically, removing a negative review involves reaching out to the reviewer and asking them to reconsider their review, says Bhan. But in places like Germany, where digital laws are particularly strict, some SEOs handle the process differently. “They often classify negative content as defamation and file complaints, using a legal loophole to get the content removed by Google or similar platforms,” says Bhan.
Germany’s strict rules allow business owners to claim almost any individual investigation as defamation. Google’s own support site notes that it is aware of the issue. A Google product expert explained that a Google product expert’s research is a known issue, and everyday users perceive a power imbalance. “I get it, but it really says that the ratings in Germany are really, really high,” one user wrote.
Google doesn’t comment on how it handles Takedown requests. But experts have said they are in the process of building a check or bill similar to the beach of reviewers to claim the reviews are fake, coughing up evidence from reviewers that they should take action against negative reviews. Under German law, the legal burden of proof lies with the making of the statements in connection with the making of the statements, not with prosecutors bringing a defamation suit to prove that the statements are false.
That’s why many users’ glowing reviews are picked up by Google.
Bhan, when considering reviews, it’s easier for a reviewer to be a reviewer than to keep one, even though the reviewer is the owner of the review. “Google doesn’t want to risk fines or fines from European regulators, so it can sometimes comply with such requirements at the expense of search quality,” he said. “It’s less about doing what’s fair to consumers and more about staying compliant. That’s clearly what’s happening here in Germany.”
Of course, there are advantages to weaponizing reviews to damage the reputation of businesses that people disagree with. That’s why it’s important to have the ability to dispute what you think are erroneous or unrealistic reviews. But this weaponization can go both ways.
An SEO expert is open about the experience of armed takedownows for ‘Defamation’ in Germany. “It’s not ideal, it’s not moral, but if everyone plays by these rules, businesses can be forced to do the same.”