Looking to find a local guide that left a fake review on the site of a colleague. The fact this can occur makes me question the ethos of ‘local guides’ and google reviews overall.
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Hi @maricka
Welcome to Connect, and thanks for your concern. I hate fake reviews too.
However, for everyone’s privacy, Google do not share the contacts of the Local Guides.
But of course you can report the local guide, following the steps here 
HERE
Of course you can make a search in Connect to see if there is a Local Guide with the same username, but in my opinion this is not the best option. Business Listings have tools to respond to a review, and even to protect themselves by interacting in their own community. Please check the Google Business Profile Help Community
If the business listing is not claimed, your colleague can do it from here: https://www.google.com/business/ . In this way he will have the tools to respond and report inappropriate contents, and to better manage the listing
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Tell me the site name of your colleague, maybe I will give answered you.
Update: I reported the review and it was taken down. It is not clear whether was it taken down by the local guide themselves or by Google.
I did not receive an email from google to say this action was taken e.g. to take it down. I just received the first notification to say it was ‘flagged’ at this stage the decision was still pending.
I followed this particular guide that left a one star review, despite being a local guide level 7 her profile was restricted, all I could see is that she left 7 other reviews with that account.
The review itself was very suspicious for a few reasons, the first being this particular business just separated from a business partner who had sold the practice to them, and then started the exact same practice over a year later in recent months with a similar name.
The business that received this review never had a customer with the name provided. After doing my own research, I came across a person with that name that managed an SEO/SEM agency.
As soon as I followed the local guide profile and some other profiles connected to them, it appears the review was then deleted.
If someone is out there targeting the business I am working with, I want to make sure it doesn’t happen again. There are many reasons to believe this was not down by a customer, and an old business partner could have been involved.
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Thank you, I understand about the need for privacy, and I also get that we can publically reply to these reviews. Nonetheless, we are 100% sure at this stage it was a competitor and I believe the reply could have just made things worse.
I love Google, used to work for Google 10 years ago, however, I feel like the review system could do much better at filtering out the genuine reviewers, versus competitors who might be playing dirty with the review system.
I know a lot of people do not value the system anymore. This mainly comes down to a lack of credibility that is evident with many reviews, however, I am also conscious that there are people out there that will believe some of these fakes are real.
Hi @maricka ,
Thanks for reaching out. For future inquiries related to business on Google Maps, we suggest you reach out to the Google Business Profile Help Community. Keep in mind that I accepted @ErmesT 's comment as a solution to your post because it answers the question you raised. You can check out this article: How do I mark comments as solutions?
Please note that I moved your post to the How-tos board. Here, you can swap advice with other Local Guides and share how to create helpful contributions on Google Maps and Connect.
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