What Employers Can and Cannot Do

Indeed does not give employers a delete button. Every request to remove Indeed reviews runs through a reporting queue that Indeed controls. From there, it’s decided against guidelines Indeed publishes on a timeline Indeed sets.

Employers who understand those guidelines file stronger reports. They also recognize the cases where reporting isn’t the right move at all.

This guide covers which Indeed reviews qualify for removal, the exact steps to report one, what happens after you submit, and why a successful report can still leave your star rating untouched.

Key Takeaways

• Indeed does not provide a delete option for employers. Every removal runs through the report queue, and Indeed’s moderation team makes the final call.
• Indeed removes content for guideline violations, not for being negative. An accurate but unflattering review will stay up.
• A reported review can be redacted rather than removed, meaning the text comes down while the star rating stays on your page.
• Indeed does not tell employers the outcome of a report, so checking the page is the only way to know.
• Reviews posted to the wrong company page follow a separate migration request rather than the report queue.
• Responding publicly reaches every candidate who reads the review afterward, and it is the one lever an employer fully controls.

Can Employers Remove Indeed Reviews?

No. Employers cannot remove an Indeed review. Indeed’s Employer Help Center states that only the reviewer can delete their own post, and there is no employer-side delete control anywhere on a company page.

Employers also cannot see who wrote a review. Reviews published under a display name, and what employers can and cannot see on an Indeed review is limited to that name, the rating, the text, the reviewer’s job title and location, and the date.

What employers can do is report a review for violating Indeed’s content guidelines. Reporting sends the review to Indeed’s moderation team, which decides whether it comes down. Reporting is a request for moderation, not a self-service removal, and that distinction shapes everything else on this page.

The standard Indeed applies is narrow. Indeed does not remove reviews for being harsh, unfair, or bad for recruiting. The review has to break a published rule. A former employee who writes an accurate and unflattering account of working at your company has not violated anything.

When a report does succeed, it can end one of two ways. The review comes down entirely, or the review text is redacted while the star rating remains on your company page. That second outcome catches most employers off guard, and it is covered in detail below.

What Indeed Will and Will Not Remove

Indeed removes company page content that breaks its published content guidelines. Content is not allowed when it includes:

1. Unlawful, fraudulent, discriminatory, threatening, abusive, libelous, or defamatory statements
2. Obscene or otherwise inappropriate material
3. Sexual, ethnic, racial, or other discriminatory slurs
4. Personal details about someone outside their role at the company
5. Irrelevant or unhelpful content

Indeed prohibits attempts to make factual claims about the company instead of sharing personal experience, and it instructs reviewers to give their own opinion rather than state opinions as facts.

This is the most useful test available to an employer when deciding whether a report is worth filing. A review saying “management was disorganized and I was unhappy” describes an experience. A review asserting that the company falsifies payroll records states something as fact about the business. The second one is arguing against the guidelines. The first one is not.

Indeed also states that company pages are not a place to report misconduct, specifically not for reporting crimes, sharing internal company details, or making claims of illegal activity, and that it reserves the right to remove such content. Reviews alleging illegal conduct are a stronger report than most employers assume.

Two further grounds are worth knowing. Indeed may remove reviews where there is evidence the reviewer was paid, or forced or pressured to post. That rule cuts both directions, so an employer running an incentivized review campaign is exposed to the same standard. Indeed also limits reviewers to one review per person per company and accepts reviews only from people who work or have worked there. A duplicate review, or a review from a competitor or a rejected candidate, is removable on that basis alone.

What will not come down is an honest, opinion-based account of working at your company, however much damage it does. Indeed built the review system to publish exactly that, and reporting it wastes effort better spent elsewhere.

How to Report an Indeed Review, Step by Step

Reporting runs through the review itself on your company page. The full path:

1. Find the review on your company page.
2. Click or tap the three dots on the review.
3. Select Report review.
4. Choose the reason from the menu that most precisely matches the violation.
5. Click or tap Submit.

There’s one constraint that frustrates employers more than any other, and most guides skip it. The report form gives you a menu of reasons and no free-text field. You cannot attach a screenshot, cite the guideline, or explain the history behind the review. The reason code you select is the entire submission.

Before opening the menu, read the review against the guidelines and identify the specific language that breaks a specific rule, then pick the narrowest reason that matches. A precise selection gives a moderator a defined question to answer. A general one asks them to build your case for you.

Claiming your company page is worth doing before any of this. Responding to reviews and the migration request covered further down are both available only on a claimed page.

Reviews, Q&A, and Interview Content Are Reported Separately

Company reviews are not the only content on an Indeed company page, and each content type is reported on its own. Indeed’s guidelines govern reviews, questions, and answers as distinct types, each subject to the same one-per-person-per-company limit.

Audit the questions and answers tab alongside the reviews tab. A damaging answer about pay, management, or turnover can sit higher on the page than any individual review, and it runs through the same three-dot menu.

Interview reviews and interview questions are also reportable. According to RetainTrust, removing interview content does not change a company’s star rating, since that rating is driven by employee reviews alone.

That is useful for triage. If your star average is the problem, interview content is not where to spend the effort.

What Happens After You Report a Review

A report has three possible endings, and the middle one surprises most employers.

Treat that as a stated turnaround for confirmed violations rather than a prediction about your specific report.

Your report can succeed, the offending language can disappear from the page, and the one-star rating behind it can keep pulling down your company average exactly as before. Employers who measure success only by whether the words came down will misread this outcome as a win.

Build a little process around that gap. Capture a dated screenshot and the review URL before you report, so you have a record of what the review said if it is later redacted rather than removed. Re-check the page after several business days.

If a clear violation is still live, Indeed’s help center contact form is the escalation path. Resubmitting the same report does not move a review through the queue faster.

When a Review Lands on the Wrong Company Page

Reviews sometimes get posted to the wrong company page, and this is handled outside the report queue entirely. Misattribution is common when a business has a generic name, shares a name with an unrelated company, or operates alongside similarly named franchise entities.

Indeed’s Employer Help Center describes a migration request to move a review to the correct company page. Only employers with a claimed company page can submit one, which is another argument for claiming the page early.

Misattribution is one of the more winnable situations an employer will encounter, because it turns on a factual question about which company the reviewer worked for rather than a judgment call about whether a review was fair. If a review describes a role, location, or policy that does not exist at your company, treat misattribution as your first hypothesis.

When Responding Beats Reporting

Most reviews will not qualify for removal, which makes the public response the most reliable tool an employer has. Reporting is a request that Indeed decides. Responding is a decision you make.

Keep the response short. Address the specific concern raised rather than issuing a general statement about company values. Avoid disputing the reviewer’s experience, since a defensive reply reads worse to candidates than the original review.

Never include details that could identify the reviewer, and never reference internal records such as performance history or the terms of a separation. Our guide on how to respond to negative reviews covers the structure.

One caution belongs here. Attempting to identify an anonymous reviewer, or contacting someone you suspect wrote a review, can create retaliation exposure. Talk to employment counsel before taking either step.

Defamation and Your Legal Options

A false statement of fact can be defamatory. An opinion about what it was like to work somewhere generally is not, however damaging it feels. “The owner steals from the tip pool” is a factual assertion that is either true or false. “This was the worst job I have ever had” is an opinion, and it is protected as such.

Any claim would run against the individual reviewer rather than against Indeed, since Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects platforms from being treated as the publisher of what their users post.

That raises the practical obstacle first: reviews are published under display names, so an employer has to identify the reviewer before there is anyone to sue. Indeed states that it may honor subpoenas, search warrants, law enforcement requests, and court orders requiring it to share a user’s identity, which puts identification behind legal process rather than a support ticket. Our explainer on how anonymous Indeed reviews actually are covers the limits of that anonymity.

NetReputation does not provide legal advice. Employers with a specific defamation concern should consult an attorney about their situation before taking action. This section was reviewed by Tommy Meyer, NetReputation’s General Counsel, who has practiced internet and defamation law since 1996.

What Our Clients Say

When to Bring in a Reputation Management Firm

Outside help earns its cost in specific situations rather than as a general policy. Consider it when a cluster of reviews appears in a short window, when you are seeing reviews from people who never worked at the company, when an Indeed page is holding a position in branded search results for your company name, or when your team has no realistic capacity to build a documented case while also hiring.

What a firm adds is mostly discipline and reach. Mapping specific review language to a specific guideline violation before filing produces better reports than a rushed reason-code selection. Monitoring runs across every employer review platform rather than the one that prompted the call, since candidates researching your company check more than Glassdoor or Indeed alone. Building positive search assets reduces how much weight any single review page carries in branded results.

Be skeptical of what you are promised. No firm can pay Indeed to remove a review. Indeed applies the same moderation standard to every company on the platform, regardless of whether that company advertises there. Any vendor offering a guaranteed Indeed takedown is describing something the platform’s published policy does not provide for.

NetReputation works with employers on review management, monitoring across employer review platforms, and search result management for branded queries.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Can employers remove Indeed reviews?

No. Indeed provides no employer-side delete option. Employers can report a review that violates Indeed’s content guidelines, and Indeed’s moderation team decides whether it is removed, redacted, or left in place. Reporting does not guarantee removal.

Can you delete Indeed reviews?

Only the person who wrote a review can delete it, through their own Indeed account. Employers have no equivalent control, and their only route is reporting the review for a guideline violation.

Can an employer remove a review on Indeed?

An employer can report a review, but cannot remove it. Indeed removes content that breaks its published guidelines, such as slurs, threats, personal information about individuals, or reviews from people who never worked at the company. Negative but honest reviews stay up.

How long does Indeed take to review a reported review?

Indeed states that it reviews reported content and removes it within one to two business days when the content breaks its guidelines. That window describes confirmed violations. Declined reports follow no stated timeline, and Indeed does not announce a decision either way.

Does Indeed tell you if a review was removed?

No. Indeed will not update you about the outcome. With no confirmation and no rejection notice, an employer cannot distinguish a report still in the queue from one that was reviewed and declined. Checking the company page is the only way to know.

Can Indeed reviews be removed if they are fake?

Sometimes, though the report has to rest on a specific rule rather than on the review being false. Indeed accepts reviews only from current or former employees, limits reviewers to one per company, and may remove reviews where there is evidence the reviewer was paid, forced, or pressured to post.

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