Indeed removes a company review only when it breaks its Company Review guidelines. It does not remove reviews for being negative, unfair or one-sided, it does not share who wrote them, and it does not accept payment to take one down, whether or not the employer is a paying client.

Indeed is the review site employers underestimate. It carries more company reviews than Glassdoor, because every job seeker who has ever applied through Indeed is invited to rate the companies they have worked for, and since Glassdoor’s merger into Indeed on 1 July 2026 the two sites’ reviews sit side by side in one Employer Center. Indeed’s rules are also, in two respects, more useful to an employer than Glassdoor’s: it prohibits allegations of illegal activity outright, and it prohibits reviews that name other employees at any level, senior leadership included. The moderation, however, is thinner. Indeed says openly that it cannot manually check every review before it publishes, so the report button does more work here than on any other employer review site, and knowing which guideline to report under is most of the skill.

This guide covers how Indeed reviews work, what Indeed will and will not take down, how to report a review from the employer side and what to expect back, the differences from Glassdoor now that the two share an owner and a dashboard, the response tools, the FTC rules on soliciting employee reviews, the legal position, and the removal services selling the report button.

What This Guide Covers

• How Indeed Reviews Work In 2026
• What Indeed Will Remove, And What It Will Not
• Step 1: Match The Review To A Guideline
• Step 2: Report It
• Step 3: What Happens Next
• Indeed Versus Glassdoor After The Merger
• Responding To The Review
• When Indeed Says No
• Fake Reviews, Review Gating, And The FTC Rule
• Removal Scams And Red Flags
• Frequently Asked Questions
• The Short Version

How Indeed Reviews Work In 2026

Every employer with a job listing or a history on Indeed has a Company Page, built automatically, whether or not anyone at the company has claimed it. The page carries a star rating out of five, category ratings for work-life balance, pay and benefits, job security and advancement, management, and culture, and the reviews themselves, written by current and former employees and, in a separate stream, by candidates about the application and interview process. Indeed asks job seekers to review their employers as part of the application flow, which is why Indeed pages for large employers often carry thousands of reviews and why the volume skews toward hourly and front-line roles.

Reviews are anonymous. Indeed shows a job title, a location and a date, does not show a name, and does not disclose reviewer identities to employers. Reviews pass through automated screening and, for some, human moderation, but Indeed’s own help material says it does not manually approve every review before publication, which means guideline-breaking content reaches the page more often than on Glassdoor and comes down when someone reports it.

Since the merger, employers manage Indeed and Glassdoor reviews from one Employer Center with an Indeed login, and see both sites’ ratings together. The two sites’ guidelines and moderation teams remain distinct, and a review removed from one does not come down from the other. Indeed, like every review platform, is protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and cannot be sued into removing a review.

What Indeed Will Remove, And What It Will Not

The Company Review guidelines are the whole test. Two of them are broader than their Glassdoor equivalents and worth knowing for that reason.

Indeed will remove	Indeed will not remove
A review that names or identifies any other employee, including managers and executives, or shares their personal information	A review that criticises “management”, “the owner” or “the CEO” without naming them
A review that makes allegations of illegal activity: fraud, theft, harassment as a crime, wage theft, discrimination as a legal claim	A review that describes poor pay, unfair treatment, or a bad manager without alleging a crime
A review from someone who never worked or interviewed there, or a second review from the same person	A review from a former employee who was fired, quit angry, or lost a dispute
Profanity, insults, threats, or discriminatory language about a protected characteristic	Harsh, sarcastic or unfair language that stays clean
Confidential company information: financials, client names, trade secrets, unreleased products	Pay figures, internal policies described in general terms, or culture complaints
Content copied from another site, or the same review posted on several company pages	A review that resembles others because several people had the same experience
Spam, links, competitor promotion, and reviews written for a reward	A generic, lukewarm review that appears to be from a real employee
Misinformation about the company, its products or services that Indeed can see is false	A review the employer says is false, on the employer’s word alone

 

The first two rows are where Indeed diverges from Glassdoor. Glassdoor allows reviewers to name executives; Indeed does not allow any employee to be identified, so a review that names the CEO, or describes a manager specifically enough to identify them, is reportable. And Indeed’s rule against allegations of illegal activity means a review that says the company “commits wage theft”, “discriminates”, or “harasses” in the legal sense of those words is reportable on its face, where the same review would stand on Glassdoor. Reviews that describe the same facts without the legal framing, such as “we were not paid for overtime”, are opinion and experience, and they stay.

Step 1: Match The Review To A Guideline

Screenshot the review with the job title, location, date, star rating, category ratings and text, and the Company Page URL. Then read it against the table and decide which single guideline you are relying on.

Look first for a name, a role specific enough to identify one person, or a description of someone’s appearance or personal life. Then for an allegation phrased as a crime or a legal claim. Then for a slur, a threat, a link, confidential information, or text that appears elsewhere on Indeed or on Glassdoor under a different heading. Check the claimed role and dates against your HR records, privately, for your own decision: a review from a job title the company has never had, or a location it does not operate in, is a non-employee report, and Indeed can check some of that against its own application data. Look for clusters: several reviews in the same voice within hours of each other is a pattern Indeed’s systems can assess once pointed at it.

If the review is a real employee saying the pay is low, the managers are poor, and the culture is bad, you do not have a removal case. Go to the section on responding.

Step 2: Report It

Claim the Company Page if you have not, through the Employer Center with an Indeed employer account; it is free and gives access to the review management tools. Then, on the Company Page’s Reviews tab, find the review and use the Report link on it. Logged-in job seekers see the same link on the public page, which is useful when a review needs to be reported by an individual, for instance the employee it names.

The report form asks how the review violates the guidelines and offers a list of reasons matching the table above. Choose the one that fits the violation you identified, not the one that feels most true. There is no free-text field of any consequence, so the category is the report; “it is not accurate” is the category most employers pick and the one most likely to be declined, because Indeed does not adjudicate accuracy on an employer’s word. Naming an employee, alleging illegal activity, profanity, non-employee, duplicate, and confidential information are categories the moderation team can verify.

For a pattern of abuse, a competitor campaign, or a review that has already been declined once, the route is the Employer Help Center contact form, with the Company Page URL, the review links, the guideline, and a few sentences on the pattern. Keep it short and factual, and do not describe the reviewer or their exit.

Step 3: What Happens Next

Indeed does not hide a review while a report is pending and does not send a confirmation of the report or, in most cases, a notice of the outcome. Removals for clear violations typically happen within one to two business days; reports that need a closer look take longer. The way to know is to check the page. The outcomes are two: the review is gone, or it is still there.

A review that is still there after a week can be reported once more under a different, better-founded guideline, or raised through the Employer Help Center with the reasoning spelled out. After that the route is closed, and repeated reports of the same review under the same reasoning are ignored. Remember that removing an Indeed review does nothing to a matching Glassdoor review; if the same text is on both, flag it on Glassdoor separately under Glassdoor’s rules.

Indeed Versus Glassdoor After The Merger

Because the two sites now share an owner, a login and a dashboard, employers tend to treat them as one. For removal purposes they are not.

Indeed	Glassdoor
Naming people	No employee may be named or identified, at any level	Non-executive employees may not be named; executives may be criticised by name
Allegations of illegal activity	Prohibited on their face	Not prohibited as such; judged on other rules
Pre-publication moderation	Automated, not every review checked	Every review screened before publication
Report feedback	Usually none; check the page	Reply within 72 business hours
Review limit	One per employer per person	One per employer per year per review type
Employer response	Public reply from the Employer Center	Public reply from the Employer Center
Anonymity	Job title, location, date shown; identity never disclosed	Same; Glassdoor litigates subpoenas and reports almost always winning
Effect of removal on the other site	None	None

The practical consequence is that a review naming a senior manager, or accusing the company of breaking the law, may be removable on Indeed and not on Glassdoor, and an employer with the same review on both should report it under Indeed’s broader rules first and use the result, if any, as context for the Glassdoor flag.

Responding To The Review

Every claimed Company Page can reply publicly to a review from the Employer Center, free, and a considered reply is the most reliable improvement available for a review that is not coming down. Indeed’s own research, like Glassdoor’s, finds that candidates read employer responses and weigh them.

Write it for the next candidate, not the reviewer. Thank them, acknowledge the substance without agreeing to specifics you dispute, say what the company has done or is doing about the issue, and invite them to contact a named person or address. Keep it under 150 words. Do not identify the reviewer, do not reference their performance, their exit, or anything only their employer would know, and do not argue. Because Indeed’s reviews skew toward hourly and front-line roles, a reply that speaks to pay, scheduling and management in plain terms does more than corporate language about values.

What not to do is the same as on Glassdoor. Investigating current staff to find the author, or threatening a former employee over a review, has produced retaliation claims, National Labor Relations Board complaints where the review concerns working conditions, and, since October 2024, exposure under the FTC’s review rule for suppression by intimidation. It also produces more reviews.

When Indeed Says No

A review from a real employee that survives a report is staying, and the four remaining routes rank the same way they do everywhere.

The first is volume, and Indeed makes it easy, because Indeed itself prompts every applicant to review past employers. An employer can invite current employees to review, evenly and without pressure, from the Employer Center, and a page with two hundred reviews absorbs a one-star review that would sink a page with fifteen. What is not permitted is covered below.

The second is to fix the thing the reviews describe. A run of reviews about scheduling, pay or a particular site is a data point, and a reply that says the problem was addressed, followed by reviews that confirm it, is the only way older reviews stop mattering.

The third is defamation. Indeed cannot be sued; the author can be, for a provably false statement of fact that caused measurable harm, if they can be identified, which means a John Doe action and a subpoena to Indeed. Anti-SLAPP statutes in more than thirty states shift costs to the employer if the claim looks like an attempt to silence a critic. It is a route for a review that makes a specific, false, damaging factual claim, and a poor one for a review that says the job was bad.

The fourth is suppression, which leaves the review where it is and works on what a candidate sees when they search the company name: the careers page, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, press, and the other review sites. For a company whose Indeed page is the second result for its name, that is a three-to-six-month project.

Fake Reviews, Review Gating, And The FTC Rule

The FTC’s Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule has been in force since 21 October 2024, and its provisions on fake reviews, bought reviews, reviews conditioned on sentiment, undisclosed insider reviews, and suppression through groundless legal threats apply to employer review sites. Civil penalties run past $50,000 per violation. Indeed’s own guidelines separately prohibit reviews written for a reward, duplicate reviews, and coordinated posting.

For an employer the line is the same as on Glassdoor. Inviting every employee to review, in the same words, with no incentive and no selection, is permitted. Telling the team to leave five stars, asking only the happy ones, tying a review to onboarding or a bonus, or having managers post as employees are guideline violations on Indeed and, depending on how they are done, federal ones. A competitor’s page filling with obviously fabricated praise is now something to report, to Indeed and if necessary to the FTC, rather than something to match.

Removal Scams And Red Flags

Search for Indeed review removal and the first page is services promising guaranteed deletion for a fee per review. Their tool is the Report link, which is free. Their skill, where they have one, is in picking the guideline; their business model is that most employers pick the wrong one.

The pitch	What it really means
“Guaranteed Indeed review removal”	Nobody outside Indeed can guarantee this. They will file the same report you can, and the guarantee is a refund policy
“We have contacts at Indeed”	Indeed’s moderation applies the same guidelines to every employer, paying or not. There is no back channel
“Removal in 24 hours”	Clear violations do come down in a day or two, and you can report those yourself for free
“Pay per review removed”	A fee structure that rewards mass reporting, which Indeed down-weights and which leaves the reviews that matter in place
“We will identify the reviewer”	Indeed does not disclose identities. Anyone claiming to is guessing from your own staff list, which is a retaliation problem in waiting
“We will bury it with new reviews”	Bought reviews break Indeed’s rules and the FTC’s, and the removed accounts leave the bad review standing

A legitimate firm will tell you which guideline it intends to report under, that it cannot promise an outcome, that it will never contact a reviewer or investigate your staff, and that its real work is on responses, review flow and the search results around the company. If the answer to every question is “removal”, keep your money.

When You Need Someone To Run It

A review that names a manager or accuses the company of a crime is a five-minute report. A coordinated campaign across Indeed and Glassdoor, a defamation claim with a subpoena fight, or a search results page that needs rebuilding around a rating that is staying is a different job. The firms that handle this properly are in ReVerb’s lists of the leading reputation management firms in 2026 and the top reputation management companies for content removal and suppression in 2026. Ask each one the questions above, and ask how they handle the employee-relations side, because a removal that current staff notice is a removal that generates the next review.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can An Employer Remove A Review On Indeed?

Only if it breaks Indeed’s Company Review guidelines: it names or identifies an employee at any level, alleges illegal activity, comes from a non-employee or a repeat reviewer, contains profanity, threats or discriminatory language, discloses confidential information, is copied or duplicated, is spam or bought, or contains misinformation Indeed can verify. A negative review from a real employee will not be removed.

Can I Delete An Indeed Review Myself?

Not as the employer. There is no delete button in the Employer Center; the only tool an employer has is the Report link, and Indeed decides. The one person who can delete an Indeed review directly is the reviewer, from their own Indeed account, which is why a review from a current employee who regrets it sometimes disappears without a report.

How Do I Report An Indeed Review As An Employer?

Claim the Company Page in the Employer Center, open the Reviews tab, and use the Report link on the review. Choose the guideline it breaks from the list. For patterns or declined reports, use the Employer Help Center contact form with the review links and the guideline.

How Long Does Indeed Take To Remove A Review?

Clear violations typically come down within one to two business days. Indeed does not usually confirm the outcome, so check the page.

Can A Review Name Our CEO On Indeed?

No. Unlike Glassdoor, Indeed prohibits identifying any employee, including executives. A review that names the CEO, or describes a manager specifically enough to identify them, is reportable.

Can A Review Accuse Us Of Breaking The Law?

Not on Indeed. Allegations of illegal activity are prohibited by Indeed’s guidelines and are reportable on their face. A review that describes the same facts as an experience, without alleging a crime, stays.

Did The Glassdoor Merger Change Indeed’s Review Rules?

No. Glassdoor merged into Indeed on 1 July 2026 and both are managed from one Employer Center, but each site keeps its own guidelines and moderation, and a removal on one does not carry to the other.

Can I Find Out Who Wrote An Indeed Review?

Not from Indeed, which shows only a job title, location and date and does not disclose identities. Only a court order in a defamation action can compel it.

Can I Pay Indeed To Remove A Review?

No. Indeed applies the same moderation to paying and non-paying employers, and sponsored Company Pages get no removal privileges.

Can I Ask Employees To Leave Indeed Reviews?

Yes, evenly and without incentive or pressure. Asking for positive reviews, asking only happy employees, tying reviews to bonuses, or posting as employees breaks Indeed’s guidelines and can breach the FTC’s review rule.

Will An Indeed Review Removal Service Get My Review Removed?

A service can file the same report you can. If the review breaks no guideline, no service can remove it, and any guarantee is a refund policy. Legitimate firms earn their fee on responses, campaigns and suppression, not on a relationship with Indeed that does not exist.

The Short Version

Claim the Company Page and read the review against Indeed’s guidelines, which are broader than Glassdoor’s in two ways: nobody may be named, and nobody may be accused of a crime. If it names someone, alleges illegal activity, comes from a non-employee, uses prohibited language, leaks confidential information, is duplicated or bought, report it under that guideline from the Reviews tab and check the page in a couple of days. If it is a real employee’s honest account, it is staying: reply briefly for the next candidate, invite every employee to review, fix what the reviews keep saying, and build out the results around the page. Flag the Glassdoor copy separately.

Do not hunt for the author, do not threaten, and do not pay anyone who promises deletion. The reviews that come down are the ones that broke a rule, and on Indeed there are two more rules to check than most employers realise.