The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2025 made fake reviews illegal in the UK for the first time. Commissioning them, hosting them knowingly, and submitting them are now enforceable offences under consumer protection law. For businesses managing a Google Business Profile in the UK, this changes the risk landscape in two directions: it strengthens the legal argument against malicious competitor activity on your profile, and it raises the compliance bar for how you collect and display reviews.
The practical problem is that most UK businesses discovered the DMCCA through press coverage and assumed it would be enforced automatically. It will not. Google's moderation of GBP profiles has not materially changed since the Act came into force. Unauthorized edits, fake reviews submitted by competitors, and automatic profile modifications by Google itself continue at the same rate. The law creates recourse. It does not create protection.
What the DMCCA 2025 actually changes for GBP profiles
The DMCCA gives the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) direct enforcement powers over fake review activity. The relevant provisions cover three categories of conduct that are now explicitly prohibited.
| Prohibited conduct | Who it applies to | Enforcement body |
|---|---|---|
| Submitting a fake review | Any person or business | CMA |
| Commissioning fake reviews | Businesses and agencies acting on their behalf | CMA |
| Hosting fake reviews without reasonable steps to prevent them | Platform operators | CMA |
| Offering or advertising fake review services | Any person or business | CMA |
For UK businesses managing a GBP profile, the most relevant implication is the first two. A competitor who submits fake negative reviews on your profile, or commissions a service to do so, is now committing an offence under UK consumer law — not just violating Google's terms of service. That distinction matters when documenting evidence and escalating beyond Google's own dispute process.
What the DMCCA does not change
The Act does not give Google any new obligation to remove reviews faster, does not create a direct right of action for individual businesses against competitors, and does not affect the volume of unauthorized edits that Google applies automatically to profiles based on its own data sources.
The most common sources of unauthorized profile changes in the UK in 2026 remain Google's own automatic updates — applied when its systems detect what it considers an inconsistency between the profile data and third-party sources — and user-suggested edits submitted through Google Maps. Neither of these is covered by the DMCCA, and neither has slowed since the Act came into force.
The most frequent unauthorized edits on UK GBP profiles
- Opening hours changed automatically by Google: particularly around bank holidays and seasonal periods. Google applies what it considers corrections based on its data sources without notifying the profile owner. In the UK, where bank holiday trading hours vary by business type, these automatic changes produce incorrect information that generates negative reviews
- Primary category modified: Google occasionally updates categories when it detects what it considers a mismatch between the declared category and the business's observable activity. A solicitor's firm that publishes content about multiple practice areas may find its primary category shifted away from its target keyword
- User-suggested edits applied without owner approval: any Google Maps user can suggest a change to any business profile. Google applies these suggestions automatically in many cases, particularly for fields like address, phone number and business name
- Fake reviews from competitor activity: now an offence under the DMCCA, but still occurring and still requiring a reporting and waiting process before removal
- Profile marked as temporarily or permanently closed: one of the highest-impact unauthorized changes, which removes the business from active search results until corrected
How to document unauthorized edits for DMCCA purposes
If you intend to report a fake review campaign or malicious profile editing to the CMA, the quality of your documentation determines whether the complaint is actionable. Google's own dispute process rarely produces the kind of evidence trail that a regulatory complaint requires.
- Screenshot every fake review immediately, including the reviewer's profile name, review date, star rating and full text
- Screenshot the reviewer's Google Maps profile if accessible, noting account creation date and activity history
- Record the date and time you reported the review to Google and the reference number if provided
- Log any pattern: multiple reviews arriving within a short window, reviews from accounts with no other Maps activity, reviews using similar phrasing across multiple submissions
- Keep a timestamped record of all profile changes, including automatic ones, to establish a pattern of activity rather than isolated incidents
Profile protection for UK agencies managing client portfolios
For agencies managing GBP profiles for UK clients, the DMCCA creates both an opportunity and a responsibility. The opportunity is that the law strengthens the case for active profile monitoring as a billable service: clients in competitive sectors now have a concrete legal reason to want their profile watched 24 hours a day, not checked once a week.
The responsibility is that agencies acting on behalf of clients in review collection must ensure their methods are fully compliant. Incentivised reviews remain a Google policy violation regardless of the DMCCA, and under the Act they may now also constitute an enforceable consumer law offence if the incentive produces a review that misrepresents the customer's genuine experience.
Guardian from LocalEdge monitors every field of your GBP profile in real time and alerts you the moment any change is detected, whether it originates from a user suggestion, a competitor action or a Google automatic update. For UK agencies, the timestamped change log that Guardian maintains is exactly the kind of documentation that supports a DMCCA complaint or a Google escalation. The LocalEdge agency platform and multi-profile diagnostic cover your entire client portfolio. For independent UK businesses, LocalEdge for individual businesses includes real-time Guardian monitoring with instant alerts.
The free GBP diagnostic identifies current inconsistencies on your profile and fields presenting unauthorized edit risk in under two minutes. For the full framework on GBP optimisation in the UK, see our reference guide: how to optimize your Google Business Profile in the UK 2026.
