A potential customer searches your business name before they call, and the Justdial listing is often the first thing they read. One or two-star reviews can sit right at the top of that page. Maybe a review names a staff member. Maybe it describes a service you never sold, or comes from someone who was never your customer. Phones ring less, walk-ins drop, and a single anonymous complaint quietly shapes what new buyers expect. This is the worry that brings Indian business owners to us. It is not vanity. It is the sense that a stranger now controls the first impression of a brand they built. This guide covers how to remove negative reviews from Justdial where the platform’s own rules allow it, and what to do about the genuine ones that will stay. The same sorting logic applies elsewhere, which is why our guide to deleting a Google review in India runs the same way.
Here is the calm version of the truth. You cannot simply delete a Justdial review because you dislike it. You can report reviews that break Justdial's rules, you can respond in public, you can push for legal action when a review crosses into defamation, and you can rebuild the listing with genuine customer voices. This guide covers how to remove Justdial reviews the honest way, what Justdial will and will not take down, and where the real limits sit.
Quick answer: can you remove negative reviews from Justdial?
You cannot delete a Justdial review yourself, and Justdial does not hand business owners a delete button. You can report reviews that break Justdial's guidelines, such as fake, competitor-planted, abusive, or irrelevant posts, and submit evidence. Moderators decide case by case. Genuine negative reviews usually stay, so responding and out-weighing them is the durable fix.
This guide is a deep dive on Justdial reviews. If you also have fake reviews on Trustpilot, Sulekha or other platforms, our cross-platform fake review removal guide covers all of them.
How Justdial ratings and reviews work
Justdial is India's local-business directory, and for many small firms it is the page that decides a first call. It carries a star rating out of five, written reviews, photos, and a contact button, all on one listing. When someone searches a service near them, that rating sits next to your name at the moment they choose whom to trust.
Reviews on Justdial come from users of the app and website, and some carry a verified tag while others do not. The listing also surfaces in wider search, so a Justdial rating can appear when people look you up on Google too. That reach is why one unfair review feels louder than a week of happy customers who never wrote anything.
Two facts matter before you try to remove Justdial reviews. First, most reviewers post under a display name, not a full identity, so you rarely know for certain who wrote a line. Second, Justdial, like any review platform, treats a genuine complaint and a fake attack very differently. Your work is to sort one from the other calmly, because that sorting decides which route actually applies to you.
If the real problem is not one review but a pattern of negative content ranking for your brand, that is a wider online reputation management question, and reviews are only one part of it.
Claim and verify your Justdial listing first
You gain very little control until you claim the listing, so this is step zero. An unclaimed listing means you cannot reply to reviews as the owner, you cannot report cleanly from a verified account, and Justdial has no confirmed way to reach you. Claiming fixes all three.
The route runs through Justdial for Business. Search your business on Justdial, find the listing, and use the option to claim or add your business. Justdial then verifies you, usually through a phone or one-time password check tied to the business number. Once verified, you get a dashboard where you can update details, respond to reviews, and flag ones that break the rules.
A verified owner account also strengthens any report you file. A flag from a confirmed business owner, with records attached, reads as more credible to a moderator than an anonymous complaint about an anonymous review. Claim first, then everything else in this guide becomes easier to act on.
What Justdial will and will not remove
This is the part most owners misjudge, so read it slowly. Justdial reviews content against its own guidelines, not against how much a review annoys you. Some reviews are candidates for removal. Many are not, and no report changes that.
Justdial may act on a review when it clearly breaks platform rules. In practice that covers content such as:
- Fake reviews from people who were never your customers.
- Reviews planted by a competitor or a paid agency.
- Abusive, hateful, or obscene language.
- Content that names or targets a specific individual to harass them.
- Posts that share private information, like a person's phone number or address.
- Spam, duplicate posts, or reviews about the wrong business.
- Content that is irrelevant to your service, or that promotes another business.
Justdial will usually not remove a review just because it is negative. A real customer who had a bad experience, and who describes it as their honest opinion, has posted the kind of feedback the platform exists to carry. That review stays, and honestly, it should. A directory that deleted genuine criticism on request would be worthless, and buyers would stop trusting it within weeks.
What most people get wrong is treating every negative review as removable. The opposite is closer to the truth. Fake, defamatory, or rule-breaking reviews are candidates for deletion through reporting or legal action. Genuine negative reviews are candidates for suppression through response and volume, not removal. Most listings are a mix of both, which is why the honest strategy is a mix too.
Here is the honest limitation, stated plainly. Even with strong evidence and a correctly filed report, Justdial does not guarantee removal, and you do not control the timeline. Moderation happens at the platform's discretion, it can take days or weeks, and Justdial may decide to leave a review up. Anyone promising you guaranteed deletion of a specific review, on a fixed date, for a fee, is selling something they cannot reliably deliver.
How to report a review on Justdial: a step-by-step process
Reporting works best when it is specific, evidence-led, and filed from a verified account. Follow this order.
- Claim and verify your listing. As covered above, set up Justdial for Business and complete verification before you report. Your flag carries more weight from a confirmed owner account.
- Open the exact review. Find the specific review on your listing in the Justdial for Business app or dashboard. Note the reviewer's display name, the date, and the wording.
- Use the flag or report option. Select the reason that matches an actual Justdial guideline, such as fake, abusive, spam, or irrelevant content. Button labels change over time, so pick the closest honest fit.
- Attach evidence where you can. Where the interface or a follow-up channel allows it, submit proof. Good evidence includes records showing the reviewer was never a customer, invoices or dates that contradict a stated fact, or a screenshot showing the same text copied across listings.
- Escalate through Justdial support. If the in-app flag goes nowhere, contact Justdial through its official help and feedback channels. For content you believe is unlawful, you can also reference the Grievance Officer that intermediaries appoint under India's IT Rules, and ask that your complaint be logged.
- Keep records and follow up. Save screenshots, dates, and any ticket numbers. Moderation is not instant. A short, polite follow-up keeps the case visible without turning it into a fight.
The framing of your report decides a lot. "This review is negative" is not a valid reason for removal. "This review claims we charged for a service on a date when this person was never our customer, and here is the record" is a policy-based, evidence-backed report. The second one gives a moderator something real to act on. The process here mirrors what we describe for Google in our guide on how to delete a Google review in India, because the logic is the same across platforms.
How to respond to a negative Justdial review
Reporting deals with reviews that should not exist. Every other review is answered, not removed, and a calm public reply often does more than a deletion ever could. New customers read how you handle criticism, and a measured response signals a business that listens.
Keep the reply short, specific, and human. Acknowledge the concern, correct any factual error without heat, and state what you have done or will do. Offer to take the conversation offline through your business number. Do not argue, do not guess who the reviewer is, and do not post anything that sounds like a lawyer wrote it. One defensive reply can undo the good impression that ten polite ones create.
There is a quiet benefit here too. A visible, professional owner response tells the next reader that the negative review is one side of a story, not the verdict. You are not hiding the criticism. You are adding context that a fair reader will weigh.
Legal escalation for fake or defamatory Justdial reviews
When a review is not just harsh but false and damaging, India gives you a legal path. Use it carefully, and with a lawyer.
Defamation in India now sits under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) 2023, which replaced the old Indian Penal Code. Defamation is dealt with under Section 356 of the BNS, so a current legal notice or complaint should cite BNS Section 356 rather than the old IPC numbers. A qualified advocate must confirm whether your facts meet the legal test, because honest opinion is protected and usually only false statements of fact are actionable. This is general information, not legal advice.
The common first step is a legal notice. A well-drafted notice from an advocate, sent to Justdial and, where the author is identifiable, to the reviewer, sets out the false statements, the harm caused, and the demand. Whether a notice is the right opening move, and how it should be framed, depends on your specific facts and should be decided with counsel. This is general information, not legal advice.
Fake reviews also touch consumer law. The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA), set up under the Consumer Protection Act 2019, has taken up fake and misleading reviews as a consumer-harm issue, and the Bureau of Indian Standards has published guidelines for online consumer reviews. You can read more through the Department of Consumer Affairs. For a coordinated fake-review problem, our fake review removal guide for Indian businesses walks through the reporting and complaint options in detail.
If a review shifts from a business complaint into impersonation, threats, or targeted harassment of a person, the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal and the National Consumer Helpline at consumerhelpline.gov.in are official routes to raise it. Whether a given review is a cyber offence, a consumer matter, or civil defamation is a legal question, and a professional should assess it. This is general information, not legal advice.
One honest note on the legal path. A court order can compel removal in a way a report cannot, but litigation is slow, public, and costly, and a case against an anonymous reviewer can draw more eyes to the very words you want buried. Sometimes the notice itself, or a platform grievance, settles the matter without a full case. A good lawyer will tell you when to fight and when to hold back.
How Justdial reviews feed AI answers about your business
Search is no longer only ten blue links. More buyers now ask an assistant, "Is this a good service near me?" or "What are the reviews for this business?" When they do, tools such as ChatGPT with web search, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini pull from public sources, and a local directory like Justdial is a natural one to read.
This raises the stakes. An assistant does not show a list a reader can weigh for themselves. It writes one summarised line that reads as a verdict. If your Justdial listing skews negative, the summary can skew negative, and the reader may never open the page to see your replies, the dates, or the context. A single confident sentence from an assistant can carry more weight than the listing behind it.
Two things follow. First, the honest, balanced picture of your business needs to exist in the public sources these engines read, so the summary has something fair to draw on. Accurate listing details, visible owner responses, and a healthy flow of genuine recent reviews all feed the model. Second, a clearly false or defamatory review is now more damaging than before, because an assistant can repeat it as fact without the caution a human reader might apply. That raises the value of getting genuinely rule-breaking reviews reported and, where needed, legally addressed.
The practical takeaway is simple. Keep your public presence accurate and current, respond professionally where reviews are visible, and keep real feedback flowing. You are not gaming the model. You are making sure the true version of your business is the easiest one for it to summarise.
An anonymized example from our work
A pattern we see often, described here without names or numbers to protect the client. An Indian services business came to us after a cluster of low-star reviews appeared on its Justdial listing inside a short window. They shared a common tone, repeated near-identical phrasing, and made specific claims about pricing and staff conduct.
When the owner cross-checked those claims against booking and billing records, the details did not match anyone the business had actually served during the periods described. That mismatch is the kind of signal that separates a fair complaint from a likely plant. Working with the owner, we helped claim and verify the listing, then structured evidence-based reports for the reviews that appeared to break Justdial's guidelines, pointing to the specific rule each one crossed and attaching the records that contradicted the claims.
Some of those reports were actioned after review. Others were not, and we said so plainly, because Justdial makes the final call and we do not control it. In parallel, and this is the part that lasted, the business began responding professionally to older reviews, fixed a genuine scheduling issue that a couple of honest reviews had flagged, and invited real customers to share their experience. Over the following months, the listing read as a fairer reflection of the actual service. No guaranteed outcomes, no invented success rate, just a disciplined mix of reporting where justified and rebuilding where it counted.
If you would like a similarly honest read on your own listing, you can talk to us for a free ORM report, or find more guides on the FameNinja blog.
A calm next step
You do not have to accept a fake or defamatory review as permanent, and you do not have to believe anyone who promises to make every negative review vanish. The real work is a sorting job. Report what genuinely breaks the rules, respond well to the rest, take the legal route where the facts justify it, and rebuild the honest picture of your business so it speaks louder than one bad line.
If you want a straight, no-drama read on your Justdial listing, and a clear view of what is realistically actionable, request a free ORM report. You will get an honest answer from a real person, not a sales script.
Written by the FameNinja ORM team, drawing on hands-on local-reputation work with Indian business owners. This article is general information, not legal advice. For any legal step, consult a qualified Indian advocate.