Review Content Guidelines
Version 1.0 · in effect from September 27, 2026
These are the rules a review has to follow. They are part of the Terms of Service.
Every rule has an identifier. When a review is removed, hidden or flagged — by a person or automatically — the decision names the rule it was made under, and so does the message sent to whoever wrote it. If you are told your review broke RG-03, you can read RG-03 here and argue with it.
A negative review is not a rule breach. Strongly critical accounts of real visits are exactly what this site is for; what follows is about honesty, privacy and keeping the criticism aimed at the care.
RG-01 — First-hand experience only
Write about a visit you or your animal actually had. Do not review a practice you have only heard about, and do not post on behalf of someone else.
Why: The entire value of the site is that a review is somebody's own visit. Second-hand accounts cannot be corrected by the person who was there, and they are the easiest kind of review to fabricate.
RG-02 — No private or identifying information
Do not include anyone's home address, phone number, email address, or any other personal detail that is not already public. You may name the veterinarian you saw — that is what the review is about — but do not name other staff or other clients.
Why: Reviews are public and indexed. A receptionist named in a bad review has no account here, no right of reply, and no way to get it taken down other than asking us.
RG-03 — No advertising
Do not use a review to promote a business, a product, a service or a website, including your own practice.
Why: A review that is really an advertisement takes up the space the reader came for, and it distorts an average that people use to choose care for an animal.
RG-04 — No conflicts of interest
Do not review a practice you own, work for, used to work for, or compete with. Do not ask anyone else to post a review for you.
Why: Self-reviews and competitor attacks are the two failure modes that make a ratings site worthless, and neither is visible to a reader from the text alone.
RG-05 — No incentives
Do not post a review in exchange for a discount, a free service, or any other payment or benefit.
Why: An incentivised review is not a report of an experience, it is a purchase, and a reader has no way to tell the difference.
RG-06 — No harassment, threats, or slurs
No abuse aimed at a person, no threats, and no attacks on anybody's race, religion, sex, gender, sexuality, disability or nationality. Criticise the care, not the human being.
Why: The subject of a review is an identifiable person doing a job. Strong criticism of their work is the point of the site; abuse is not, and it drives away the people whose reviews are worth reading.
RG-07 — Say what happened, not what you conclude from it
Describe what you saw and what was said. If you believe something was negligent, illegal, or grounds for losing a licence, say it is your view and say what it is based on — and take a licensing complaint to the state board, which can act on it.
Why: This is the rule most likely to be tested in a takedown request. A statement of fact about a named professional's conduct is actionable in a way that the same account framed as your own experience and opinion is not, and a review that gets removed under legal pressure helps nobody who reads the site.
RG-08 — One review per visit
Do not post the same review more than once, across accounts, or to several veterinarians at the same practice. Update your existing review instead of adding another.
Why: Repetition moves an average without adding information, and it is the most common shape of a coordinated campaign.
RG-09 — Stay on the subject
A review is about veterinary care you received. It is not the place for politics, for disputes with other reviewers, or for general commentary unconnected to a visit.
Why: Off-topic content is what turns a reference site into a forum, and the reader looking for a vet at 11pm has no way to skip it.
RG-10 — No medical advice to other readers
Describe the treatment your animal was given. Do not tell other readers what to do about their animal's condition, what dose to give, or to avoid a treatment.
Why: An animal can be harmed by advice from a stranger who has not examined it. Nothing on this site is veterinary advice, and a review that reads like a prescription undermines that.
How these are enforced
Some breaches can be spotted automatically — a phone number in a review, the same text posted twice. Those are flagged by software and, where the decision is to remove something, reviewed by a person. The rest depend on context that no automated check has, and are only acted on when someone reports them or a moderator sees them.
Either way the decision is recorded against a rule identifier, and you will be told which one. If you think a decision was wrong, reply to the message you were sent, or write to support@ratemyveterinarian.com.
If you are the subject of a review rather than its author, the takedown and correction form is the route with a clock on it. It says, for each kind of complaint, what we will and will not do — including where the answer is that a critical review of a real visit stays up.