The Federal Trade Commission has been increasingly aggressive about fake review enforcement. In 2023, the agency finalized rules making it illegal to buy or create fake reviews and imposing significant civil penalties for violations. Yet fake reviews remain widespread because the economics favor them and enforcement is imperfect.
For legitimate businesses, the fake review problem comes in two flavors: competitors or hostile actors posting fake negative reviews to damage your business, and the temptation (which you should resist absolutely) to post fake positive reviews about yourself.
Recognizing Fake Negative Reviews
Several patterns suggest a review may be fake or coordinated rather than genuine:
The reviewer has no history. A brand-new Google or Yelp account that has left only one or two reviews, all negative, for similar businesses in your category, is a significant red flag. Genuine reviewers typically have a history of reviews across different types of businesses.
The review contains suspicious specificity or vagueness. Fake reviews written by people unfamiliar with your business sometimes contain references to things that do not match your operation: wrong product names, wrong location details, or conversely, such vague language that it could apply to any business in your category.
Multiple reviews arrive simultaneously. A wave of negative one-star reviews appearing within a short time window, particularly if they share thematic similarities, strongly suggests a coordinated campaign.
The review mentions a transaction that you cannot verify. For businesses with transaction records, a review claiming an experience you have no record of is worth investigating.
Reporting Fake Reviews to Platforms
Every major review platform has a process for flagging reviews as potentially fake or in violation of platform policies. The process and success rates vary considerably.
On Google, flag reviews through the three-dot menu on the review and select “Report review.” Google investigates reported reviews but does not communicate the outcome of investigations. Removal typically takes anywhere from a few days to several weeks if the review is found to violate policies. The success rate for removal is higher when multiple credible signals of fakeness are present and documented.
When reporting, provide as much supporting documentation as possible: evidence that the reviewer has no record with your business, examples of similar suspicious reviews from the same account, timestamps showing the suspicious clustering of negative reviews, and any other relevant context.
Escalating to Legal Action
When fake reviews are part of a clearly coordinated campaign, legal options become relevant. In the United States, fake negative reviews can constitute business defamation if they contain false statements of fact that damage your business. Trade libel laws in many states provide specific remedies for false statements that damage commercial interests.
The first step toward legal action is preserving evidence: screenshot every suspicious review immediately with date stamps, document any patterns in reviewer profiles, and if you can identify any connection between the fake reviewers and a competitor or disgruntled former employee, document that as well.
Subpoenas served on Google, Yelp, or other platforms can sometimes identify the IP addresses and account creation information behind anonymous reviewers, which can help identify the source of a coordinated attack. This process requires legal counsel and a viable legal theory but is increasingly common in serious cases.
Protecting Against Fake Positive Reviews
Posting or buying fake positive reviews for your own business is an increasingly risky practice. Beyond platform policy violations that can result in penalties, the FTC’s new rules make fake reviews a federal enforcement matter. Several high-profile enforcement actions have resulted in significant civil fines for businesses that purchased fake reviews, including cases where individual executives faced personal liability.
The right path to positive reviews is the legitimate one: ask satisfied customers, make it easy, and provide consistently good service that gives them something genuinely positive to write about.
