The number of fake customer reviews has significantly increased in the last few years on popular online review platforms like Trustpilot. Business owners must know how to identify Trustpilot fake reviews and protect their online reputation to thrive in today’s hyper-competitive digital era. Otherwise, those fake reviews can cause severe reputational damage to a business.
Nowadays, the number of fake reviews has significantly increased in major online review communities, such as Trustpilot. And the reason behind this – most businesses engage in fake review generation (which is an illegal practice) to boost their review count and improve their brand presence on Trustpilot.
While Trustpilot reviews help users to find great businesses and make informed purchasing decisions, fake reviews about your business on the same platform can harm your business growth. So what’s the solution?
Here in this blog, we’ll provide you with a comprehensive guide to detect fake Trustpilot reviews and take the right call. You’ll also learn: how to protect your brand reputation, prevent the damage caused by fake reviews on Trustpilot, and more.
What is Trustpilot and How Does It Work?
It’s an online review platform where customers can leave reviews about various businesses after seeking products and services from them. However, it’s free to use and open to everyone – businesses, customers, and communities.
How does it work? The platform can be leveraged differently both by potential customers and businesses. It works differently for both businesses and customers. Let’s know how!
- For potential customers: The platform helps them find the most suitable business that offers what they’re looking for and avoid spending on unreliable businesses’ offerings.
- For existing customers: Customers can use Trustpilot to share their recent experience of purchasing any product or service from a business.
- For businesses: Trustpilot allows businesses to use their positive reviews as online marketing tools to attract new customers. On the other hand, they can address negative Trustpilot reviews and identify the areas for improvement in their customer service.
Do you know that Trustpilot posts more than half a million customer reviews on its sites every month? Now you can imagine the popularity of this specific platform!
What Are Trustpilot Fake Reviews?
These are fraudulent customer reviews on the Trustpilot platform. These fake reviews don’t reflect the genuine purchasing experience of customers and are shared to either boost or malign a company’s reputation.
Another crucial intention behind leaving fake customer reviews on Trustpilot is to manipulate or mislead public perception about a business and its offerings – positively or negatively.
Fake reviewers often steal the identities of real customers or pretend to be the same on Trustpilot to establish or damage a company’s reputation. However, the platform claims not to permit any kind of fraudulent reviews.
Who can write fake reviews on Trustpilot? Both individuals and organized groups can share fake reviews on the platform. Businesses often pay such fake reviewers to write fake reviews. Those reviews violate the platform’s guidelines regarding false information and conflicts of interest.
What does Trustpilot do? The platform actively fights against these fake reviews using its in-built technology. Its fraud investigation technology helps the platform maintain its integrity and helps genuine consumers.
How Fake Reviews Appear on Trustpilot?
Fake reviews can appear on Trustpilot through various coordinated campaigns that use –
- Incentivized reviews
- Bots and fake accounts
- Review bombing
In the next section, we’ll discuss how you can effortlessly spot fake reviews on Trustpilot.
How to Identify Fake Reviews on Trustpilot?
Managing Trustpilot fake reviews is a complex process due to the existence of fake reviews on the platform. A business can receive an extensive range of reviews on Trustpilot, but that doesn’t mean that all the reviews are genuine.
If you fail to identify the fake reviews, they can severely impact your brand reputation and presence on the platform. Identifying fake or spam reviews requires you to observe patterns and spot the fraudulent feedback that is shared with the intention to harm your business’s reputation.
- Identical Language – Many fake reviews have a pattern of containing similar phrases and language, mostly because a group of individuals is writing them or using the same review template. Likewise, these reviews mostly don’t convey any genuine customer experience.
Example: “Extremely bad customer service!”, “Very poor customer service!”, “Bad customer service!”
- Sudden Increase in Reviews – Have you ever received a large volume of reviews within a very short period of time? Those reviews are more likely to be fraudulent, trying to manipulate the public perception about a product or service.
It’s a classic case of fake reviews on Trustpilot! It significantly indicates artificial manipulation of the Trustpilot rating about a business.
- Repetitive Patterns in Reviews – If the review patterns are repetitive, it’s more likely that the reviews are fake. Have you ever noticed a bunch of reviews with the same words, sentences, and language? It’s repetitive and needs your attention to verify its authenticity.
Example: “Buggy water purifier!”, “Water purifier full of issues”, “Water purifier is buggy!”
- Unnatural Frequency of 5-Star Rating – Most fake reviews on Trustpilot show an overwhelming number of five-star ratings with excessive appreciation for a business. Unnatural frequency of reviews that contain mixed feedback can also be a sign of fake reviews.
Example: “Five-star review for their shoe collection! The collection is spectacular, and the one I purchased is the most amazing show that I’ve ever seen in my life. The shoe store is so good! want to visit it every month to elevate my shoe collection. Recommending to all! It’s the best shoe store in the world!”
- Reviews with No Details – Genuine customers who have purchased products or services from a business are more likely to review a business with all possible details about their experience. They tend to mention what has impressed them and what hasn’t, such as features, delivery, or customer service issues.
If you notice any review with no proper details about the customer experience, it’s more likely that the review is fake. So, with generic descriptions without proper details, you must suspend. Even a one-star review with no specific details about giving negative feedback can be a sign of a fake review!
Example: “Great!”, “Best company!”, “Bad”, and “Poor service!”.
- Reviews from a New Account (that has only one review) – Many fake reviewers often create new accounts on Trustpilot or email IDs to share fake reviews. Those accounts are not genuine ones and often contain fake details.
If you suspect any reviewer accounts that have just been created and show a very limited review history, often with only one review, it’s a red flag! An isolated 5-star rating with no proper details about the customer experience is also a sign to suspect.
Still have doubts? You can seek effective brand review management services for professional guidance.
3 Helpful Tools You Can Employ to Detect Fake Reviews on Trustpilot
Till now, we’re talking about how brands can detect fake reviews on their Trustpilot profile. But the complex process can be performed easily with some helpful tools, such as ReviewMeta, Semrush, and Trustpilot itself.
Let’s have a look at the three major tools that you can use to spot fake reviews on Trustpilot.
| Tools | Purpose of Using |
| ReviewMeta | For analyzing product or service reviews to spot and delete the fake onesProvides a clear idea of the customer sentimentUses algorithms to scan Trustpilot reviews for identifying suspicious reviewer behavior or potential fake reviews |
| Trustpilot’s Transparency Reports | In-built system in Trustpilot that helps brands combat fake reviews and remove themOffer statistics related to fake review removal by using automated fake review detection technology to improve the platform’s transparency |
| SEMrush Brand Monitoring Tool | Best for tracking your brand’s online reputation across various review sites, including TrustpilotUses AI-powered technology to collect valuable data, analyze customer review trends, and spot suspicious review patterns |
Fact-check: Do you know that Trustpilot removed 4.5 million fake reviews from its platform in 2024, and 90% of them were removed automatically by machine learning, generative AI, and neural networks?
How Does Trustpilot Handle Fake Reviews?
Trustpilot has quoted –
“We think having an open platform is a good thing because it allows anyone who wants to review an experience with a business to do so, regardless of whether or not the company has invited them.”
But this doesn’t mean that reviewers can share Trustpilot fake reviews and question the transparency of the platform. Being open to all means the platform must protect its integrity from fake reviews and only welcome genuine customer feedback.
Trustpilot considers a review as fake if –
- The review doesn’t represent a genuine purchase experience.
- The review is intentionally shared to manipulate potential customers’ perception of a business or its offerings.
Here’s how Trustpilot is fighting against fake reviews.
- Fraud Detection Algorithms
The authorities of Trustpilot have worked tirelessly to develop and fine-tune machine learning algorithms to detect reviews that don’t meet their criteria. And that’s how they invented their fraud detection software.
Here’s how the software works:
- The platform employs AI and machine learning to examine a large amount of review content and customer behavior.
- Its fraud detection algorithm allows for the analysis of IP addresses and the accurate identification of anomalies and suspicious review patterns.
- Trustpilot has an in-built sophisticated model that is especially built to scan millions of authentic reviews on the platform. It can detect a real review and also a fake one!
Trustpilot is constantly putting its best efforts and investment into improving the accuracy of its software.
- Reviewer Verification Options
Do you know that Trustpilot offers an option for reviewers to verify their identity on the platform?
To detect fake reviewer accounts on Trustpilot, the authorities have come up with this verification process. A reviewer needs to submit their photo ID and other details after sharing a review on Trustpilot. It ensures the authenticity of the reviewers who share customer feedback on Trustpilot.
And the most amazing part! Reviews submitted by verified reviewer accounts have a ‘Verified’ label to give potential customers more confidence. Prospective customers can identify a genuine review from a real customer.
- Manual Moderation
Trustpilot has a dedicated content integrity and fraud investigation team that plays a crucial role in reviewing flagged content manually. This content integrity team’s responsibility is to gather additional evidence and take appropriate actions against the fraudulent reviews.
Note: The platform relies on its separate community of consumers and businesses to flag suspected reviews. This practice further triggers a detailed investigation through Trustpilot’s automated systems and human teams.
- Transparency Reports and Initiatives
We’ve already talked about this specific tool in the above. Trustpilot publishes transparency reports that highlight the platform’s initiative to fight against fake reviews. It also mentions the total number of reviews on the platform removed in a year.
What does Trustpilot do? Trustpilot takes legal actions against the companies and reviewers who are engaged in fake Trustpilot review generation. The Trustpilot team invests in technology and innovation to protect the platform’s users and maintain the platform’s integrity.
Criticism and Limitations of the Efforts to Handle Trustpilot Reviews
No matter how effective your Trustpilot review management strategies are, there will always be some limitations and criticism.
Businesses may struggle to manage their customer reviews on Trustpilot because of the following limitations.
- Difficulty in Verifying the Authenticity of Reviews
Fake reviews can be positive and negative! Thus, a robust online customer review management strategy is required.
The prevalence of fake reviews can erode customer trust in brands and distort consumer perception of specific products or services. Trustpilot fake reviews can even misguide consumers, and they often make wrong purchase decisions. Review platforms like Trustpilot often struggle to mitigate the impact of fake reviews, which leads to customers losing trust in these review sites.
- Business Model Reliance on Paid Accounts
Trustpilot allows businesses to gather and promote reviews. Their reliance on paid accounts for advanced features or higher online visibility can significantly introduce bias.
Many businesses pay for access, which increases their likelihood of having an inherent advantage. It leads to their perception of unfairness related to how online reviews are displayed in Trustpilot. On the respective platform, brands have a limited ability to completely control the Trustpilot reviews they receive, which raises questions about crucial topics like data ownership and platform control.
- Investigative Journalism Pieces
Investigative journalism is another threat to Trustpilot!
Yes, it can expose many significant flaws and manipulative practices related to review platforms like Trustpilot. Such incidents occurred in the past as well! In the following section, we’ve provided some of the real-world examples regarding this. Those media reports can trigger widespread public scrutiny, which leads to countless bad reviews and publicity for the Trust pilot and the brand involved in this.
For businesses: Those journalism pieces can prompt businesses to issue public apologies or take legal actions against the users.
For Trustpilot – The media can also ask Trustpilot to suspend those fake reviews to initiate further investigation.
Some Real World Examples of Trustpilot Fake Reviews and Scandals
Here are three major examples of scandals related to Trustpilot fake reviews.
- BBC’s Investigation in 2021
Incident: In February 2020, the BBC reported that Trustpilot had removed around 2.2 million fake reviews from the platform. Among these fake reviews, the fraud protection software deleted 1.5 million, and 6 lakh were removed manually.
At that time, 469,000 companies reported fake reviews on Trustpilot, while consumers removed around 90,000.
Report: In its report, the BBC highlighted Trustpilot’s constant efforts to remove fraudulent reviews and take legal actions against the companies that were caught red-handed manipulating customer reviews on Trustpilot.
- Joe Lycett’s Got Your Back Experiment
Incident: Joe Lycett Got Your Back Experiment highlighted Trustpilot’s vulnerabilities to fake reviews. The individual is an incredibly right-wing comedian who registered a fake company named Icon Water Purifiers on the Trustpilot platform back in 2021.
He involved his friends to write fake reviews for a fake product (water purifier) on Trustpilot. His show exposed how companies could easily manipulate reviews submitted on the respective platform.
Report: Trustpilot responded by removing those fake reviews from the platform and posted a public consumer warning on Icon Water Purifier’s company page. The platform also closed the company page for any new review submissions.
However, Trustpilot didn’t forget to appreciate the experiment that highlighted a critical consumer issue – how to combat dishonest actors abusing trust on review platforms.
The platform owners also promised to implement necessary changes to their internal fake content detection systems. It also marked reviews as ‘invited’ from its own invitation tool to showcase more transparency.
- Trustpilot’s Former Employee Allegations
Incident: In 2023, a former employee of Trustpilot named Hven Somhelst wrote an essay against the company for intentionally posting fake reviews. In the essay, the employee alleged six loopholes within the platform that encouraged spammers to submit fake reviews.
He accused Trustpilot of extortion! He claimed that the platform was intentionally allowing fake reviews to convince other users to sign up for their costly premium Trustpilot accounts. “Scammers are adept at finding and manipulating loopholes, and that is why they are attracted to Trustpilot”, Samhelst wrote.
Common Methods Brands Use to Generate Fake Reviews on Trustpilot
Dishonesty finds its way anyhow! Businesses often utilize various tactics to trick online review platforms like Trustpilot and post fake reviews to improve their online reputation and review count. On the other hand, competitors or spammers are more likely to share Trustpilot fake reviews to damage a company’s image.
Trustpilot, as a popular online review site, receives numerous fake reviews.
Wondering how brands generate fake reviews? Let’s have a look at the most common methods businesses use to generate fake reviews on Trustpilot.
- Paid Review Services – Many brands pay third parties (individuals or groups of people) to write positive reviews on Trustpilot for their business. Those fake reviewers are more likely to use fake Trustpilot accounts ot use AI bots to write and post fake feedback on the platform, pretending to be real customers.
- Incentivized Feedback – Do you know that many brands offer incentives to their customers in exchange for positive Trustpilot reviews? Yes, you heard that right! It’s a very common way to drive more customer reviews for their Trustpilot page.
Brands offer special discounts, coupons, and even free products or services to their customers and ask them to rate their brand higher. It’s a hidden practice and completely illegal!
- Review Gating or Filtering – The term may sound unfamiliar to you! Review gating or filtering means attempting to control customer reviews and filtering out the negative ones. Brands often engage in such practices to encourage reviews from their happy customers only. The intention behind this unethical practice is to create an unrealistic perception of customer satisfaction in front of their potential clients.
- Bots or Fake Accounts – Bots have been the best friend of brands that are into illegally boosting their online reputation and generating good reviews. Businesses often utilize bots or create multiple fake accounts to post a large number of positive and negative reviews.
Sometimes, they do it to boost their positive review count on Trustpilot, while sometimes they aim to damage their market competitors’ online image.
- Suppression of Negative Reviews by Flagging – The primary action to take after addressing the customer concern mentioned in the negative review is to remove the same from Trustpilot with effective and ethical methods, right? But many brands often flag those negative reviews as fake to get them taken down from Trustpilot instead of removing them.
- Only Reviews by Happy Clients – It’s quite natural for every business to receive both positive and negative customer feedback. Similarly, it’s not possible for any business to only receive positive reviews and appreciations. But many businesses implement ethical strategies to make only the reviews from their happy clients appear on their Trustpilot page.
- Reviews from Multiple Domains or Profiles – It can often be observed that a company’s review page on Trustpilot is full of reviews from the same account. This means the company is receiving multiple customer feedback from the same reviewer profile.
There is a huge chance that all these reviewer profiles are fake or bots. The company may have paid third parties to create fake accounts for submitting numerous reviews on its Trustpilot page. The practice is often performed aiming to increase their Trustpilot review count.
How to Remove Fake Reviews on Trustpilot?
Based on Trustpilot’s Guidelines for Businesses, one can report a review if it violates the site’s review policy.
What’s needed? But every business must claim its Trustpilot profile to effectively manage the online reviews it’s receiving on the platform, which includes – identifying fake reviews, reporting them, and responding to trustworthy ones.
Without a verified profile on Trustpilot, you cannot flag fake reviews. Similarly, you cannot remove a review just because you don’t like it.
“Reviews are owned by the reviewers, who can edit or delete them.”, Trustpilot said.
If a business wants to delete a review from Trustpilot, it needs to provide enough evidence that the specific review has violated Trustpilot’s content guidelines.
What if a brand misuses the platform by flagging reviews continuously? If a business constantly flags reviews for removal, even if the reviews are not fake ones and are shared by real customers, Trustpilot can even suspend the brand’s profile.
- Log in to Your Trustpilot Business Account
The first step to remove a Trustpilot review is to log in to your business account.
What if you don’t have an account? For such cases, you need to claim your business profile on the Trustpilot website and create a free account. After creating and signing up for your account, you need to follow the following steps –
Navigate to ‘Manage Reviews’ and then ‘Service Reviews’ > click on the ‘Inbox’ button > find the review that you want to report > find the Flag icon that is located at the bottom right of the specific review
- Select the Reasons
Now it’ll open a drop-down box of various reasons, among which you can choose your reason why you want to report or flag the review.
Types of Reasons to Remove a Trustpilot Review
The following are some major reasons to remove a Trustpilot review.
- Harmful or illegal content – If a review negatively targets a group of people or individuals based on their skin color, gender, race, or religion
- Defamation – If the review content can damage a brand’s reputation and cause financial loss (this is a grey area, as expressing a negative feedback about a brand or presenting false narratives to malign a brand’s image are two different things)
- Terrorism – If the review supports or appreciates hate groups
- Threats or Violence – If the Trustpilot review glorifies violence
- Obscenity – If the customer review contains disturbing materials like adult content and extreme profanity
- Personal information – If the review reveals any personal information about a brand, including a person’s name, email address, phone number, or any identical photo/video
Note: You shouldn’t report a review that contains personal information that is already available on the brand’s Trustpilot profile.
- Promotional content – If the review promotes any other business’s service or products via codes and links
- Not a genuine customer experience – If the review is not at all based on a real customer’s buying experience, and if a review is not shared by a real customer
Note: Always remember, a Trustpilot user can leave reviews about a brand even if he/she hasn’t bought anything from it.
- About another business (mostly a competitor) – If a review talks about another business domain or promotes services offered by market competitors
- Submit Your Request
Now that you’ve selected the reason why you want to remove a specific review on Trustpilot, it’s time to submit the request. You’ll be asked to highlight the review content that you want to mention as an issue.
Submit your request and wait for the verdict. This is the hardest part we know! If you flag the review following proper rules, it increases the likelihood of its removal.
“A methodical approach to flagging, backed by solid evidence, can make all the difference in getting a review removed successfully,” quoted by Roque Rodon, the Director of Operations and Technology at Erase.com.
And the timeframe?
No, Trustpilot doesn’t provide an accurate timeframe for when they’ll inform you about their decision to remove that specific review from their platform. You may not receive any answer for months, or you may get their message within days. We suggest you regularly keep a check on your Trustpilot business profile for updates.
If you want to ensure the removal of fake reviews on your Trustpilot profile, hire a professional content removal service from a reputable agency.
How to Respond to Fake Reviews on Trustpilot?
How you respond to fake reviews is crucial for businesses. It requires you to have some skills to offer effective responses to fake reviews. You cannot respond to fake reviews the way you respond to a genuine review.
Here are some steps you can follow to respond to Trustpilot fake reviews.
Step 1: You need to identify the reviewer first. To do this, you need to use the ‘Find Reviewer’ tool present in the review itself in your Trustpilot profile. This will help you connect with the reviewer and understand their customer sentiment.
Step 2: Check if you’ve a record with the customer or the email address.
Step 3: Now, it’s time to flag the review if you find that the review has violated Trustpilot’s content policy. We’ll provide you with a detailed guide to flagging Trustpilot reviews in the next section of this blog.
Step 4: If you want to respond to a fake review before flagging it, you must be professional and polite. You must not make the situation worse.
Step 5: Though you identify a review as fake, you must thank the reviewer for taking the time to leave a review. Politely mention that you’ve no such record of selling a product or service to them, and you can’t identify them as a customer.
Step 6: You can also provide an email address or any other contact information to privately discuss the issue with the reviewer.
Sample Example of Response to a Fake Review on Trustpilot
The following is a sample response to a fake customer review on Trustpilot. You can take reference from it or modify it based on your requirements.
“Thank you for reviewing our business. Unfortunately, we have no record of anyone under your name ever purchasing our products or services or being a client of our company in the past.
We always take genuine customer reviews seriously and are strictly committed to resolving any concerns faced by our valuable clients. If you’d like to discuss your concern further, please feel free to reach out to us (your email ID/phone number) and provide proof or reference of your purchase from our brand. Kind regards, (your company name).”
FAQs
Yes, Trustpilot can detect fake reviews on its platform. It uses AI and appoints human moderators to detect fake reviews on its platform. Apart from this, the platform utilizes community reporting for the same purpose. Trustpilot continuously updates the platform to stay ahead of new fake review generation tactics. Through behavioral analysis and Natural Language Processing (NLP), AI identifies the fake review patterns on Trustpilot and removes them.
Trustpilot asks for more information after someone submits a new review for a company. It asks the reviewers to share the reference number of their purchase to identify whether it’s a valid review or not. They try to identify a reviewer’s specific buying experience with a business.
It also helps the business respond to the review specifically and improve its service based on its customers’ feedback. Additionally, Trustpilot requests a reference number from the reviewer to increase the authenticity and credibility of the reviews. This process makes it easier for Trustpilot moderators to verify that the reviews are based on genuine interactions.
No, a company cannot pay a reviewer for sharing their honest feedback about a business on Trustpilot. Paying for reviews violates Trustpilot’s terms and policies, as it’s considered unethical and fraudulent. The platform is designed for customers to share their honest feedback after purchasing any product or reviewing a business. It strictly discourages paid and manipulated customer reviews that can erode other potential customers’ trust.
It’s not a mandatory practice! But hiring a reputable online review management agency and seeking their professional guidance can help you effectively deal with fake reviews on Trustpilot. The professional team will help you identify the fake reviews on Trustpilot to prevent reputational damage. Effective review management is a skill that a professional has
If you prioritize Trustpilot as your primary review site and want to manage the reviews received on this platform, you can consider hiring a renowned agency.
Conclusion
Do you want to prioritize Trustpilot as your primary review platform? If yes, you’re making a great choice. Trustpilot is one of the most popular online review platforms that can help build a strong reputation for your company if you successfully drive genuine customer reviews.
But Trustpilot has some drawbacks as well – the existence of fake reviews on the platform. But how to do it? Fake Trustpilot reviews adversely impact your company’s reputation by manipulating public perception. If you want to effectively identify fake reviews on your Trustpilot review page and deal with them, you require proper skills and constant efforts to implement impactful strategies.
We hope that our proven tips and tricks will help you spot fake customer reviews on your Trustpilot review page. You can make the required modifications to our strategies as per your needs regarding effective fake review management on Trustpilot. After exploring our blog, if the strategies still seem challenging to you, you can hire a premier online reputation management agency to deal with fake reviews on Trustpilot and build a solid reputation.
