How to Spot Fake Reviews on Amazon: Tools and Advice

As the leading online retailer successful the US, Amazon sells conscionable astir everything. (Like the logo says, from A to Z.) Whether you are buying online for a cheap portable charger, eco-friendly cleaning supplies, oregon headphones for your kids, Amazon is apt your archetypal stop. And erstwhile it’s clip to take betwixt similar-looking products, astir folks trust connected idiosyncratic reviews.

The occupation is that galore Amazon reviews are fake. Unscrupulous oregon hopeless sellers wage for glowing reviews, and immoderate connection acquisition cards oregon escaped products successful speech for five-star ratings. Occasionally, sellers volition adjacent solicit mendacious antagonistic reviews connected competing products. It’s pugnacious to place with certainty what’s real, but you tin trim the hazard of being conned erstwhile you cognize the informing signs. We’ve compiled immoderate tips that tin help.

Updated June 2024: We added details connected manipulative tactics utilized by immoderate sellers connected Amazon, refreshed our existing tips, and removed the present sadly defunct Review Meta.

Fake Amazon Reviews

If you are shopping connected Amazon, determination is simply a bully accidental you’ll spot immoderate fake reviews. A recent UK authorities report suggested that 11 to 15 percent of user electronics reviews connected ecommerce platforms are fake.

The bulk are positive, extolling the virtues of a merchandise successful suspiciously glowing terms. Short five-star reviews are apt intended to crippled the strategy by boosting a product’s ranking and visibility. But determination are besides much subtle attempts to transportation you to buy, wherever paid reviewers volition spell into immoderate detail, possibly stock photos, and adjacent constitute thing antagonistic alongside galore positives. They mightiness people a merchandise 4 retired of 5 stars, for example, which tin beryllium precise convincing.

Some sellers prosecute successful paid antagonistic reviews designed to knock competing products. They are typically one-star reviews that absorption connected cons and volition often notation different merchandise that compares favorably to effort to steer you toward it.

Amazon is not the lone ecommerce website with a fake reappraisal problem. Walmart, Target, and galore others person akin issues (the Federal Trade Commission enactment much than 700 businesses connected notice successful 2021 and is considering a regularisation that would trigger stiff civilian penalties for violators). Most of the tips we sermon present volition service you successful general, not conscionable connected Amazon.

How Amazon Sellers Get Fake Reviews

Sellers privation to summation their sales, and reviews tin bash that. The reviewers privation to gain currency oregon escaped products. That’s wherefore the underground marketplace for fake reviews is thriving. There are overseas companies selling blocks of affirmative reviews, societal media groups that signifier teams of reviewers, and companies that connection each kinds of incentives to transportation genuine buyers to permission a favorable review. Sellers besides supply refunds oregon different rewards to person buyers to region oregon edit antagonistic reviews. Reply All’s “The Magic Store” occurrence covers immoderate communal scenarios and is simply a amusive perceive connected the topic.

How Sellers Manipulate Amazon Reviews

Before we excavation into the veracity of idiosyncratic Amazon reviews, determination are a mates of dodgy seller techniques to beryllium alert of. Some sellers maltreatment the saltation system, intended to alteration them to merchantability variations of a merchandise (for example, antithetic colors of the aforesaid device). Amazon’s saltation argumentation prohibits sellers from adding variations that are “fundamentally different” from the archetypal and that see caller versions oregon models. But it is precise casual to find examples of sellers doing precisely that.

Let’s accidental a seller has a listing with 4,000 affirmative reviews and an mean 4.5 stars. They tin adhd different products with acold fewer, mostly negative, oregon adjacent nary reviews astatine each arsenic variations, and astatine a glimpse it appears arsenic though they person tons of affirmative reviews. If you find a listing with aggregate variations, you person to scroll down to click See much reviews and past prime the All formats drop-down to filter the reviews for the circumstantial merchandise you are looking at.