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Fake Review Forensics

Guides and analysis on fake reviews, review manipulation patterns, and reputation forensics. Updated when the data is.

Featured · Guides

How to Check a Contractor's Reviews Before You Hire Them

Check the review timeline before you hire a contractor, not just the star average. Warning signs include a cluster of five-star reviews posted in the same day or two, reviewer accounts with no other history, and near-identical praise wording across multiple reviews. These are the same patterns the FTC found in its May 2026 case against a home-repair listings operation that invented more than 15,000 fake local business profiles. A free analyzer can score a contractor's full review history against these patterns in seconds.

Andrew Keymaster · Sep 7, 2026 · 6 min read

Education

The Low-Activity Account Signal: Our Most Common Fake-Review Flag, Explained

Low-activity reviewer accounts, profiles with no other reviews, photos, or history, make up 91% of everything Revdict flags. Here is why the signal is so common, why it is not proof by itself, and how it combines with other patterns to move a verdict.

Andrew Keymaster · Sep 4, 2026 · 6 min

What Is a 'Review Drive'? Manipulation Signal Explained — Revdict

Education

What Is a 'Review Drive'? The Manipulation Pattern Where the Customers Are Real

Our scoring model flags a distinct pattern separate from fake or bought reviews: staff prompting real customers, in a compressed burst, to leave five-star reviews naming a specific employee. Here's how it's detected, how often it shows up, and why Google banned the practice in April 2026.

Andrew Keymaster · Aug 31, 2026 · 6 min

Guides

Can a Business Sue You for a Negative Google Review?

An Ohio manufacturer's August 2026 defamation suit over a one-star Google review raises a real question for anyone who leaves honest feedback: what actually counts as defamation, and does your state's anti-SLAPP law protect you?

Andrew Keymaster · Aug 29, 2026 · 7 min

Guides

What to Do If Someone Threatens Fake Negative Reviews Unless You Pay

A scam is hitting small businesses nationwide: a stranger threatens to flood your Google listing with fake negative reviews unless you pay, then often keeps demanding money even after you do. Here's exactly what to document and where to report it, to Google and separately to federal law enforcement.

Andrew Keymaster · Aug 24, 2026 · 6 min

Trends

Amazon and BBB Won a Permanent Injunction Against a Fake-Review Broker

A King County court permanently barred a review-selling operation from serving Amazon and the Better Business Bureau, in the first joint fake-review suit the two have filed together. The broker economy the case describes works the same way on Google Maps.

Andrew Keymaster · Aug 22, 2026 · 5 min

Comparisons

Free Fake-Review Checkers Compared: What Each One Actually Covers

No single free tool checks fake reviews everywhere — Revdict analyzes Google Maps businesses, ReviewMeta analyzes Amazon products, and Fakespot, once the best-known name in the category, shut down for good in July 2025. Here's what each tool actually covers, what it can't tell you, and which one fits the review you're looking at.

Andrew Keymaster · Aug 16, 2026 · 5 min

Guides

Is Review Gating Illegal? What the FTC and Google's 2026 Rules Actually Ban

Review gating — asking only your happiest customers for a review — sits closer to illegal than most businesses realize. The FTC's Consumer Review Rule bans the sentiment-based incentives and suppression that most gating setups rely on, and Google's April 2026 policy update closed the rest of the gap. Here's exactly what's banned and what's still allowed.

Andrew Keymaster · Aug 13, 2026 · 6 min

Trends

AI-Generated Reviews Are Here: How Detection Is Changing

Google is deploying its Gemini models to catch review fraud and scam patterns before they publish, and blocked 292 million policy-violating reviews in 2025. But AI-written review text breaks the one detection method that's easiest to explain — near-duplicate wording — which is why timing and account patterns matter more than ever.

Andrew Keymaster · Aug 10, 2026 · 4 min

Education

The Economics of Review Farms: What Review-Buying Actually Costs

Fake five-star reviews sell for as little as $9 each; fake negative reviews aimed at a competitor cost more. Here's what the review-manipulation market actually charges, who profits, and what a business risks under the FTC's $53,088-per-violation rule.

Andrew Keymaster · Aug 8, 2026 · 5 min

Education

Review Bursts: The Clearest Fake-Review Signal, Explained

A review burst is a sudden spike of five-star reviews arriving far faster than a business's normal pace — and it's the single strongest signal in our fake-review model. Here's what counts as a burst, why timing matters more than content, and what real burst patterns look like in our data.

Andrew Keymaster · Aug 6, 2026 · 6 min

Guides

My Business Got Hit by Fake 1-Star Reviews: An Owner's Playbook

A sudden wave of fake 1-star reviews is a review-burst attack, not normal customer feedback drift. Here's the step-by-step response: document the pattern, report through the right channel, and know when to escalate to the FTC.

Andrew Keymaster · Aug 2, 2026 · 6 min

Trends

The FTC's Fake-Review Rule: What It Bans and the Fines So Far

The FTC's Consumer Review Rule bans buying fake reviews, insider reviews, and suppressing negative ones, with penalties up to $53,088 per violation. Since December 2025's warning letters, two cases have closed with real payments — here's what's banned and what enforcement has actually produced as of August 2026.

Andrew Keymaster · Jul 31, 2026 · 7 min

Comparisons

Google vs. Yelp vs. Tripadvisor: Who Fights Fake Reviews Best?

Google, Yelp, and Tripadvisor all fight fake reviews, but with different tools and different tolerance for false positives: Google leans on automated pre-publication screening at massive scale, Yelp runs manual sting operations and public "Consumer Alerts," and Tripadvisor employs a large moderation staff and is notoriously strict about removal.

Andrew Keymaster · Jul 27, 2026 · 5 min

Guides

How to Report a Fake Google Review (and What Actually Happens)

Reporting a fake Google review takes under a minute, but removal isn't automatic and nobody tells you the outcome. Here are the exact taps on every surface — Maps app, Maps web, Search, Business Profile — what happens inside Google's review queue afterwards, and what to do when one report clearly isn't enough.

Andrew Keymaster · Jul 25, 2026 · 6 min

Trends

What Share of Places Have Manipulated Reviews? Our Data, July 2026

As of July 2026, 33.5% of the 242 Google Maps places we've analyzed show signs of review manipulation, and 12.4% score high enough to be called Likely Manipulated. Here's the full breakdown by verdict, signal type, and what's driving it.

Andrew Keymaster · Jul 23, 2026 · 4 min

Education

How Our Fake-Review Score Works (and What It Can't Tell You)

Our 0-100 manipulation score combines review-burst detection, reviewer-account age and activity, duplicate-text matching, and rating-text consistency into a single number. Here's what goes into it, and the real limits of what any automated score can prove.

Andrew Keymaster · Jul 21, 2026 · 6 min

Guides

How to Spot Fake Google Reviews: 7 Signals With Real Examples

Fake Google reviews leave patterns a normal reader can catch: review bursts, thin reviewer histories, duplicate phrasing, and rating-text mismatches. Here are seven signals to check before you trust a listing, with real analyzed examples.

Andrew Keymaster · Jul 19, 2026 · 6 min