Fake-Review Signals by US City: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami Compared

We compared manipulation scores for the biggest US city samples in Revdict's catalog, and the cities look more alike than different. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami all average between 18 and 29 on our 0 to 100 scale, but the share of places flagged ranges from 2% in Chicago to 22% in Los Angeles. The data is as of October 2026.

#What did we measure?

We took every place in the Revdict catalog with a completed analysis, 729 as of October 2026, and kept the 460 in the United States. Six city groupings have at least 19 places each. For every group we computed the average score, the median review count, and the share of places whose verdict was anything other than clean (suspicious, solicitation campaign, or likely manipulated).

Read the numbers with care. The catalog is not a random sample of Google Maps. People submit places they are curious about, so the sample leans toward restaurants, and a city's figures describe the places we happened to analyze there, not the city. A score describes patterns in review records. It is not a finding that anyone did anything wrong, and our explainer on the scoring model covers what it can and cannot tell you.

#How do the big US cities compare?

Chicago is the cleanest sample, Los Angeles the most flagged, and the average score barely separates them.

Of the 50 Chicago places, 49 came back clean and one was suspicious. In Los Angeles, 7 of 32 carried a flag. Those are small counts, so a handful of places moves the percentage a lot. One Chicago place going the other way would take its figure from 2% to 4%.

You can browse the underlying reports in the catalog: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and Brooklyn each have their own index.

#Why do Miami scores run higher but get flagged less?

Miami and Miami Beach average 26.5 and 28.6, about eight to ten points above the other cities, yet only 12.5% and 5.3% of their places are flagged. Both facts can be true because a verdict needs more than a moderate score.

The Miami samples have the highest review volumes in the table, with a median above 10,000 reviews per place, and the highest average ratings, 4.68 and 4.72. Tourist-heavy places collect a lot of reviews from people who write one and never return. Our most common signal, the low-activity account, counts exactly those reviewers, so it lifts the score without the stronger signals that turn it into a verdict. That is our reading of the pattern, not something the data proves, and a larger Miami sample could change the picture.

#Is New York different from Brooklyn?

Barely. New York (14.8% flagged, average 19.3) and Brooklyn (15.2%, average 18.4) are within noise of each other, even though Brooklyn's median review count is about 40% lower. The two boroughs share a restaurant scene, and the places we analyzed there are mostly well-known spots with thousands of reviews each.

The median score tells a more interesting story in New York: 10, against an average of 19.3. Most New York places score low, and a minority of high scorers pull the average up. Chicago has the reverse shape, a median of 23 and almost no outliers. A city whose average looks normal can still hide a few places worth a second look.

#Does city size or review volume matter more?

Volume appears to matter more than geography. Every city in the table has a median review count above 3,000, and in this catalog places with 3,000 or more reviews are flagged far less often than places with fewer than 200. Our analysis of ratings and review counts shows the same effect across all 680 places it examined, and the country comparison found that small review bases explain most of the gap between countries.

A coordinated batch of 40 five-star reviews moves a 300-review rating by a visible amount and a 6,000-review rating by almost nothing. That is why large, busy places in big cities look clean in aggregate: there is more honest noise to hide in, and more cost to the person trying to shift the rating.

#What can a city sample not tell us?

Quite a lot. Our New York group is four times the size of any other, so its figures are the most stable and the others are indicative at best. All six groups are dominated by restaurants, so the table says little about plumbers, dentists or hotels, whose reviews behave differently. And we only see places somebody chose to submit, which probably skews toward busy, well-known venues with plenty of reviews to examine.

A fairer comparison would sample the same number of places in each city at random and include every business type. We have not done that yet. When the catalog is large enough to support it, we will publish the comparison again with the larger sample and note how the conclusions moved.

#What should you take from this?

Do not pick a restaurant by its zip code. The city a place sits in tells you little about whether its reviews are reliable, and the gap between our cleanest and most flagged samples is a few places, not a structural difference.

• Look at the individual place. A place with a few hundred reviews and a 4.9 deserves more scrutiny than one with 8,000 reviews and a 4.4, in any city.
• Sort by newest and look for a cluster of near-identical praise on a few dates.
• Paste the Google Maps link into our free analyzer to see the score and the evidence for a specific place.

#Frequently asked questions

#Which US city has the most fake reviews?

We cannot say. In our October 2026 sample Los Angeles had the highest flagged share (21.9% of 32 places), but a sample that small cannot rank cities. Review manipulation follows individual businesses, not city limits.

#Why is Chicago so clean in this data?

Of 50 Chicago places analyzed, 49 came back clean. The sample is mostly large, high-volume restaurants, and big review counts are harder to move. It describes the places we analyzed, not all of Chicago.

#Does a high average score mean a city has fake reviews?

No. Miami averages higher than New York or Chicago but has a lower flagged share than New York. The average mixes mild signals, such as one-time reviewers, with serious ones. The verdict is a better guide than the average.