Fake Review Data & Trends

Trends

UK Regulator Opens Five Fake-Review Investigations: What They Cover

The CMA opened five consumer-law investigations into fake and misleading reviews on 27 March 2026. Only some involve fabricated reviews; the rest are about incentives, insiders and filtered ratings.

Andrew Keymaster · Oct 25, 2026 · 6 min

Trends

Fake-Review Signals Across 825 Places: Our Data, October 2026

As of October 2026, 570 of 825 analyzed Google Maps places come back Clean and 28 reach Likely Manipulated. Here is how the verdict split, score distribution and signals changed since our July release.

Andrew Keymaster · Oct 19, 2026 · 5 min

Trends

Which Kinds of Restaurants Get Flagged Most? Burgers, Pizza, Breakfast and More

Across 309 labeled restaurants in Revdict's catalog, burger, fast-food and pizza places were flagged 5.4% of the time against 20.6% for other restaurant types. Smaller groups like breakfast and Brazilian spots run higher, with caveats.

Andrew Keymaster · Oct 12, 2026 · 5 min

Trends

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

We compared manipulation scores across the biggest US city samples in Revdict's catalog. The averages are close, but the share of flagged places runs from 2% in Chicago to 22% in Los Angeles. Here is what the October 2026 data does and does not show.

Andrew Keymaster · Oct 10, 2026 · 5 min

Trends

Do Near-Perfect Google Ratings Score Worse? What 680 Places Show

We grouped 680 analyzed Google Maps places by star rating and review count. Places rated 5.0 averaged 49.2 on our manipulation score, against 19.8 for places rated 4.0 to 4.4. Here is the full breakdown, as of October 2026.

Andrew Keymaster · Oct 3, 2026 · 5 min

Trends

Do Fake-Review Signals Vary by Country? What Our Data Shows

We compared average manipulation scores across the 659 places in our catalog, grouped by country. The US and UK track close together; several other markets run higher, but mostly because the businesses are smaller, not because the country is different.

Andrew Keymaster · Sep 27, 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 · 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

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

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