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How to Spot Fake Reviews on Amazon

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As the leading online retailer in the US and the UK, Amazon sells just about everything. (Like the logo says, from A to Z.) Whether you are shopping online for a cheap portable charger , eco-friendly cleaning supplies , or headphones for your kids , Amazon is likely your first stop. And when it’s time to choose between similar-looking products, most folks rely on user reviews.

The trouble is that many Amazon reviews are fake. Unscrupulous or desperate sellers pay for glowing reviews, and some offer gift cards or free products in exchange for five-star ratings. Occasionally, sellers will even solicit false negative reviews on competing products. It’s tough to identify with certainty what’s real, but you can reduce the risk of being conned when you know the warning signs. We’ve compiled some tips that can help.

Updated June 2024: We added details on manipulative tactics used by some sellers on Amazon, refreshed our existing tips, and removed the now sadly defunct Review Meta.

Fake Amazon Reviews

If you are shopping on Amazon , there is a good chance you’ll see some fake reviews. A recent UK government report suggested that 11 to 15 percent of consumer electronics reviews on ecommerce platforms are fake.

The majority are positive, extolling the virtues of a product in suspiciously glowing terms. Short five-star reviews are likely intended to game the system by boosting a product’s ranking and visibility. But there are also more subtle attempts to persuade you to buy, where paid reviewers will go into some detail, maybe share photos, and even write something negative alongside many positives. They might score a product four out of five stars, for example, which can be very convincing.

Some sellers engage in paid negative reviews designed to criticize competing products. They are typically one-star reviews that focus on cons and will often mention another product that compares favorably to try to steer you toward it.

Amazon is not the only ecommerce website with a fake review problem. Walmart, Target, and many others have similar issues (the Federal Trade Commission put more than 700 businesses on notice in 2021 and is considering a rule that would trigger stiff civil penalties for violators ). Most of the tips we discuss here will serve you in general, not just on Amazon.

How Amazon Sellers Get Fake Reviews

Sellers want to increase their sales, and reviews can do that . The reviewers want to earn cash or free products. That’s why the underground market for fake reviews is thriving. There are overseas companies selling blocks of positive reviews , social media groups that organize teams of reviewers, and companies that offer all kinds of incentives to persuade genuine buyers to leave a favorable review. Sellers also provide refunds or other rewards to convince buyers to remove or edit negative reviews. Reply All ’s “ The Magic Store ” episode covers some common scenarios and is a fun listen on the topic.

How Sellers Manipulate Amazon Reviews

Before we dig into the veracity of individual Amazon reviews, there are a couple of dodgy seller techniques to be aware of. Some sellers abuse the variation system, intended to enable them to sell variations of a product (for example, different colors of the same device). Amazon’s variation policy prohibits sellers from adding variations that are “fundamentally different” from the original and that include new versions or models. But it is very easy to find examples of sellers doing exactly that.

Let’s say a seller has a listing with 4,000 positive reviews and an average 4.5 stars. They can add other products with far fewer, mostly negative, or even no reviews at all as variations, and at a glance it appears as though they have lots of positive reviews. If you find a listing with multiple variations, you have to scroll down to click See more reviews and then select the All formats drop-down to filter the reviews for the specific product you are looking at.

The number one SPIDERCASE listed in cell phone holsters is a regular case with screen protector and does not include a holster.

There’s a second advantage for sellers in abusing this system because it can help them win the coveted Best Seller badge and earn a spot on Amazon’s Best Sellers page . The sales totals that decide best-selling items from each listing include all variations, and the Best Seller badge is applied to all variations. This can create a positive feedback loop that boosts visibility for that listing, which boosts sales, and so on.

A quick look in the Best Sellers in Cell Phones & Accessories , for example, reveals countless abuses of this system. Many sellers are listing multiple products, such as cases for different models of phone, as variations under the same listing. I found the same issue, with completely different models under a single listing, in several electronics categories, from Wi-Fi routers to video projectors.

It’s also alarmingly common for sellers to deliberately list under the wrong category. Sticking with Cell Phones & Accessories but drilling down into less-competitive categories, where it requires fewer sales to get the Best Seller badge, like Crossbody & Lanyard Cases or Holsters , at the time of writing, the top products in both those categories appear to be miscategorized cases.

There are no reviews for the iPhone 12 variant listed here, yet the overall listing has 4,465 ratings and a 4.5 star rating.

How to Avoid Fake Reviews

We are not talking about big-ticket items and major brands, where you can easily find legitimate reviews in the media (though counterfeits are a whole other problem ). If we may be so bold, you can find genuine product recommendations and honest reviews here at WIRED.

However, most fake reviews target affordable items from unknown brands that only have reviews on Amazon. While it may not be possible to avoid false reviews, you can reduce their impact on your purchasing decisions.

Start by confirming the product reviewed. As we explained above, some listings have multiple products or switch the product listing to a newer version but still have older reviews attached. If there are multiple products under the listing, you must select the product you are interested in, click See more reviews , and choose it under the All formats drop-down. It's also a good idea to switch the reviews list from Top reviews to Most recent to find out what the latest buyers are saying.

The overwhelming majority of fake positives are five-star reviews, and false negatives tend to be one-star reviews, so you are more likely to find legitimate reviews in the middle. Canny fake reviewers understand that overselling is a problem and may award four stars rather than the full five, but no one is paying for two- or three-star reviews.

These red flags may indicate a fake review campaign:

• A very high percentage of five-star reviews
• Lack of detail in reviews and vague praise
• Generic review titles like “Nice product” or simply “Awesome”
• Mentions of competing products
• Wording similar to other reviews
• Poor grammar and spelling mistakes
• Multiple reviews on specific dates (especially if there are long gaps between them)
• “Customers also bought” section contains unrelated products
• Glowing reviews with one small negative that isn’t a deal-breaker
• Explaining away cons

Nothing here is a foolproof way to spot fakes, because legitimate reviews will sometimes have these elements. But you can always dig deeper.

Find reviews of the product elsewhere. If you can find them, reputable review websites and YouTube videos can be handy for getting a closer look at a product rather than relying on a few images.

Look up the brand online. If the company doesn’t have an official website, take that as a warning sign. See if you can find social media pages for the brand, and see what they and their followers are posting. You may find alternative reviews on social media or evidence of incentives for positive reviews.

If you’re suspicious, click on the reviewer’s name to see their profile. Look at how many reviews they have written and what other products they bought. Amazon also lists an Impact score for reviewers based on people tapping that Helpful button under their reviews.

Again, none of these potential red flags are concrete proof. Some legitimate small businesses don't have a web presence, for example. But several red flags together are reason to be suspicious.

What Is Amazon Doing?

Amazon claims it’s constantly battling the scourge of fake reviews . Search “buy Amazon reviews” on Google to see how tough a job that is. The company says it removes suspicious reviews frequently, and sellers who engage in forbidden practices, such as offering gift cards in return for five-star reviews, are sometimes banned .

Aukey, Choetech, Mpow, and the Sunvalley Group (the parent company for RavPower, Taotronics, and Vava), were all famously kicked off Amazon. This raises an interesting point: Just because a product has fake reviews doesn’t mean it’s a bad product. Fake reviews can simply be about trying to gain an edge over rivals or boost visibility. I can personally vouch for some products from Aukey and RAVPower, though my opinion of the companies engaging in these practices is another story.

The Verified Purchase badge lets you know that the person writing the review bought the product. However, some groups will refund purchases to enable reviewers to get this badge and leave a fake review. Sellers can also buy Helpful votes for fake reviews to boost their visibility. In research for this article, we found review swap schemes, where sellers agree to review each other’s products favorably.

Part of the problem for Amazon is the sheer volume of goods and reviews. As a shopper, your only option is to flag suspected fake reviews for investigation by tapping the Report Abuse link under each review.

Amazon’s Vine Program

Another part of Amazon's strategy is the Vine Program . Amazon handpicks people it identifies as its “most insightful reviewers” and makes them eligible to request free products from thousands of brands in return for honest reviews. Vine reviewers are encouraged to provide unbiased opinions, even if they are negative, so the sellers who participate must be confident in their products. Reviews are clearly labeled as part of the program and tend to be more in-depth, often with photos.

While many Vine reviewers are honest, and the Vine badge may signal higher trustworthiness than a regular review, the program has come in for some criticism. Vine reviewers get products for free, but they are not supposed to be paid or sell or give away those products (though it's unclear how, or even if, this is policed). Participating vendors must also pay Amazon an enrollment fee for each product. Unscrupulous sellers may still try to circumvent the program by offering extra incentives for positive reviews.

Fraud-detecting artificial intelligence is a relatively new weapon in Amazon's fight against fake reviews.  Amazon recently told the BBC  that its AI can investigate suspicious reviews by digging into the reviewer's history, sign-ins, and relationships with other online accounts, including any connected to sellers of the products under review. But AI is a double-edged sword.

As artificial intelligence has muscled into the public consciousness with the arrival of easily accessible AI chatbots , it was inevitable that someone would use them to generate fake reviews . An AI chatbot may not be able to buy or try a product , but it can help a human reviewer create more convincing copy.

Tools Can Help

You may not want to conduct an in-depth investigation every time you need to buy a new potato masher or power strip. That’s understandable, and thankfully there are tools that can help you spot fake reviews.

• Fakespot offers a Chrome extension or mobile app that analyzes review legitimacy and seller history to weed out fake reviews.
• The Review Index tries to identify fake reviews and flag them, but it also offers useful review summaries categorized by specific elements of each product.

We can’t verify the accuracy of these tools, and the ratings and analysis they provide still require some interpretation. Amazon insists its fake review problem is not as bad as these tools suggest. Just be aware that any system designed to spot fake reviews will produce false positives. That said, they can help you analyze unfamiliar brands and products.

You can find more useful advice in our guide on how to shop safely on Amazon . If you do end up buying something that fails to live up to expectations, please leave an honest review to warn those who come after.

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How to Avoid Getting Your Book Banned on Amazon and Manage Amazon Book Reviews Properly

Posted by Stephanie Chandler | Nov 8, 2023 | Blog , Nonfiction Book Marketing | 0

Recognize Verified Book Reviews

The good news is that anyone can write a book review, whether they purchase the book on Amazon or not, provided they have an Amazon account and have spent $50 on the site in the past year. However, keep in mind it’s best to acquire more verified reviews than non-verified.

A verified tag appears next to a review when the reader purchased the book on Amazon in any format—print, Kindle or audiobook. Verified reviews show readers that the feedback is theoretically legitimate and shows Amazon that your book is earning reviews from sales generated on the site.

Avoid Paid and Fake Book Reviews

Of course, the verified reviews system can also be gamed on Amazon. Some unscrupulous product sellers pay reviewers to buy their products and write reviews. This is a major violation of Amazon’s policies.

This paid review practice was highlighted in the publishing community several years ago when an author named John Locke paid for over 300 reviews of his novel. He subsequently wrote an ebook about how he sold one million books, though he failed to mention the fake review practices he was using. This controversy was ultimately beneficial to the author community because it put a spotlight on these practices and prevented authors from making the same mistake, knowingly or unknowingly.

Let me also clarify that paid reviews on Amazon are entirely different from paid editorial reviews from services like Kirkus and Publisher’s Weekly. It is perfectly acceptable to invest in editorial reviews since these are professional assessments of a book and are often published in magazines and on publishing industry websites. You can also feature editorial reviews directly on your Amazon book page. (Do this through your Author Central account.)

Understand Amazon’s Policy on Incentives

One important Amazon guideline indicates that you cannot offer incentive for book reviews. This means that you should never offer readers a bonus chapter, book, coupon, report, or compensation of any kind in exchange for a review. Many authors are unaware of this policy and inadvertently make this mistake, ultimately learning the hard way when their book is banned from the site entirely or Amazon removes the ability to leave reviews on the book.

This is a practice that Amazon claims to police heavily, but as an Amazon shopper, I have received all kinds of coupon and discount offers from product sellers in exchange for a review. I find this incredibly frustrating since authors seem to be penalized for these issues more than the product sellers, but it’s the hard reality. Do yourself a favor and avoid offering incentives of any kind.

Solicit Reviews without Ending Up in the Amazon Doghouse

Amazon’s policies don’t prevent authors from asking for reviews, just offering incentive for them, so there is nothing wrong with asking readers to write a review. In fact, you should get in the habit of asking readers for reviews.

With that said, several authors have shared with me a variety of issues they have experienced when many people attempt to write a review on a book on the same day. One author sent out an email to his list of 500+ subscribers asking his readers to write a review for his book. It’s hard to say how many people responded exactly, perhaps a dozen or more, but it triggered Amazon to quickly disable the ability for anyone to post a review on the book. The author ended up communicating back and forth with Amazon support for several days before they relented and turned back on the review function.

This is frustrating because those of us who maintain an email subscriber list and have done the work to build a rapport with our readers, run the risk of running into this issue as well. Asking for reviews isn’t a violation of any Amazon policy, so you aren’t doing anything wrong when you invite readers to participate. But something in Amazon’s algorithms triggers the review function to be disabled.

Get Legitimate Verified Reviews

Since verified reviews are the primary goal for all of us as authors, it’s important to establish a plan for getting more reviews on Amazon. Some authors incentivize reviewers by selling the Kindle edition of their book for a low price—typically $.99 to $.2.99—for a short period or over the long term. This is a popular strategy during a book launch as well, since it can inspire sales that might not happen at a higher price point.

The goal here is to make it easy to purchase your book while also asking for, and getting, verified book reviews.

Contact Amazon Support for Assistance

If the review functionality on your book is ever disabled, contact Amazon support right away. I find support through Author Central can be faster and easier than KDP support, but either should be able to assist. And if you don’t get the help you need, start over and contact them again. Often a different support agent will take action that a previous agent refused to do.

Keep Generating Reviews

Like it or not, book reviews are essential on Amazon. They show perspective readers a book is worth their investment in money and time, and they show Amazon your book is popular. As authors, we should all have an ongoing goal to grow the number of reviews on our books. For additional tips, download our free report: 50 Ways to Generate Book Reviews .

Like this article? You will love our courses for authors!

Check out the Nonfiction Authors Association Course Academy here.

About The Author

Stephanie Chandler

Stephanie Chandler is the founder and CEO of the Nonfiction Authors Association and the Nonfiction Writers Conference. She is also the author of several books including The Nonfiction Book Marketing and Launch Plan and The Nonfiction Book Publishing Plan . A frequent speaker at business events and on the radio, she has been featured in Entrepreneur, BusinessWeek, Writer's Digest, and Wired magazine. Visit StephanieChandler.com to learn more or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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Let’s Talk About Amazon Reviews: How We Spot the Fakes

Published May 13, 2016

Like a lot of people, we read Amazon reviews as part of our product research. Getting broad feedback on a product can be very useful when we're looking for widespread issues or seeing how a company handles warranty claims. However, as time has gone by, we’ve begun to read user reviews with a far more critical eye. Although many reviews on Amazon are legitimate, more and more sketchy companies are turning to compensated Amazon reviews to inflate star ratings and to drum up purchases.

Have you ever seen some random product for sale that’s from some brand you’ve never heard of, and the company has no website—yet its widget has somehow garnered 15,000 five-star reviews since … last week? We sure have. This situation is likely the result of a compensated-review program. Such compensated reviews—orchestrated by businesses that cater to companies that want more public positive feedback—violate Amazon’s terms of use but are difficult to police. (This arrangement is not to be confused with Amazon’s  Vine program , in which companies provide products to users in exchange for an honest opinion, although those reviews can be problematic in their own way. You can read our thoughts on them below .)

The compensated-review process is simple: Businesses paid to create dummy accounts purchase products from Amazon and write four- and five-star reviews. Buying the product makes it tougher for Amazon to police the reviews, because the reviews are in fact based on verified purchases. The dummy accounts buy and review all sorts of things, and some of the more savvy pay-for-review sites even have their faux reviewers pepper in a few negative reviews of products made and sold by brands that aren’t clients to create a sense of “authenticity.” In fact, for extra cash, a company can pay one of these firms to write negative reviews of a competitor’s product. Wirecutter contributor Brent Butterworth has written about this practice as well.

Super shady, we know. And Amazon has a history of trying hard to deal with offenders  and shut them down . In fact, in April, Amazon sued another round of companies  that are accused of selling fraudulent reviews. But by the time those companies are caught, their clients have already made a bunch of sales, and the fraudulent reviewers will likely pop up again under new names to repeat the process.

Want to know more? Wirecutter headphones editor  Lauren Dragan talks to Marketplace Tech about compensated Amazon reviews and how to tell real crowdsourced opinions from astroturfing.

How to avoid getting scammed

You have a few ways to suss out what may be a fake review. The easiest way is to use Fakespot . This site allows you to paste the link to any Amazon product and receive a score regarding the likelihood of fake reviews.

For example, we ran an analysis on some headphones we found during a recent research sweep for our guide about  cheap in-ear headphones . You can see from the results below that the headphones’ reviews didn’t score so well.

We corresponded with an official spokesperson for Fakespot to get a better idea of where these results come from. He said:

The quick answer is that every analysis does two simultaneous things: we analyze every single review posted and we review each reviewer and every review that reviewer has ever posted on that account. We take all that data and run it through our proprietary engine which grades everything and looks for patterns. The engine adjusts based on the prevailing patterns used by proven fake reviewers and their reviews, so while there is some base criteria, we’re able to use artificial intelligence to keep ahead of the imposters. Every fake reviewer has patterns. And the more data we collect via analyses completed, the more our engine is able to adapt and learn. The secret sauce is not only in the engine but the ability to run the data in the quickest amount of time possible; ensuring swift delivery of an accurate product.

The likelihood of knowing for certain if a review is fake

To get some perspective, we spoke with Bing Liu, a professor in the department of computer science at the  University of Illinois at Chicago , whose focuses include sentiment analysis, opinion mining, and lifelong machine learning. He has written textbooks on the subjects. We wanted to know his opinion on whether it is possible for a program or group of programs to evaluate reviews and correctly determine their validity. Liu’s thoughts:

It is hard to say without knowing their techniques. The problem with this task is that there is often no hard proof that the detection is actually correct unless the author of the actual fake reviews (not made up fake reviews) from a review hosting site confirms it. Of course, it is easier if the company actually hosts reviews (e.g., Amazon or Yelp) because they can analyze the public information that the general public can see and also (more importantly) their internal data which tracks all the activities after a person comes to the website. A lot of unusual behaviors can be detected. Unfortunately, such data is not available to people outside the site.

In other words: Unless you have a way to confirm with the person (or company) writing the review, or you are Amazon, it’s all conjecture. Keep in mind that these analyses are based on Fakespot’s techniques, so we have to take their word for it. We don’t have a way to verify how precise they are. However, you can make educated guesses. And if you’re in a hurry or in need of a second opinion, Fakespot can be a useful tool when you're considering a purchase.

All of that aside, we had a similar opinion when we read the Rxvoit reviews ourselves, and we can tell you a few factors that we use when evaluating customer reviews.

How we spot a phony review

What aspects of the Rxvoit headphones’ reviews felt funny to us? Well, first of all, we noticed that a lot of the positive reviews happened within a few days of each other. That indicates to us that people made a push for reviews to happen on a timeline.

In fact, at the time we did our research sweep, the Rxvoit headphones had a five-star rating and a few hundred reviews posted within a week or two. This, for a company that is very new (as in, it has only one product—these headphones) and one we had never heard of. That's a red flag.

Second, within those reviews, we saw a lot of the same wording, and even similarly staged user photos . It was as though someone said, “Hey, take a picture of a close-up of your hands holding the headphones over a countertop.” While we know that people do post pictures to accompany their reviews, it seemed too coincidental that they were all staged in the same way, all over a span of a few days.

And lastly, we couldn’t find a company website for Rxvoit. While the lack of a Web presence isn’t in itself an indication of a shady manufacturer or a signal to look out for fake reviews, it is worth noting. When your only point of contact for a company is through Amazon, you have no way of accessing customer service directly. This means warranty claims are tough to redeem. It also means it’s tougher for a significant number of people to “just happen” to stumble across a product and decide to purchase it, which makes a sudden spurt of reviews very unlikely.

What does this look like in the wild? Well, here’s an example of reviews that are accused of being fake from the most recent Amazon lawsuit .

Notice how all the reviews appeared within days of one another. They also reference the same key thing: the light on the cable. In fact, two of the three use the exact phrase “how bright the lights on the cable are.” That’s a good indication that something is sketchy. And although we don’t know what product the lawsuit’s example refers to, if the product’s manufacturer was brand-new and had a few hundred of these kinds of reviews within a few days, chances are good that the company paid for them in some way.

The Vine program

The Vine program , and similar methods of eliciting feedback, give away products for free (or sell them at a deep discount) to potential customers vetted (by Amazon in the case of the Vine program) for the helpfulness of their reviews, in exchange for an “honest review.” While these sorts of reviews are far more ethical than paid-for reviews, they can also be a little problematic. Even if the way the review was obtained is disclosed on product pages, several aspects of the purchasing process don’t get considered as part of these programs.

For example, returns and long-term use aren’t part of the evaluation. When you get something for free, you’re less likely to follow up on breakage concerns or customer service issues. Additionally, if the reviewer didn’t actually buy the product, that person doesn't take the purchase and shipping processes into consideration.

But most important, receiving something for free or nearly free can greatly affect one's opinions. You might notice how few of the reviews through Vine and similar programs are negative or even critical. This isn’t a case of reviewers intentionally being dishonest, but rather the result of unconscious positive bias. Not paying for an item can make difficulties with that item seem less irritating.

Additionally, reviewers may give their opinions on items for which they have no expertise or real experience and therefore have no frame of reference about how well something works by comparison. It’s hard to say how good something is if you don’t know what else is out there.

So, just know that you can’t always believe what you see when it comes to five-star reviews. While some overnight successes do exist, often a four-star product with authentic reviews and a proven track record is a better buy. Look beyond the overall star rating and read with a critical eye, and you’ll be in good shape.

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