Fake reviews are becoming an increasing problem for UK small businesses. In 2023, the Department for Business & Trade estimated that between 11% to 15% of all reviews for three common product categories (consumer electronics, home and kitchen, sports and outdoor) were fake. Other studies have placed this figure as high as 30%.
Usually, consumers encounter fake reviews on ecommerce sites, such as Amazon or eBay, despite legislation being introduced in April 2025 that made this practice illegal. A tell-tale sign is a high-volume of 5* reviews in a short amount of time which are written in overtly salesy language.
However, many UK small businesses fall victim to fake reviews, whether it’s on Facebook, Tripadvisor, Google or Trustpilot. Often these are negative, accusing the business of failing to uphold basic industry standards or honour deals, but they can also be deliberately misleading or look to discourage consumers from using a business because it looks ‘too good to be true’.
Sometimes the flood of fake reviews can be a scam intended to make the business owner panic into paying someone who claims they can remove the reviews for them.
Fake reviews can have a significant impact on a business’s reputation and sales, and at the very least are disconcerting for business owners, particularly if you’ve just started out. It’s easy to think this might have longstanding ramifications for your business, but as long as you stay calm and don’t do anything rash, everything should blow over.
Here’s our guide to handling fake reviews.
Check it really is a fake review
It might be tempting to dismiss negative reviews as fake, especially if what is said is hurtful, but your first course of action should be to verify the reviews and reviewers.
Here’s a quick checklist of how to verify a review and its reviewer:
- Find out if the account was recently created – while this may indicate that the account is a bot or spam, it could be that someone was moved to create an account purely to review your business
- Check the reviewer’s history – do they write a high-volume of negative reviews in a short space of time?
- Does the review correlate with events? (In other words, do you or your staff remember them visiting your shop/café and complaining? Did you have a negative experience recently with a customer?)
- Check if the review might be meant for someone else – you might share a similar name with another business.
If the review is genuine, you should consider addressing the complaint. While you might disagree with what the reviewer said, and may not feel the need to act on their comments, it’s important to show a willingness to listen to feedback.
Thank them for their review, and indicate that you’ll bear this in mind going forwards. If you would like to make things right, provide a work email address or telephone number to continue the conversation privately.
For more information about handling and responding to complaints, read our article on handling customer complaints.
If the review is fake, here’s what you need to do next.
Respond to the review
Some review sites such as Trustpilot show what percentage of reviews businesses reply to. This includes written responses as well as those flagged as in breach of guidelines (such as being fake).
It’s important to respond as quickly as possible to all reviews, whether they’re positive or negative, and in the case of fake reviews you should calmly outline how you believe the review is not genuine.
Here are some tips for your response to the fake review:
- Use calm, neutral language – getting into an argument isn’t a good look for a business owner.
- Acknowledge their review politely then methodically outline why you believe that the review is not genuine – it could be that they have reviewed the wrong business, or that you have no evidence of them having been a customer of yours.
- Invite the reviewer to contact you privately – an email address is best so you can keep a written record of the conversation.
Report the review
Google, Trustpilot and Facebook allow businesses to flag reviews as suspicious and disingenuous. You will need to demonstrate that the review breaches the site’s terms of service, which will often include hate speech, illegal content, spam or being demonstrably fake. Familiarise yourself with these before you report a review.
You should document all fake reviews, including screenshots of the review, your reply, attempts at customer verification, and any further correspondence between you and the reviewer.
If you have received any emails from someone claiming to be able to remove negative reviews for you, do not engage with them. Instead, take a screenshot of the email and use this as evidence in your report to the site.
Don’t report a review just because you disagree with it. This will not only waste your time, it may negatively impact your chances of successfully reporting fake reviews in the future.
Take proactive steps
One of the best defences small businesses have against fake reviews is building a foundation of legitimate reviews.
While you can’t pay for reviews or offer any incentives for someone to write reviews, you can encourage people to review your business after having used your services. This could be an automated email after a purchase or a QR code on the bill asking how you did, although bear in mind that negativity bias means people are more likely to leave a review after having had a bad experience than a positive one.
You could also consider making an announcement on social media that you have been hit by negative reviews. Not only does this acknowledge the issue for anyone who happens to come across your review page, it might prompt your loyal customers into leaving a review they’ve put off doing for a while.
If you’re able to see the funny side of things, you could look to incorporate the fake reviews into your marketing. Just be aware that you will need to anonymise the user(s), and that not everyone will share your sense of humour.
How to deal with spam comments on social media posts
Spam social media comments can function in the same way as fake reviews, aiming to lower consumers’ confidence in a business. Luckily, they’re far easier to deal with than fake reviews.
If you want to remove a comment, you can either hide it from view or delete it, with the option to block the user and any future profiles they may create as well.
Make sure to hide or remove comments on social media posts as quickly as possible. Although social media platforms propel posts with comments higher up the algorithm, if your post has lots of bot comments it could put off prospective customers.
Final thoughts
Handling fake reviews is an important part of your online marketing. It’s important to stay calm if you are targeted by fake reviews and document your efforts to show they are spam and fabricated. If you are contacted by anyone who offers to remove the reviews, document the exchange and include this in your report to the review site.
