Fake Review Statistics

Last updated: September 26, 2024

Highlights. Worldwide, fake reviews cost online consumers $0.12 on the dollar for a total cost of $759.6 billion in 2024.

  • Projections indicate fake reviews will cost online consumers worldwide $1.23 trillion in unwanted purchases by 2030.
  • An average of 30% of online reviews are considered fake or ungenuine.
  • On major websites, up to 47% of reviews are identified as suspicious; these sites remove an average of 8.42% of reviews.
  • 82% of consumers encounter fake reviews at least once over 12 months; 46% of identified* fake reviews are 5 out of 5 stars.
  • The number of fake reviews grows 12.1% faster than the number of all online reviews.

*This datum comes from self-reporting sources that use 5-star rating systems.

Pie Chart: Removed Fake Online Reviews by Star Rating, due to rounding, percentages do not total 100, including 5 stars (46% of fake reviews removed), 1 star (29% of fakes removed), and 2 thorugh 4 stars (8% of fakes) according to Statista

Fake Review Impact Statistics

Fake reviews boost product sales 12.5% in the first two (2) weeks.

  • In a 5-star system, one (1) additional star can boost demand for a product by 38%.
  • One (1) additional star can increase a restaurant’s revenue up to 9%.
  • The U.S. Federal Trade Commission determined that a business purchasing fake reviews can generate a 1,900% return on investment.
  • Negative fake reviews reduce business 25%.

Bar Graph: Products with the Most Fake Reviews by share of total category views including supplements (64% fake reviews), beauty (63% fakes), electronics (61%), and athletic shoes (59%) according to Statista

Fake Review Removal Statistics

Major e-commerce sites and review aggregators invest in technology and manpower to identify and remove fake reviews.

  • Yelp removes an average of 9% of reviews from its pages and marks an additional 17% as suspicious.
  • Trustpilot removed approximately 3.28 million reviews consumers wrote in 2023 (representing 6.07% of all reviews on the platform).
  • TripAdvisor removed approximately 2.86 million reviews consumers wrote in 2023 (8.8% of reviews on the platform).
  • Google blocked or removed 170 million reviews worldwide for policy violations (including fakes).
  • In one year, Amazon spent over $500 million and hired 8,000 employees to combat fake reviews.
  • Up to 47% of Amazon reviews were considered fake or ungenuine in June 2020; the same entity estimated that less than 20% of 19 million Amazon product reviews were fake in May 2024.
  • In 2020, Yelp removed 16% of reviews from its pages using its proprietary algorithm.

Grouped Bar Graph: Fake Reviews Removed from Selected Sites by share of total reviews including reviews from TrustPilot, Yelp, and Trip Advisor from 2022 (6% of TrustPilot reviews, 4% of Yelp reviews, and 4% of Trip Advisor reviews), 2023 (6% TrustPilot, 4% Yelp, and 9% Trip Advisor), and 2024 (6% TP, 9% Yelp, 10% TA) according to Statista, Trip Advisor, Trust Pilot, and Yelp

Fake Review Market Statistics

Researchers working in conjunction with the Morrison Center for Marketing Analytics have identified a public market for fake reviews in which retailers purchase positive online reviews.

  • One company investing $250,000 in fake reviews generated sales exceeding $5 million.
  • 4.5 million retailers purchased fake reviews via Facebook groups during the height of the COVID pandemic (when monthly e-commerce revenue spiked up to 44.4% year-over-year).
  • Sellers soliciting fake reviews from seller reputation escalation (SRE) services face penalties (such as account bans) 25% of the time.
  • In a typical SRE market, the average seller solicits fake reviews 10 times per month.

Grouped Bar Graph: How Sellers Solicit & Incentivize Reviews by share of consumers who received each type of request over a 12-month period from 2024 and 2023 including discount (45% of consumers received this type of request in 2024 while 26% of consumers did in 2023), free gift or services (33% in 2024 and 18% in 2023), prize drawing entry (25% in 2024, 17% in 2023), loyalty points (24% and 15%) and cash (23% and 12%) according to BrightLocal

Fake Review Consumer Statistics

Worldwide, 65% of consumers suspect companies aren’t proactively addressing fake information, including online reviews.

  • The average consumer wastes $125 a year purchasing products based on fake reviews.
  • 85% of consumers suspect reviews are fake “sometimes or often”.
  • 80% of consumers have received a review request for a purchased item.
  • 67% of consumers are concerned about review fraud.
  • 65% of consumers tend to write a more positive review for a business that specifically requested it.

Bar Graph: How Many Consumers Encounter Fake Reviews, including the share of All consumers (82%), 18- to 34-year-olds (92%), 35- to 54-year-olds (74%) and consumers aged 55+ (59%) according to BrightLocal

Online Review Statistics

Consumers are highly likely to seek out online reviews, which in turn influence their purchasing decisions.

  • Online reviews influenced $3.8 trillion in revenue worldwide in 2021.
  • Consumers are 270% more likely to purchase a product that has five (5) reviews compared to a product that has zero (0) reviews.
  • 59% of consumers only check one or two sites for reviews before they decide to use a local business.
  • 7% of consumers check five or more (5+) sites before they use a local business for the first time.
  • 81% of consumers are most likely to start their search for reviews with Google.

These data and insights were compiled by the Capital One Shopping team based on publicly available data.

Sources

  1. National Bureau of Economic Research
  2. World Economic Forum
  3. Northwestern University, Medill Spiegel Research Center
  4. Trust Pilot
  5. TripAdvisor
  6. Statista, Industry Overview
  7. Fakespot
  8. Harvard Business Review
  9. Yelp
  10. BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Surveys
  11. Google, The Keyword