Highlights. Worldwide, fake reviews cost online consumers $0.12 on the dollar for a total estimated cost of $787.7 billion in 2025.
- Projections indicate fake reviews will cost online consumers worldwide $1.10 trillion in unwanted purchases by 2030.
- 82% of consumers encounter fake reviews at least once over 12 months; 46% of identified* fake reviews are 5 out of 5 stars.
- 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 7.9% of reviews.
- 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.
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%.
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 5% of reviews from its pages and marks an additional 18% as suspicious.
- Trustpilot removed an estimated 3.8 million reviews consumers wrote in 2024, representing 6.1% of all reviews on the platform.
- TripAdvisor removed as many as 3.5 million reviews consumers wrote in 2024 (10% of reviews on the platform).
- Google blocked or removed 170 million reviews worldwide for policy violations (including fakes) in 2023.
- 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 2024.
- In 2020, Yelp removed 16% of reviews from its pages using its proprietary algorithm.
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.
- 42% of consumers would suspect a review to be fake if it seems part of a paid or incentivized agreement.
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”.
- 46% of customers are suspicious of reviews that read like they were generated by AI.
- 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.
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.
- 67% of consumers only check one or two sites for reviews before they decide to use a local business.
- 6% of consumers check five or more (5+) sites before they use a local business for the first time.
- 83% 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
- National Bureau of Economic Research
- World Economic Forum
- Northwestern University, Medill Spiegel Research Center
- Trust Pilot
- TripAdvisor
- Statista, Industry Overview
- Fakespot
- Harvard Business Review
- Yelp
- BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Surveys
- Google, The Keyword