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February 23, 2026
Guest Writer, Bizrate Insights
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In the digital marketplace, consumers constantly rely on third-party reviews to trust whether a product or service is worth the price. Over 99% of American consumers read online reviews before purchasing.
But fraudsters know these stats, too. The result is an increasingly clouded digital environment full of fake accounts—and fake reviews. “Fake reviews not only waste people’s time and money but also pollute the marketplace and divert business away from honest competitors,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan during an announcement of new regulations. A new FTC rule will prohibit the “sale or purchase of fake reviews,” instituting civil penalties.
This has many online sellers scrambling. How can ecommerce companies continue to build trust and customer loyalty through reviews when fake reviews are flooding the marketplace? With a postpurchase, transaction-verified customer reviews capture service that helps you create a trail of “real human -> real order” feedback.
Shopping online can feel like a walk through the Wild West. Is a product all it’s cracked up to be? Are videos, pictures, and reviews really enough to make an informed decision? Not always. With enough fake reviews, customers need to be able to distinguish between genuine and fake third-party reviews.
That’s why an AMC Global study found a “strong preference for verified purchaser reviews. These reviews, submitted by real, verified buyers, carry far more weight than incentivized or promotional reviews, and are easier to determine whether they contain authentic feedback.”
Consumers trusted verified customer reviews at a higher rate. Additionally, the study found that the mere presence of these reviews helped build brand trust and confidence. If a brand is willing to verify reviews, it shows accountability for the product on offer. In fact, verified customer reviews are increasingly becoming the gold standard online. Two-thirds of customers will avoid a brand they see as untrustworthy. Publishing verified reviews helps fix that problem
For Baby Brezza, that meant integrating their pre-purchase survey into their existing buyer journey. This ensures they could harness reviews from current, engaged, and happy customers. “Virtually overnight, our seller ratings improved,” said David Contract, Baby Brezza’s Marketing Team Lead. Its Google Rating moved from 2.5 out of 5 to 4.6 out of 5. “[Bizrate Insights] helped us increase the quantity and quality of reviews.”
If authentic reviews build trust, fake reviews can erode your credibility just as quickly. A fake review is a shortcut to a larger presence online, but like many shortcuts, it requires sacrificing a legitimate, trust-building relationship with your customers, as well as potential legal ramifications.
The minute your shopper suspects a review is fake, the review (and all others) loses all of its confidence-building power. This suspicion kicks in when a review feels staged or even “too perfect,” leading shoppers to look at every product they see from your brand in a new light.
According to research, “fake reviews … lead to diminished satisfaction and trust in the e-commerce platform.” In other words, fake reviews don’t just eliminate trust in one product. Customers start rethinking your entire shopping experience.
Center your reviews on verified human buyers. Verified customer reviews should be the default signal. Ideally, you’ll emphasize recent purchases and show the product in a real-life context (scenarios, photos) that allow consumers to picture themselves purchasing the product as well.
Bizrate collects post-purchase, order-verified feedback from real buyers to handle this naturally, giving shoppers all the clear signals that what they’re reading is from authentic voices.
Products with nothing but five-star reviews can create a sense of skepticism in buyers. The reality is: Most products come with at least a few customer suggestions or shortfalls. What’s more: 5 out of 5-star reviews don’t address those pain-point questions that can unblock a customer’s purchase.
Deprioritize reviews that appear “too perfect.” Instead, seek out verified, recent, purchase-contextualized reviews. Authenticity is more important than a pristine rating.
Bizrate’s pre-purchase/post-delivery prompts capture these purchase-context details (i.e., delivery experience, the specific product purchased). This way, you can showcase the kind of credible nuances that show your reviews are authentic.
A review is only as valuable as it is helpful. If there are incentivized, fake reviews that reduce the perceived credibility of a product, shoppers get frustrated because they know they aren’t helpful. Fewer will therefore move their mouse or finger to tap “add to cart.”
That’s why many people post badges to increase trust. According to one examination of trust badges, “The verified badge increased trusting beliefs; the incentive badge decreased trusting beliefs.” But the effect can backfire, as “verification cues can backfire when perceived as manipulative,” as noted at ScienceDirect.
More reviews do not mean more persuasion, according to one research paper. The quality of reviews is more important to potential customers. Says the study: The “impact of online reviews is constrained by the information acquisition factor, a process through which consumers obtain information to assess product qualities.”
Start from a position of authenticity, not manipulation. There should be plain labels and clear disclosure about who’s posting the reviews. Ideally, your system for incentivizing customers to leave reviews encourages them to talk about specific use cases that are helpful to the end user. Prioritize substance and specificity. For Bizrate, that means post-purchase invitations tied to real orders, ensuring verified, high-quality reviews are the priority.
Shoppers tend to lean on easy cues (star averages / the quality of top reviews) when they break ties in a purchase decision. AI-generated reviews can therefore “trick” shoppers into choosing the wrong product right before they check out.
Mitigating AI-generated reviews was the top priority of recently published FTC rules, categorizing them with other deceptive review practices. AP News highlights how the rule targeting already went into effect in October AI-generated reviews of last year.
Not only are AI-generated reviews against the rules, but they can also lead to honest products getting out-ranked, losing clicks, and more. This may also result in lower PDP (product detail page) sessions and a lower CVR (conversion rate). Buyers feel “steered” toward worse items, resulting in higher returns and increased post-purchase churn.
Anchor a customer’s decision-making on fresh, verified, delivery-confirmed feedback from real people. This way, no amount of noise can drown out the real customers. The more efficient you are at gathering this feedback, the more you’ll “crowd out” fake reviews.
The key? Using services like Bizrate to capture post-delivery feedback (think shipping, fit, and first-use experience) that AI spam doesn’t fabricate at scale with any convincing authenticity. Even better? Bizrate has a 15% response rate, compared to competitors in the mere 3% range.
With tighter FTC rules in place, platforms should combat fake reviews. That’s why top platforms like Google, Trustpilot, and Apple will down-rank listings, remove content, or issue sanctions. This can result in cutting off your most critical traffic at the very top of the funnel.
Amazon instituted new rules to help manage the 125 million customers contributing nearly 1.5 billion reviews and ratings to its stores over the years, including adding more funding to seek out illegitimate reviews and remove them from the site.
If you want your reviews to remain visible on today’s top platforms, you need a zero-tolerance approach to trust for every review. Ensure authentic feedback reaches the places shoppers decide. Bizrate, for example, can provide a clean and compliant review supply backed by purchase verification. It also syndicates verified customer reviews to platforms like Google Seller Ratings, which helps you maintain an active status.
With the FTC cracking down on fake reviews—which is spurring platforms to do the same—the future of reviews is about quality, not quantity. That’s why it’s so essential to capture genuine, post-purchase reviews on products. With a good system for collecting and syndicating these reviews, you can encourage real customers to leave genuine, helpful impressions. The most recent shopper data suggests that’s exactly what other shoppers are looking for.
The BrightLocal survey reveals that customers are wary of AI- generated reviews and any reviews that appear too perfect. Customers will even seek out negative reviews to get the whole angle of a new product. To build trust with customers, there’s only one option: a system for collecting honest, comprehensive, and authentic product reviews.
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