How to Spot Fake Trustpilot Reviews and Protect Your Business Reputation

Your presence on Trustpilot is a testament to your business’s reputation. However, what if your profile pages are flooded with fake Trustpilot reviews? They will harm your credibility, and all the effort you’ve put into establishing your online presence will go down the drain. So, how can you deal with this situation? Continue reading to unravel the secrets!

How Can Trustpilot Fake Reviews Ruin Your Brand?

Hurt Your Brand’s Reputation

With over 90% of buyers reading online reviews before making a purchase, imagine what happens if they notice your credibility is built from fraudulence.

Whether you are trying to cultivate a persona online with fake positive reviews or your competitor wants to defame your business by bombarding your Trustpilot profile with unauthentic negative reviews, your business will leave a bad impression on customers’ minds. 

Low Ranking On Search Engines

Whether on Google or Bing, their bots are intelligent enough to detect skeptical feedback about your business on Trustpilot. Even when you receive mostly 5-star ratings, overly positive comments will raise suspicion on these search engines, which potentially blocks the way to the SERP ranking ladder for your business.

Drive Customers Away

Who wants to trust a brand with a suspicious online presence? For one, customers are less likely to focus on low-ranking websites. In addition, once visitors notice shady reviews on your Trustpilot profile, they will not linger any longer.

Even when the fake positive reviews may attract some customers, they will be disappointed to find your products or services fall short of their expectations. Your revenue, therefore, will experience a significant drop.

Legal Issues

Businesses involved in manipulating customer perception with fake reviews can face legal issues, as they may be considered fraud or a form of false advertisement. The aftermath can be devastating, with your credibility completely damaged.

How To Spot Fake Trustpilot Reviews

Read The Reviews Carefully

Are Trustpilot reviews fake or not? The first way to detect a fake review is to trust your gut instinct. Read the review over and over again to see if it sounds more “human” or “AI-generated.” If many comments look familiar with almost the same structure, there is a good chance that they are not written by real users. 

A review with click-bait links or expressing hatred while recommending a competitor’s products is also not 100% reliable. Meanwhile, comments that detail the user experience rather than using vague terms like good, bad, hate, like, etc., might be considered organic.

Check The Time

A review posted before the product’s launch is, of course, a fake one. If a large number of comments, especially overly positive or negative, are posted at nearly the same time or in a short period, you should not trust them. These reviews are likely bought from a fraudulent third party. Scroll down the review site to check the timestamps and see whether they are distributed in a reasonable interval.

Check The Reviewers

The next step is to verify the identity of the reviewers – are they real users or not? Invest in some time to check their profile, like their address or profile picture. 

Those with an avatar may appear more authentic, but this trick is not always true. Take a further step by examining their address. Do many comments come from the same town or city? If yes, they could be your competitor’s attempt to defame you.

Another way is to check their previous feedback, not only on Trustpilot but also on other platforms like Amazon or TripAdvisor. Let’s say their reviews mostly praise or complain about the same product or service. It’s best not to believe what they’re sharing. Users with mixed reviews about multiple companies are more trustworthy. 

Pay Attention To The Language

The language of a review can tell you a lot about its legitimacy. Some special comments are all capitalized, use poor grammar, overuse exclamation points, or swear frequently, which you shouldn’t take seriously.

On the other hand, too technical language is also not something that most reviewers use. It’s hard to consider reviews with industry-specific terms legitimate because average buyers tend to leave concise and easy-to-understand comments. 

There Are No Guaranteed Ways To Spot Fake Reviews!

Let’s face the truth! We aren’t 100% sure that a review is genuine or fake; our tips above only work to some extent. Trustpilot has its own censorship but can’t detect and eliminate all fake reviews on its website.

In fact, Trustpilot itself shared that even some comments with repetitive and simple language are credible. Meanwhile, some detailed reviews are untrustworthy after the website investigated their IP address and behavioral patterns.

Can You Remove Fake Reviews On Trustpilot?

Basically, you can’t delete a fake review yourself, but Trustpilot allows you to report or flag a shady review so that its experts can examine it later. That said, this process doesn’t guarantee the website will remove that comment for you. Worse yet, Trustpilot might punish businesses that abuse this function or make invalid reports, which can decrease your overall rating.

If you still want to try, sign into your Trustpilot account, go to the Review section, navigate to the review you want to remove, and select the Flag icon on the right. Then, you must provide a valid reason for your report before delivering it to the website. The final step is to wait for the verdict from Trustpilot, and there is no solid timeframe for this process.

Boost Your Brand’s Reputation With Organic Positive Reviews!

The good news is that there is a more effective way to deal with fake reviews rather than relying on the website to delete them for you: buy authentic positive Trustpilot reviews from EazyViral to overshadow those fake ones!

These are all organic feedback from real users with genuine experiences of the product or service, ensuring that your business receives organic growth without facing any legal consequences. These positive comments will bury other fake reviews, effectively enhancing your online reputation not only on Trustpilot but also on other social media platforms.