Fake reviews and EU rules: what you can and can't do

In the EU it's illegal to write or commission fake reviews, and to claim your reviews come from real customers if you don't check. You can ask every customer for a review, show all of them and moderate under rules you publish. Here's where the line is, in practical terms, for anyone who shows reviews on their website or collects them on Google.

What the law says

The rules come from Directive (EU) 2019/2161, known as the Omnibus Directive, which amended the EU directive on unfair commercial practices. Member states have had to apply it since May 28, 2022. Romania adopted it through Emergency Ordinance No. 58/2022.

The directive added two new items to the list of practices banned in all circumstances:

• point 23b: stating that reviews of a product come from consumers who actually used or bought it, without taking reasonable and proportionate steps to check that they do;
• point 23c: submitting, or getting someone else to submit, false reviews or endorsements as if they came from consumers, and misrepresenting consumer reviews or endorsements, including on social media, to promote products.

On top of that, if you give access to reviews, whether and how you make sure published reviews come from people who actually used or bought the product counts as material information for consumers.

What you can't do

The directive's text and the European Commission's guidance on applying it make it clear that you can't:

• buy reviews or likes, whether through an agency or from people you know;
• have employees, relatives or friends write reviews as if they were customers;
• publish only the positive reviews and delete the negative ones;
• pay someone to test your product and write about it without disclosing that the review is sponsored;
• put a "verified customer" badge next to reviews you haven't verified in any way.

Google's rules are even stricter. Its policy for Maps content bans any payment, discount or free product in exchange for a review, asking only happy customers for reviews, discouraging negative reviews, and reviews written with a conflict of interest, such as by current or former employees.

What you can do (and should)

• Ask every customer for a review, with the same wording, after each order or visit. We covered how to ask in practice in our article on Google reviews.
• Verify reviews. The Commission's guidance gives examples such as asking for an order or booking number, requiring reviewers to register, or verifying by email. Verification shouldn't be so hard that it puts real customers off.
• Moderate under written rules: remove abuse, spam and other people's personal data, the same way for good and bad reviews.
• Reply to reviews, including the negative ones, briefly and without arguing.

What to put next to reviews on your website

If you show reviews on your site, add a few lines on how you collect them. For example:

The Commission's guidance notes that how the average rating is calculated is also material information. The text above answers everything: where reviews come from, how they're checked, whether you publish all of them and how the average is worked out.

How often businesses get it wrong

In January 2022, the European Commission and national consumer protection authorities published the results of a check of 223 major websites: online shops, marketplaces, booking sites, comparison sites. The findings:

• for 144 of them, authorities couldn't confirm the business was doing enough to make sure reviews were genuine;
• 104 didn't say how reviews were collected and processed;
• 176 didn't say whether paid reviews were banned or, if not, how they were flagged;
• at least 55% of the sites were likely breaking the directive.

And those were big sites with legal departments. The good news for a small business is that the rules are easy to follow: ask everyone, buy nothing, don't delete what you don't like, and say on your site how you work.

If you'd like help collecting reviews or with your website copy, you'll find us on our marketing services page.