Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI
      Moz Local

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Research & Trends
    3. White Hat / Black Hat SEO
    4. How does google know if rich snippet reviews are fake?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    How does google know if rich snippet reviews are fake?

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO
    4
    4
    3075
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • wlingke
      wlingke last edited by

      According to: https://developers.google.com/structured-data/rich-snippets/reviews - all someone has to do is add in some html code and write the review. How does google do any validation on whether these reviews are legitimate or not?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • MiriamEllis
        MiriamEllis Subject Expert last edited by

        Hi Lingke!

        Good feedback from everyone here. I just wanted to be sure to throw into the mix that fact that John Mueller specifically stated last December that Google does not want markup on on-site testimonials:

        https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/wY1vF2RRos4/discussion

        More on this here:

        http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local/26385-say-what-google-says-dont-add-review-markup-your-customer-reviews.html

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
        • rjonesx. 0
          rjonesx. 0 last edited by

          My guess is that Google is getting better and better at detecting false review data. There is a lot of academic research around this area, particularly in accounting fraud, where patterns created by humans to appear random do a poor job of actually representing standard data. A popular example of this is called Benford's Law where leading digits of certain data sets (like electricity bills) are more likely to be lower digits (starting with the number 1, for example). When people try and fake the data, they don't tend to follow this law.

          Google has huge data sets on validated reviews and known-fraudulent reviews. If there is a way to detect unbelievable reviews, you got to believe Google is working on it.

          That being said, this is probably the best reason not to start posting fake reviews... it's illegal.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • CleverPhD
            CleverPhD last edited by

            The answer here is "no" Google has no idea if they are fake or not.  Google may be able to tell if the reviews are duplicated on other sites (as it can do with other content) and so could in theory not rank the pages with the duplicate content/reviews. A common recommendation we give to a small business is to not copy reviews from other sites for this reason, and usually reprinting reviews are a violation of the TOS of the review site.   I would speculate that Google could look at the overall reputation/authority of a site to see if they display snippets, but that it really only a guess on my part.

            The only thing that Google can validate, to a degree, are the reviews that come through Google+ type profiles.  They can do things like see if a profile was created, gave a single positive review and then the user never logs in again. That would obviously be a suspect pattern and there are for sure other examples. I have seen Google sometimes do things like look at a business, see if it has a validated Google Local profile and if they do, Google will pull in reviews from review sites and display them in the Google local cards.  There is a bit of validation there as the business has taken the time to verify itself in Google Local.

            That said, I would say many users can tell a fake review a mile away.  We bring focus groups onto a review site I help with and they can tell when things look "off".   I would not waste my time with fake ones for that reason alone.

            Also, if you do have legitimate reviews, you do need to make sure the markup is correct if you want the snippets to show in the SERPs.  If your markup is not valid the snippets will not show up. The Rich Snippets testing tool can help with this

            https://developers.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            Browse Questions

            Explore more categories

            • Moz Tools

              Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

            • SEO Tactics

              Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

            • Community

              Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

            • Digital Marketing

              Chat about tactics outside of SEO

            • Research & Trends

              Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

            • Support

              Connect on product support and feature requests.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • 1kB_man_YWH

              Does Google only show high rankings to webmasters?

              google seo

              Hello! I'm using Google Chrome browser. On the browser logged in with the Google Web Master account, the keyword ranking of my site is ranked on pages 1 to 2. However, in the case of the Google Secret tab and other browsers that have not logged in to the Google Web Master account, the keyword ranking of my site is only 10 pages. Which one is more reliable?
              Does it only show higher rankings to webmasters?
              Or will you soon be able to see the high ranking that has only been seen by webmasters in other browsers? I desperately need your help. Thank you. I look forward to your kind cooperation.

              White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 1kB_man_YWH
              1
            • Ericrodrigo

              How to fix site breadcrumbs on mobile google search

              For past one month, I have been doing some research on how to fix this issue on my website but all my efforts didn't work out I really need help on this issue because I'm worried about this I was hoping that Google will cache or understand the structure of my site and correct the error the breadcrumb is working correctly on desktop but not shown on mobile. For Example take a look at : https://www.xclusivepop.com/omah-lay-bad-influence/

              White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ericrodrigo
              0
            • Choice

              Forcing Google to Crawl a Backlink URL

              I was surprised that I couldn't find much info on this topic, considering that Googlebot must crawl a backlink url in order to process a disavow request (ie Penguin recovery and reconsideration requests). My trouble is that we recently received a great backlink from a buried page on a .gov domain and the page has yet to be crawled after 4 months. What is the best way to nudge Googlebot into crawling the url and discovering our link?

              White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Choice
              0
            • b.digi

              Does Trade Mark in URL matter to Google

              Hello community! We are planning to clean up TM and R in the URLs on the website.  Google has indexed these pages but some TM pages are have " " " instead displaying in URL from SERP.    What's your thoughts on a "spring cleaning" effort to remove all TM and R and other unsafe characters in URLs?  Will this impact indexed pages and ranking etc? Thank you! b.dig

              White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | b.digi
              0
            • esiow2013

              Does Google crawl and index dynamic pages?

              I've linked a category page(static) to my homepage and linked a product page (dynamic page) to the category page. I tried to crawl my website using my homepage URL with the help of Screamingfrog while using Google Bot 2.1 as the user agent. Based on the results, it can crawl the product page which is a dynamic. Here's a sample product page which is a dynamic page(we're using product IDs instead of keyword-rich URLs for consistency):http://domain.com/AB1234567 Here's a sample category page: http://domain.com/city/area Here's my full question, does the spider result (from Screamingfrog) means Google will properly crawl and index the property pages though they are dynamic?

              White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | esiow2013
              0
            • gamblingau

              Fake PageRank scam?

              Had someone offering to place a link on their site for a monthly fee, claiming their site is PR8 - I checked the PR and it seems to be real, with no 301 redirect, but by looking at the site and their presence in google results, I highly doubt their PR is legitimate, but cannot find out how they faked it, and whether having a link on their site will have a negative effect on my site. Their domain is articledomination(dot)info Can anyone shed some lights into this ?

              White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gamblingau
              0
            • BrandLabs

              Will Google Penalize Content put in a Div with a Scrollbar?

              I noticed Moosejaw was adding quite a bit of content to the bottom of category pages via a div tag that makes use of a scroll bar. Could a site be penalized by Google for this technique? Example: http://www.moosejaw.com/moosejaw/shop/search_Patagonia-Clothing____

              White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BrandLabs
              0
            • BonsaiMediaGroup

              Can you set up a Google Local account under a PO Box?

              I have a client that wants a Google local listing in a town he serves but does not have a physical location.  Is it an issue to share an address with an existing company?  Is is it better to use a P.O. Box? or is there a forwarding address company? Is this considered a black hat Local SEO tactic?

              White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BonsaiMediaGroup
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.