The fake 5 star review offer scam

• A message that arrives soon after a sudden drop in your rating.
• A promise of a set number of five star reviews per week.
• Talk of pushing bad reviews down, burying them or replacing them.
• A request for payment up front, often by crypto, gift card or a payment app.
• Sometimes a request for your Google account login or manager access to post them.

In some cases the same people posted the one star reviews. The bad reviews create the problem, the offer sells the cure.

The message rarely uses the word fake. It talks about reputation repair, rating recovery or review management, and it may come with a business name and a website that look professional. What it sells is the same: reviews written by people who never visited you.

The timing is the pitch. An owner who has just watched a rating fall in a day or two is upset and wants anything fast. The offer lands in that window, often with a screenshot of the new rating and a line about lost customers. Slow down. Nothing about the one star reviews gets worse in the hour it takes to read them properly, and a quick yes is exactly what the sender is counting on.

Nothing about the one star reviews changes when five star ones are added. They stay on the listing, in the same place, with the same text. Anyone who sorts your reviews by lowest rating still sees them first. The only way a review leaves the page is if the reviewer deletes it or Google removes it under its policies.

Bought reviews are also easy to spot for the people reading them: short, vague, posted close together, from accounts with no history in your area.

Readers notice the gap. A listing where a burst of one star complaints is followed by a burst of glowing praise with no detail reads as a business that bought its way out, which makes the low reviews look right. Google's policy also names unusual volumes or patterns of reviews as a sign of rating manipulation, and that applies to a burst of praise as much as a burst of complaints.

Google's policy lists incentivized reviews and content not based on a real experience as fake engagement, which is not allowed. Its help page on Business Profile restrictions says that when it finds a business owner broke that policy, it may do the following, on top of removing the reviews.

• Block new reviews and ratings on the profile for a set period.
• Unpublish existing reviews and ratings for a set period.
• Show a warning on the profile that fake reviews were removed.

Google says it emails the owner before applying a restriction, and that the owner can appeal through a form. The restriction lands on your profile, not the seller's. The seller moves on to the next listing.

The FTC rule on consumer reviews and testimonials, in effect since October 21, 2024, bans businesses from buying positive or negative reviews and from buying or selling fake reviews. The guide on whether fake reviews are illegal sets out what the rule covers.

The FTC questions and answers page on the rule adds that review brokers and reputation management companies are not immune from it. The seller of the reviews and the business that buys them are both within its reach.

• It promises reviews, not a report to Google.
• It names a number of stars or a target rating.
• It wants your Google password or manager access.
• It wants payment before anything happens.
• It came from someone you never contacted.

A legitimate removal request does the opposite: it names the Google policy a specific review breaks, files it through Google's own channel, and needs no password.

An offer of a free trial, where a few five star reviews appear before you pay, is the same scam. Report any review on your listing from someone who never visited, including the flattering ones.

1. 1

   Do not reply

   Screenshot the offer with the sender details and date, then leave it unanswered.

2. 2

   Check for a demand

   If the offer says the bad reviews stop when you pay, that is extortion. Report it on Google's merchant extortion report form.

3. 3

   Label the bad reviews

   Run the free review check. It reads each low review on your listing and labels it against Google's policies, so you know which ones can be filed and which are real opinions that stay.

4. 4

   Report the seller

   Send the offer and your screenshots to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and use the report option in the app it came through.

5. 5

   Tell your team

   Anyone who answers your phone or inbox should pass offers like this to you unanswered, so nobody agrees to a trial on your behalf.