Reviews and trust - there is no future for the first without the second

Yet again the regulators have seen fit to step in - this time in relation to fake reviews, specifically those posted to Google. It is time we revisited the rationale behind regulation and reviews.

In an ideal world...

Everyone who wrote a review...

• Would be in a position to understand everything to do with whatever product or service they had been sold and were reviewing

• Would be in a positive - or at the very least, benign - frame of mind, both at the time they interacted with the business that sold them the product or provided them with the service and later, when they came to write their review

• Would have perfect command of the English language, or whatever other language they wrote their review in (Google accepts reviews in 149 languages)

And every business that asked its customers to write a review...

• would welcome every review with open arms

• would not place any barriers in the way of someone wanting to review their product or service

• would respond to every review posted - anywhere

And every review platform would conform to these basic tenets...

• it would favour neither business nor consumer

• it would ensure that no barriers were placed in the way of a consumer wishing to post a fair and accurate review

• it would offer an effective appeal route for the business under review against inaccurate, potentially misleading or plain unfair reviews

• it would ensure that its reviews were as visible as possible to consumers

The current regulatory situation

In the UK, as regular readers know, online reviews are regulated (by the Competition and Markets Authority - 'CMA'), and such regulation is backed by the force of law.

The CMA has been conducting an ongoing review into the use and abuse of reviews for many years now. Here is their advice to businesses - which remains current to this day. Periodically the CMA will announce action it is taking or agreements it has come to - here is its latest, this time with Google.

At this stage we should mention that, in the UK at least, there are examples of businesses taking reviewers to court for posting defamatory reviews. Here is one such. For obvious reasons, both commercial and reputational, this is a rare occurrence, as the legacy press and social media rarely shine a favourable light on 'big business' taking customers to court. This makes a fair and evenhanded regulatory and legal approach to reviews even more important. But such action does conclusively prove one thing: that businesses would do well to take every measure to avoid such negative reviews, especially the 'unfair' ones.

The future

So far, quite reasonably, the regulators have focused their attention on the sites that host reviews. They are also right to refine that focus to concentrate on Google, as it now hosts four out of every five reviews on the web (see its remarkable dominance here).

This was reinforced when we were privileged to have an in-depth conversation with a senior staffer at the CMA last year. The central thrust of his message was 'Just because the CMA doesn't constantly repeat the fact that we have an open investigation into abuses of online reviews does not mean that we have closed the file, the opposite is true.'

So the next logical move by the regulators will likely be on the following two fronts...

• against the legacy review sites that have been driven to offer more and more questionably legal benefits in order to compete with Google reviews (bearing in mind these sites invariably charge businesses and Google does not). These range from control over who is able to write a review to the ability to challenge a genuinely held customer opinion in the hope that the customer will simply give up and not insist on their review being published

• against businesses that are in contravention of the CMA's core regulations - the main ones being 'cherry-picking' only demonstrably happy customers to invite to post reviews and 'gating' - identifying that same cohort using a questionnaire 

We also hope they will widen their remit in relation to the review sites...

• sites that offer businesses boosted prominence in rankings in return for financial reward
• sites that muddy the water by selling leads to businesses on the back of reviews
• sites that discriminate against reviewers who are unable or unwilling to provide proof of purchase*

*this, on the face of it, would appear to be a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It is only when faced with a real-world situation when the consumer has genuinely lost their receipt or cannot see why they should be required to provide one to a third-party review site that the injunction by the CMA to allow the review to stand must apply.

To summarise

From a business's standpoint, today in 2025, there are few* reasons to use a review site and many reasons to use Google reviews...

• they are the first reviews any prospective customer sees of your business
• every one of your business's locations will have a distinct Google profile with reviews attached
• they have greater credibility than other kinds of review, simply by virtue of readers understanding that Google knows a great deal about the poster
• just about everyone on the planet is able to write a Google review without 'joining' or 'registering'

*these 'few' reasons become fewer by the year. The exception is retail which understandably requires stand-alone reviews for each and every product they sell. So sites such as Bazaarvoice still have a role to play. Our advice to all service and professional businesses is to focus entirely on Google reviews; should they already have a presence on other sites that should be maintained, at least for the time being, alongside Google.

A very important question for businesses that already have an established presence on Google

How do you collect your Google reviews? 

Many - most? - businesses, if they are being candid, will admit that they are selective in inviting customers to write a review to Google. This is against the CMA's aforementioned core regulations - against the law. 

So what? - we hear people say all the time. And our answer? We have sympathy, but your business does not exist in isolation. We agree that it is highly unlikely that your business, of all the 5.5 million in the UK, will be the first to be sanctioned by the CMA (although the long list of those fined by HMRC for breaches of AML should at least give you pause for thought - imagine your business appearing on a list like this - and then featuring in the local/national press as 'ABC Plc fined by government agency for breaking rules relating to their customers' online reviews.'). 

Look at it this way: you know your business is in breach by cherry-picking 'happy' customers to invite to post a Google review. So your staff know as well. And they move on - sometimes to direct competitors. How do you suppose a competitor will use that knowledge? Is there even an outside chance that, when faced with a potential customer, they will be tempted to say something along the lines of "Yes, their Google score and reviews are excellent, aren't they? Perhaps if they complied with the law and allowed all their customers to write a review, as we do, then maybe they wouldn't look quite so great?"

This innocuous link - 'Write a review' - makes the business compliant with the CMA regulations at a stroke - it also leads to the key benefit of review management: moderation

Resulting in the business looking like this on Google...

Initial search (left) and their Google reviews tab (right) showing their score and all their reviews collected since they joined HelpHound...

From 5 to 500 - not so hard when you combine a great business with the correct - compliant - review management

The key here is that no well-run business needs to remain in this position (few reviews or in breach of the CMA regulations). By the simple expedient of employing moderated review management it will a) protect itself from factually inaccurate or potentially misleading reviews - that's what gives our clients the confidence to be so proactive in inviting reviews - and b) achieve a great score on its own website and on Google.

It will also be demonstrating that its reviews can be trusted - both those on its own website (see above) and those on Google.