TripAdvisor blocked more than one million fake reviews in 2022

Over one million fake or paid-for reviews were blocked or removed from TripAdvisor in 2022, the company has revealed.

The online travel company’s latest Review Transparency Report said 72% of the 1.3m fraudulent reviews were caught before being posted, up from 67% in 2020.

Of the 30.2m reviews posted on TripAdvisor last year, the company said 4.4% were found to be fake.

Some 24,521 posts were traced to paid-for review companies, nearly half of which were based across India, Russia, Turkey, Italy, Vietnam, and the United States.

More than 33,000 businesses received a ranking penalty for fraud while 341 were issued with red badge warnings and saw their ranking position downgraded.

TripAdvisor has long faced pressure from the hospitality industry to clamp down on fake reviews being posted on its site.

In 2018, the owner of a company which sold fake review packages to businesses was jailed for nine months by the Italian courts in the first conviction of its kind.

The following year a Which? Travel investigation accused TripAdvisor of failing to stop a torrent of fake five-star reviews artificially boosting the ratings of some of the world’s top-ranking hotels, including the Travelodge brand. However, TripAdvisor said at the time the analysis was “flawed”.

“Tripadvisor is built on trust, and we will never stop improving our systems to ensure our community has access to reliable content and the businesses listed can compete on a level playing field,” said Becky Foley, vice president of trust and safety at Tripadvisor.

“The findings from this report show that our approach is working; we’re catching a higher proportion of fraudulent content before it is published, with nearly three-quarters of fake reviews never even making it to the platform.”

To review TripAdvisor’s Review Transparency report in full click here.

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