The CMA's new powers - fail one question and your business is vulnerable

There have been three important events in the last eighteen months regarding online reviews that every business should be aware of:

• The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 gave the CMA vastly increased powers to sanction businesses misusing online reviews
• The CMA has invested in AI software to speed up the identification of businesses likely to be in breach
• The CMA has begun taking action, initially regarding five businesses (one being a review site), where it considers there have been potential breaches

Below is a checklist, in the form of the five questions to which the answer will be a simple 'Yes' or 'No', so you can identify if your business is in breach, and therefore what action it needs to take, if any, to avoid sanction by the Competition & Markets Authority (CMA).

1.  Does your business selectively invite customers to write reviews, either to a review site or to Google (or both)?

2.  Does your business employ any mechanism - a formal survey or a simple 'were you happy with our service?' type email to identify 'happy customers' before inviting them to write a review? 

3.  Does your business have control over the timing of reviews written by your customers?

4.  Can your customers only write reviews of your business if specifically invited to do so?

5.  Does your business use a review site - Trustpilot, Feefo etc. - to identify those customers most likely to leave a 5* review and then invite those, and only those, to post a review to Google?

If you cannot answer 'No' to all of the above five questions, your business is in breach of the CMA's core regulations*.

*We cannot, of course, make any promises as to any course of action the CMA is likely to take in any individual case, but logic indicates that businesses that have taken steps to correct breaches, or that were in breach in the past but are no longer, are unlikely to be the first targets for regulatory or legal action by the CMA.

What will the CMA do?

First: what it will not do: the CMA will not warn any business that it is about to become subject to either investigation or sanction; it will consider that its press releases over the years have provided sufficient warning.

Past history indicates that the CMA is highly unlikely to initiate action against a business and subsequently find it not at fault. The CMA will only initiate action where it considers that it has a watertight case. 

CMA fines, even before the 2024 Act gave them the power to levy fines of up to 10% of a business's turnover, were never insignificant. The case of the four Bristol estate agents that were fined £370,000 for illegal price-fixing is instructive in this regard.

The 'we're too small/insignificant' argument that we have heard so often in the past ceases to hold water now that whistleblowers, combined with the CMA's own AI, make it economically viable for the CMA to sanction businesses regardless of size. From our discussions with the CMA, resources are a critical factor, and anything the CMA can do to bolster these or show HM Treasury that its ROI is providing a positive financial impact will undoubtedly be viewed positively.

Our advice?

It couldn't be simpler: comply with the CMA regulations. Now. 

How?

We fully understand the reasons why businesses have cherry-picked (invited only customers they were certain would write a positive review) and/or gated (pre-qualified customers before inviting only those likely to leave a 5* review) in the past. Inviting 'everyone' was considered a risk too far. But the benefits of having a great score, especially a great score on Google, were just too obvious to ignore.

Unfortunately for such businesses, that option was never on the table: the CMA's regulations have expressly forbidden such a strategy for many years now. One can see the CMA's logic: how are consumers to trust a business if it is somehow able to filter reviews to ensure that only those that show the business in a positive light ever make it onto the web? On top of that, how are consumers to trust reviews as a whole?

This has, until now, given a great many businesses a stark choice: avoid engaging with reviews altogether or flout the CMA regulations. The first sacrifices far too many benefits (increased enquiry rates and lead flows, social proof and SEO, to name but a few). It also runs the increasing risk that a minority of disgruntled customers can 'capture' a business's online image. 

The second of those is no longer viable, as we have explained above. The risk of sanction is now just too great (and the sanctions are far too severe to contemplate). 

Achieved thanks to moderation - search 'estate agent Kingsbury' and see how this business shines in full compliance with the CMA regulations

That's where moderation - the act of employing an external moderator to ensure reviews are as accurate and reflective of the reviewer's experience of the business as possible*, comes in - it's an extra expense, admittedly, but one that will a) ensure compliance with the CMA regulations and b) protect your business from factually inaccurate, potentially misleading or just plain unfair reviews. 

*Moderation relies on the cooperation of the reviewer. In our long experience, an average of 7 reviews in 100 require intervention of some kind by our moderators, to invite the reviewer to correct errors of fact or rewrite a potentially misleading comment. In only 3 cases in 100 where our reviewers become involved does the reviewer decline to do so. Put yourself in their position: who, knowing the business will post a response to their review, will persist in writing one that contains inaccuracies?

The 'Perfect Business' - does it need moderation?

We come across these less and less these days. Why? Not because businesses have become slacker, but because more and more consumers have come to understand the power a single well-crafted review has - especially if written on Google - to hurt such businesses.

We continue to encounter many businesses whose perfect Google score of 5.0 has been impacted by an inaccurate or misleading negative review. Some might reasonably say, 'But that's just one among dozens (hundreds even)', and they would be mathematically correct. But consumers have also learned how to read reviews: these days they will often select the 'lowest' button...

...and if the reviews they then read are credible, they will often move swiftly on to another similar business.

How do we know this? Because of the urgent calls we receive from businesses where a single negative review, often inaccurate and sometimes unfair in the extreme, has resulted in their inbound enquiry flow falling measurably. Retroactive review management - known as 'reputation management' in the trade - is far less effective than proactive moderated review management.

And Finally...

Even when businesses understand all of the above, they are left asking one crucial question: 'Does this mean we have to actively invite every single one of our customers/clients/patients to write a review?'

The answer is 'No'. The 'golden key' to review management is twofold: first, an intimate understanding of the CMA regulations and then this button, allowing anyone to review your business when on your website...

To see this working live - both the 'Write a review' process and the 'What is HelpHound?' explanation, click here

...the key word here is 'allow'. This makes your review management practice compliant. The CMA understands that there are circumstances where a business wouldn't want to proactively invite a customer to write a review, but they do require you to provide a mechanism to 'allow' them to do so. We probably don't need to repeat it, but all reviews written by people clicking that button are sent directly to pre-publication moderation. How much better than a factually inaccurate or misleading review on Google?

Further reading...

• How the CMA uses its direct enforcement powers

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.

Why pay when the best review solution is free?

This article was prompted by a puff piece in today's Times for a new app aimed at garden enthusiasts called PictureThis. Essentially a solution for a problem already solved by Google Lens.

Here's the PictureThis plant identifier app (a snip at £25 p.a.)...

And here's Google Lens - in action...

Plant identified - for free.

What relevance has this to reviews, you will be asking? Well, almost exactly the same situation pervades the reviews sphere: businesses are paying for a service that Google already provides - for free. And those paid-for alternatives are by far and away less effective.

Look at this simple matrix...

And just pause a minute to think about how you, the person reading this article, and your customers, find, see, read and react to reviews. 

• Everyone sees Google reviews - every time they perform a search, even if they are not consciously looking for them

        Search for a specific business and what does the consumer see?

Trustpilot? AllAgents? Yelp? Feefo? Any other review site's reviews? No. Google reviews (Oh!, and in this instance, the business's own reviews hosted on its own website and pulled through to Google under its organic listing, but we'll come to that later)

        Search for a category of business and what does the consumer see?

The same: Google reviews. Or rather the business's score and the number of Google reviews it has accumulated. The reviews themselves are just a click away...

• As a result, Google reviews have massive influence, way ahead and above any individual review site, no matter how ubiquitous; many studies have repeatedly confirmed that consumers increasingly don't bother to seek out individual sites now that Google provides reviews in all searches, all the time. You only have to look at the share prices of the two largest quoted review sites to see what investors think...

• This leaves the businesses that employ those review sites in the position of having to jump through multiple hoops - often at significant expense (Google Ads/SEO etc.) - in order that their reviews be seen. Even then their reviews are often - almost always, in fact -subordinated to Google reviews.

Ask yourself the $64,000 question: if a fairy godmother came along and offered you the choice of 100 5* Google reviews or the same for a reviews site, which would you choose?

HelpHound - where do we come in?

If you look back at the two Google searches above you will see one aspect of our service: providing the mechanism for the business to show reviews on its own website...

Right in the potential clients' eyeline on their home page, with over two hundred more just a click away...

     

...that Google pulls through into every search result...

But perhaps our most important functions take place behind the scenes:

1. Collection and moderation: our software not only enables the business to display its own reviews (that it owns - rather than giving away that valuable content and data to a reviews site); before each one of those reviews is published it is thoroughly checked by one of our moderators for factual inaccuracies and potentially misleading statements
2. Only then, after being published on the business's own site, is the reviewer - every reviewer - asked to copy their review across to Google. That's why our clients invariably have more reviews on their website than they do on Google - but our keyword is 'quality': any business can accumulate hundreds of reviews, but it takes the kind of care and expertise we deploy at HelpHound to ensure, as far as is practicably possible, that those reviews add value for all concerned, consumer and business alike.
3. Compliance: most businesses are currently reaking UK law when looking to boost their Google reviews. The law specifically states that in a business invites a single customer to write a review it must allow all to do so - and at a time of the customer's own choosing. And it's no defence to say 'Well, they can write a review on Google whenever they like'. HelpHound clinets comply with the CMA regulations.
   

Many kinds of business don't necessarily need a service such as this (online retail, for instance, where consumers are buying a physical product), but service businesses and the professions - medical, financial, legal and estate agency, for example - do themselves and their potential clients and patients a disservice if they don't.

Key takeaways

• if your business has yet to decide on a reviews strategy/solution: make sure it is focused on Google reviews
• if you are concerned by the harm an inaccurate or misleading review (or reviews) can do (to your business): you would do well to give HelpHound's service serious consideration
• if you are already involved with a reviews site you should be reviewing that involvement in light of the points made in this article

Further reading

• Moderation: the keystone of any reviews strategy

• Reviews and the law: almost all businesses that we meet are breaking the law in some way or another; how do our clients comply?

• Results: how professional review management is positively guaranteed to generate more clicks and calls for your business

• Trustpilot: why it struggles so badly when compared with a Google-focussed review policy

CMA to investigate Amazon and Google over fake reviews

Here is the full text of the CMA's announcement

Background

The CMA has repeatedly stated its determination to address the manipulation of online reviews, ever since its first open letter on the subject back in 2016. 

They are, as is usual for government agencies, acting both top-down and bottom-up. This action is part of their top-down activity (bottom-up action currently primarily consists of reacting to whistleblowers implicating individual firms in breach of CMA regulations relating to cherry-picking and gating reviews).

Reasoning

We see more and more references such as this "online reviews were excellent" in the review content; just more confirmation of the value attributed by consumers of all kinds of goods and services.

The CMA's reason for taking action is straightforward: fake or otherwise unreliable reviews cause direct harm to the consumer, by misleading them into buying one product in preference to another, possibly of better quality or more suitable, or using one service over another less apparently well-regarded thanks to fake or manipulated reviews. 

Manipulation of reviews by businesses, whether by posting fake reviews, only inviting 'happy' customers to write reviews or by using other mechanisms - gating, for instance - to positively impact their review scores and/or to ensure an unrepresentative number of positive reviews are written is equally misleading.

Reality

Fraud - and therefore, by definition: breach of the CMA regulations - is widespread. Harm, in the context of product reviews, almost certainly impacts SMEs with limited marketing resources more than the consumer. The consumer may end up with a substandard product but the worst outcome will probably be 'throw it away and start again', highly irritating but survivable. 

But in the case of high-value services, the opposite is true: a patient that is misled by manipulated reviews into using a substandard medical professional or an investor misled into using a subpar investment adviser can be caused immense harm, physical, mental and financial, sometimes - often? - all three.

Reviews are trusted, currently

This is the crux of the matter facing the entire web, not simply Amazon and Google, and regulators worldwide: how much longer can the status quo persist without consumers being worn down by businesses abusing reviews, not to mention honest businesses being done down by their less-than-scrupulous competitors?

Take these two business's ratings and number of reviews on Google (let's call them A and B for the sake of anonymity):

A

B

Difficult to choose between them, right? On the face of it - absolutely, after all, what is 0.1 between friends?

But let's delve a little deeper; business A has this on their website:

It refers to the reviews the business hosts on its own site and includes a vital indication that the business is complying with the law, by inviting any customer and any visitor to their website to 'Write a review' whenever they feel like doing so.

Underneath the reviews is this link:

It leads directly to a full explanation of the review management system the business is using, which includes this important paragraph:

Business B?

It is difficult for consumers to accurately and definitely establish that any given business is contravening the regulations regarding reviews. But here are some pointers:

• Does the business have anything on their own website that indicates that all of their customers may post a review at any time?
• Are there any patterns in the business's reviews that give cause for concern? These may include...
• no reviews for a period of months and then several in a short space of time; not necessarily non-compliant (if the business can prove they invited all their customers to post a review) but sometimes indicative of cherry-picking
• patterns in the wording of reviews (the reviews consistently name-check members of staff, for instance)
• locations of other reviews for the same reviewer indicate that it may be unlikely the individual reviewer has visited a certain geographic location (you may remember the case of the restaurant in Virginia that received hundreds of reviews from reviewers who had never used any other business in that state after they had denied entry to a prominent member of the Trump administration)
• Does the business have significant numbers of reviews on a platform other than Google? This can be an indication of gating (the business invites everyone to write a review on the secondary platform - so compliant so far - and then goes on to invite only those who posted a 5* review there to post to Google)
• Does the business make use of feedback mechanisms or customer surveys? Again, not conclusive evidence of gating, but a common enough way of establishing which customers are likely to post a positive review if subsequently asked

For the regulators

This is a very different story: the CMA has legal powers of investigation and confiscation and has used them in the recent past. Businesses that cherry-pick and gate leave a highly visible record of such behaviour on their computer hard drives that remains there for years to come. 

So: just because the CMA is not currently paying visits does not mean that businesses flouting their rules will not face action. We have consistently advised businesses that compliance is a priority and that the publicity flowing from a fine for non-compliance is simply not worth the risk. Especially given that they are able to take the route Business A has taken.

And finally...

Speak to us. Become compliant. Look great in search. Watch the calls and clicks mount up. Sleep at night.

Further reading

• The CMA regulations and how they impact your business
• Gating - defined and explained

TripAdvisor and fake reviews - again!

When will the world - the reviews sites themselves and the regulators (the CMA in the UK) -wake up to the damage done by fake reviews?

Regular readers will have lost count of the number of times we have written on this subject, and the articles go back nearly ten years. First, let us look at the points made by Which? and the BBC and TripAdvisor's responses.

Our points:

1. Fake reviews are written by employees or agents of the hotel in question. Surely it is not about '[going after] fake reviews "very aggressively"' but more about going after the hotels themselves? What has TripAdvisor done to warn its users that the hotels in question have been guilty of seriously misleading the public? Nothing, as far as we can make out.
2. There is another category of fake review that neither Which? nor the BBC has touched on: the negative fake review. These are written, in significant volumes, by competitor hotels.  
3. "We are doing more than any other platform out there" That's not saying much Mr Kay; as far as we are aware HelpHound is the only reviews mechanism in the world today that moderates reviews pre-publication (and we are not claiming that our system is 100% watertight, but at least we do everything we can to ensure that it is as close as possible to the ideal). TripAdvisor has massive financial resources (it turned over nearly $2 bn last year) and staff (over 3,000 at last count) and it is constantly investing in just about everything except ensuring the veracity of its reviews, the very aspect of its business model that reassures its users so they use its platform to book their hotel and therefore earn TripAdvisor revenue.  

Our points:

1. Naomi Leach of which is right on both counts: TripAdvisor has consistently failed, over many years, to give any concrete examples of action it has taken, on its own initiative, to prevent fake review appearing on its site and to prevent hotels gaming their Tripadvisor reviews.
2. "Platforms like TripAdvisor should be more responsible for the information presented to consumers". Absolutely; we would just take the word 'more' out of this sentence.
3. Show us your 'fraud detection tools'. TripAdvisor has consistently hidden behind the weak excuse that to expose its so-called 'fraud detection tools' would lead to further and more sophisticated fraud by hotels. That, to our mind, is a bit like saying that drivers will find a way around speed cameras.

Our points:

1. The UK CMA has the power to sanction review sites or sites such as TripAdvisor that invite and display reviews as part of their business model. It is high time that they did so.
2. The CMA also has the power to prosecute businesses that set out to fraudulently deceive consumers. They should do so.

In summary

We look forward to seeing TripAdvisor take action - publicly visible action - against hotels that post fake reviews. Years ago they did do so, here is the 'red flag' notice they used...

Surely the hotels that Which? identified in their investigation merit something similar, if only to warn consumers? After all, what are reviews for at the end of the day?

We would also like to see a thorough investigation by the CMA - and action taken.

The CMA act against fraudulent use of reviews

Last month the CMA announced a 'programme of work':

Here at HelpHound we have been warning that this was in the pipeline since 2017. This article was, as you can see, published in April 2017:

And we seriously commend it to any readers who have yet to study its contents.

The first action by the CMA has already been taken: they have contacted Facebook and eBay regarding the sale of fake reviews.

Where next?

We cannot be sure, but if we apply basic logic then it will look something like this:

1. address review providers (the reviews sites) that allow or encourage businesses to defy the regulations
2. address high-profile businesses that manipulate reviews in order to give a false impression of their business

Both of these in more detail:

The reviews sites:

Reviews sites are under intense competition from Google reviews, and Google reviews are free, so what 'benefits' are review sites offering businesses? Here are just two:

• 'Quarantine': in examples we have seen (and documented) the reviews site in question allows the business - the paying business 'member' - to challenge reviews. These reviews are then withdrawn from the site until the reviewer provides 'evidence' that the transaction under review actually took place. on the face of it, fair enough. In reality, this function is being exploited by businesses to a) make it harder for a consumer to get a negative review published, if at all and b) when that review is - eventually - published it appears well down the list of recent reviews of the business, and is therefore much less likely to be read

• 'Closed reviews sites': sites that only allow reviewers to post a review if invited to do so by their paying business 'member'. This enables businesses to exclude customers from the process altogether.

Manipulation by businesses:

The law states - categorically - that if a business invites any of its customers to post a review it must allow all of them to do so. It also states that this function must be available at a time of the customer's own choosing (on the day of purchase, the next week, the next month or a year later).

There is much more on this here.

Another commonly used ruse: invite reviews of 'product or service A' and then use those reviews to promote 'product B' (an example: the business collects reviews of one product, in this instance a vacuum cleaner, it then runs a marketing campaign for a brand-new product - an electric bicycle - referencing the rating acquired for the cleaner). 

How about inviting the review right at the beginning of the relationship? Upon order or, in one prominent case, for an estate agent upon instruction?

Or invite those simply calling your premises to rate the quality of the call (rather than your full service)?

One simple question:

Ask yourself 'is everything we do with regard to reviews designed to ensure a full and unvarnished picture of our business in the eyes of our potential customers?'

If the answer is 'Yes, but...' then we humbly submit that you should be speaking to us.

The future for reviews - could it be bleak?

Writing in yesterday's Times - referring to the Sri Lankan's government's blocking of social media (Facebook and WhatsApp) after the horrific Easter bombings - Lucy Fisher, the Times defence correspondent said...

'The radical move would once have been condemned by the international community as the heavy handed tactics of a dictatorship determined to shut down free speech. In the wake of the Christchurch mosque shootings last month, however, resignation is growing that the American companies that own and run these content and messaging platforms cannot sufficiently police themselves and enforce their own rules on content.'

So what has this to do with reviews? Let us try and explain (and please do feel free to comment). Here are five statements that might well have seemed contentious even eighteen months ago, certainly we would not have blogged them back then, but here we are, doing exactly that...

1. The general public cannot trust reviews sites
2. The general public cannot trust Google reviews
3. Reviews can be bought or faked
4. Neither the reviews sites nor Google have mechanisms in place to ensure that the reviews they publish are genuine 
5. The regulators have done very little to address the situation

Let us examine each of these in more detail...

1. The general public cannot trust reviews sites

Pressure like this forces staff to get reviews from anywhere and everywhere they can (unless you believe this agent was completing in excess of ten sales a month!)

Reviews sites are paid for by businesses. This does not make them intrinsically unreliable, but it is interesting to talk to businesses that have used them. Invariably they make statements such as 'they allowed us to select who to invite and when to invite them' or 'they had a brilliant system that drove negative reviews straight to page two'. In addition to these very 'broad brush' complaints we have a detailed file on each of the major reviews sites going back over the years detailing patterns of review writing and suspect individual reviews.

2. The general public cannot trust Google reviews

Anyone with access to a computer can write a Google review. While the majority of Google reviews are undoubtedly genuine, we see evidence of businesses manipulating Google reviews every day (by cherry-picking, gating or simply asking 'friends, colleagues and family' to write reviews). This is not directly Google's fault, except that Google could, if it decided to do so, instigate procedures to identify and punish such reviews and practices. In Google's favour, they will, if presented with evidence, take action against firms that are gating (pre-qualifying reviewers).

3. Reviews can be bought and/or faked

You don't see advertisements like this on eBay (and many other sites) for no reason. These businesses have customers, and those customers are paying to have their Google (and other) scores inflated. Theses are just a selection from eBay today...

4. Neither the reviews sites nor Google have mechanisms in place to ensure that the reviews they publish are genuine 

Apart from Yelp's infamous 'filter' (that would appear to filter as many genuine reviews as it does fakes or malicious reviews) and Feefo's 'invitation only' system that relies on the business sending Feefo genuine customer email addresses, we see little effort by most reviews platforms to ensure the authenticity of their reviews or their reviewers, and few sanctions on businesses caught manipulating their systems. How many hotels have been 'red flagged'; by Tripadvisor? Ten? - in ten years? We could identify ten hotels in a single London postcode that regularly write negative reviews of their competitors.

5. The regulators have done little to address the situation

The CMA  - the UK government regulator directly responsible for consumer protection in the area of reviews has sanctioned one business since 2015. One. And here is the sanction...

And here is the full post on the CMA's website. Here are the CMA's regulations relating to reviews and our analysis of them. Here is our open letter to the CMA.

Why is this so important?

Because, increasingly, consumers base significant spending and investing decisions on reviews. Not just 'knitwear', but who to invest their life savings with, who to appoint to sell their house or who to entrust their healthcare with. Important, potentially life-changing, decisions.

It would easy for the government to simply say 'reviews cannot be trusted, they're banned'. But this would be to miss a wonderful opportunity to serve consumers' best interests.

Consumers' best interests

These are patently best served by having reviews that are genuine and therefore credible. There is an example for others to follow, and it's called HelpHound. At HelpHound we do everything short of forcing the system grind to a halt to ensure that our clients' potential customers are served genuine and credible reviews.

• every single review is read by one of our moderators. They are trained to know what to look for and, while a very clever person would undoubtedly sneak a five star review past them on the odd occasion, they would never get a negative through without challenge; the chances of such 'fake positives' making a meaningful difference to an established HelpHound client's score, on Google or on their own site, are so small as to be negligible

• reviews that contain assertions of fact or potentially misleading statements are always referred to both the reviewer and the business under review for clarification. This does not mean that negative comments are suppressed - far from it - just that those comments must be supported by the facts

• We have a 'two strikes rule' that all our business customers sign up to when they join. This means that they are allowed one 'mistake' - one review that our moderators decide was written by a connected person (it is invariably a 'keen', often young and inexperienced, junior member of staff). After that they are on a warning, with the ultimate sanction being termination of their contract. How often in the last five years have we had to issue such a warning? Never. Simply because our clients get just how crucial the credibility of their review is

• Overriding all the above is the core premise that, at the end of the day, the customer's right is to have their review, whatever it states, published on our client's site, and the automated invitation to copy that review to Google will follow as night follows day

So - if HelpHound can do it, why cannot others? That is a bit like asking 'why does Facebook allow live-streaming of mass murder?' - we don't know, we are not Facebook, but we do know what we would do if we were.

So come on government, come on the CMA, but most of all: come on UK Plc. Let's start giving consumers what they want. 

Genuine, reliable reviews of your businesses