Consumers heavily rely on product reviews when making purchasing decisions and incentivized reviews mislead customers into believing they are from unbiased and independent customers. The private sector, consumer groups, and governments need to team up to send a clear message that this is unacceptable and work to stop fake reviews for good. Amazon and Google’s efforts help demonstrate the power of industry collaboration around fake reviews.

“Our goal is to ensure that every review in Amazon’s store is trustworthy and reflects customers’ actual experiences,” said Claire O’Donnell, Amazon’s director of Selling Partner Trust & Store Integrity. “The parallel actions with Google further our efforts in protecting customers and our selling partners, and we are proud to team up with a company who is also committed to taking action against bad actors attempting to deceive customers.”

This action is a continuation of Amazon’s broader work to hold bad actors accountable outside their store. Amazon has teams dedicated to uncovering and investigating fake review brokers and took legal action against more than 150 bad actors attempting to engage in reviews abuse across the U.S., China, and Europe in 2023. In addition to using legal action to shut down fake review brokers, Amazon uses sophisticated industry-leading tools that use machine-learning models to analyze reviews for fraudulent patterns and suspicious activity prior to publication. As a result of continued investments, Amazon proactively blocked more than 250 million suspected fake reviews from our store in 2023.

Amazon filed its complaint against Bigboostup.com in the Western District of Washington, while Google filed in the Northern District of California.