--- title: "Fake reviews and UK law: what small businesses need to know" url: https://reviewnudge.app/guides/fake-reviews-uk-law/ published: 2026-09-30 updated: 2026-09-30 author: "Jack Stovell" author_profile: https://i.hilyt.it/jack publisher: "Adapt Progress Evolve Limited" summary: "Since 6 April 2025 UK law bans writing or commissioning fake reviews, hiding that a review was incentivised and publishing reviews misleadingly. Asking every customer honestly is fine." language: en-GB --- # Fake reviews and UK law: what small businesses need to know > Since 6 April 2025 UK law bans writing or commissioning fake reviews, hiding that a review was incentivised and publishing reviews misleadingly. Asking every customer honestly is fine. Since 6 April 2025 it has been illegal in the UK to write or commission fake reviews, to hide that a review was incentivised, or to publish reviews in a misleading way, such as hiding the genuine negative ones. Asking all your customers for an honest review is fine. That's the short version, and the rest of this page is the detail. One quick note before we go on: this is general information, not legal advice. ## What changed in April 2025 The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 brought in a list of commercial practices that are "in all circumstances considered unfair", which means they are banned outright. Reviews got their own entry on that list. The relevant bit is Schedule 20, paragraph 13, and it came into force on 6 April 2025. The CMA published its fake reviews guidance (CMA208) just before that, on 4 April, plus a shorter guide for businesses that publish reviews. It's a lot of official paper for a simple idea: reviews should be real, and you shouldn't stack the deck. Here's what that looks like in practice. ## What the law bans There are four things in paragraph 13, and they're easier to hold in your head than you'd think. First, submitting a fake consumer review, or a review that hides the fact it was incentivised. That includes commissioning someone else to write it for you. Second, publishing reviews, or review information like star ratings, in a misleading way. Third, publishing reviews without taking reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent and remove fake ones, concealed incentivised ones, and false or misleading review information. Fourth, offering services to traders to do or help with any of the above. That third one is easy to miss. It covers what you publish and what you do to keep it honest, as well as what you write. ## What counts as a fake or incentivised review A "fake consumer review" is one that claims to be based on a person's genuine experience but isn't. That's the definition, and it cuts both ways. Fake reviews can be positive (praising a business) or negative (written to undermine one). Here's the bit people get wrong. A review isn't fake just because you dislike it or disagree with it. If it reflects the reviewer's genuine experience, it's genuine, even when it stings. The CMA says a review of a gift bought by a friend, or of a stay that got cut short, can still be perfectly genuine. Now for "commissioning", which is where it gets broader than you'd guess. It isn't just money. The law says commissioning includes incentivising by any means, and the CMA lists money, commissions, discounts, vouchers, freebies, free stays and invitations to events. It could even include a business asking a member of staff to write a review. The CMA's own examples of banned commissioning are worth reading slowly: - offering an existing customer a free or discounted product for a five-star review - a social post asking for five-star reviews in exchange for free products - contacting someone who left a negative review and offering a refund or gift card if they change it to remove the negative comments Incentivised reviews aren't banned outright, to be fair. They have to be disclosed and still reflect a genuine experience. But many platforms don't allow them at all, and submitting one there is likely to be misleading. Google and Trustpilot both ban incentives for reviews, and there's more on that in the practical rules. Our advice is simple: don't offer them. ## Asking customers for reviews without breaking the law Good news, this is the easy section. Asking for reviews is completely fine. What the CMA says is allowed is encouraging reviews "without predetermining the contents or sentiment". Its example is merely emailing customers generally to ask if they'd like to leave a review. No steering, no rewards, no "only if it's five stars". So the safe pattern looks like this: ask everyone, ask neutrally, and let people say what they actually think. If you want help wording a request, there's a [review request message builder](/tools/review-request-generator/) and a guide on how to [ask for an honest review](/guides/ask-for-an-honest-review/). For the platform side of things, see [the practical rules](/guides/asking-for-google-reviews-rules/) on asking for Google reviews. Where businesses trip up is the sneaky stuff. Only messaging the customers you know are happy, for example. The CMA specifically calls out encouraging just the satisfied ones to leave reviews as cherry-picking. Which brings us to the next bit. ## Hiding or cherry-picking reviews is also banned You'd think a ban on fake reviews would stop at fake reviews. It doesn't. Publishing genuine reviews in a misleading way is banned too. The law gives some concrete examples of what counts as misleading. Not publishing, or removing, negative reviews while keeping the positive ones. Giving greater prominence to positive reviews over negative ones. Leaving out information that's relevant to how a review was written, including the fact that someone was commissioned to write it. The CMA adds that if a reviewer is an employee, a shareholder or a supplier, that's relevant information too. It also says businesses shouldn't interfere with someone's ability to leave a negative review. That covers things like threats of harm or legal action, arbitrarily stopping and starting review invitations, or making dispute resolution depend on the customer not leaving a negative review. And you shouldn't edit, withhold or remove genuine negative reviews. Yes, that's uncomfortable. Nobody loves a one-star. But a rating built only from the good bits misleads the people reading it, and that's the point of the rule. If the negative review you're looking at genuinely is fake, that's a different matter, and there's a separate guide on how to [remove a fake Google review](/guides/remove-fake-google-review/). ## If you show reviews on your own website This part is easy to miss, because it has nothing to do with asking for reviews. It's about what you publish. The CMA's short guide applies to any trader who publishes consumer reviews or review information, from any source, on websites, social media, print, wherever. So a testimonials page, a star rating or a "what our customers say" strip on your homepage can all be in scope. What the CMA says publishers should do is fairly sensible. Have a published policy that clearly prohibits fake reviews and says how you handle incentivised ones. Assess the risk of banned content, and do that regularly rather than once and forgotten. Have processes to detect, investigate and remove banned reviews. What's reasonable depends on your circumstances: where the reviews come from, how many you have, how risky they are. What's reasonable for a small shop with a handful of testimonials is likely to look different from what a big marketplace needs. But using a third party to monitor reviews doesn't remove your own responsibility. That stays with you. If you're putting together testimonials, the [testimonial card maker](/tools/testimonial-generator/) turns a real customer's words into a card. The words still need to be real, and theirs. ## What the CMA can do Under the new regime the CMA can decide for itself whether consumer law has been infringed, without going through the courts. It can also fine up to 10% of global turnover. That's a ceiling, and it doesn't tell you what any particular business would face, but it shows how seriously the rules are meant. It's already acting. On 27 March 2026 the CMA opened five investigations into fake and misleading reviews. They include looking at whether a business asked staff to write positive reviews, and whether customers were offered discounts for five-star reviews without disclosure. The CMA says it has not reached any conclusions about whether the law has been broken. So the direction of travel is pretty clear. Ask everyone, ask honestly, show the good and the bad, and keep an eye on what you publish. And, once more for luck: this is general information, not legal advice. ## Questions people ask ### Is it illegal to ask my staff to review my business? The CMA's guidance says commissioning a review can include a trader asking a member of staff to write one. If that review is presented as an ordinary customer review and the connection isn't made clear, it risks being a concealed incentivised review, which is banned. Trustpilot also doesn't allow reviews from people working for your business. This is general information, not legal advice. ### Can I delete bad reviews from my own website? Removing genuine negative reviews while keeping positive ones is one of the examples of misleading publication in the law. The CMA says traders should not edit, withhold or remove genuine negative reviews. Removing a review that is fake is different: publishers are expected to take steps to remove fake reviews. ### Is a review fake if I don't agree with it? No. The CMA's guidance says a review isn't fake just because the business it's about doesn't like it or disagrees with it, as long as it reflects the reviewer's genuine experience. A review of a gift someone else bought, or of a stay that was cut short, can still be genuine. ### Does the law apply to a small business? The ban applies to traders generally, and the CMA's short guide applies to any trader that publishes consumer reviews or review information, including on its own website or social media. What counts as reasonable steps depends on your circumstances, such as where the reviews come from and how many you publish. ## Sources - [Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, Schedule 20 (legislation.gov.uk)](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2024/13/schedule/20) - [CMA: Fake reviews guidance (CMA208), GOV.UK](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fake-reviews) - [CMA: Short guide for businesses publishing consumer reviews, GOV.UK](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fake-reviews/short-guide-for-businesses-publishing-consumer-reviews-and-complying-with-consumer-protection-law) - [CMA: New consumer protection regime comes into force (7 April 2025), GOV.UK](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-to-boost-consumer-and-business-confidence-as-new-consumer-protection-regime-comes-into-force) - [CMA: Fake and misleading reviews, 5 businesses under investigation (27 March 2026), GOV.UK](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/fake-and-misleading-reviews-5-businesses-under-cma-investigation) - [Trustpilot: Guidelines for businesses](https://corporate.trustpilot.com/legal/for-businesses/guidelines-for-businesses) - [Google Maps: Prohibited and restricted content](https://support.google.com/contributionpolicy/answer/7400114)