‘Buy Fake Reviews’ Searches Surge 1,268% As SMEs Warn Of A Growing Online Trust Crisis

Over 21,000 people searched how to buy fake reviews last month, while searches for fake business reviews topped 68,000 Businesses are facing a growing crisis of trust online, with new Google search analysis revealing searches for “buy fake reviews” have soared 1,268% over the past year, highlighting growing demand for services that artificially boost online reputations.

At the same time, searches for “fake business reviews” have increased 1,026% year-on-year, now reaching 68,000 monthly searches, suggesting consumers and business owners are becoming increasingly concerned about whether online ratings can be trusted.
Analysis by AnyBusiness.com.au found “buy fake reviews” now attracts 21,000 searches every month globally, with five-year Google Trends data showing interest remained relatively flat before exploding over the past 12 months, suggesting review manipulation has become significantly more mainstream.

For small and medium-sized businesses, the implications are significant.
Unlike major brands that can absorb occasional fake reviews, SMEs often rely on relatively few reviews to build credibility, meaning even a handful of fraudulent ratings can influence customer decisions, search visibility and revenue.

Mary Tamvakologos, Managing Director at AnyBusiness.com.au, says the figures reveal a worrying shift in how businesses are competing online.

“We’ve reached the point where thousands of people are actively searching for ways to buy fake reviews every month, while even more people are trying to work out whether the reviews they’re reading are genuine. That’s a trust problem for every business.

For SMEs especially, reputation has become one of their biggest commercial assets. A few fake one-star reviews can discourage potential customers overnight, while competitors using fake five-star reviews create an unfair playing field.”

Why businesses should never buy fake reviews

While paying for positive reviews may appear to be a quick way to improve ratings, Mary says the long-term consequences can be severe.

“Buying reviews is one of the biggest mistakes a business can make. Platforms such as Google are continually improving their systems for identifying suspicious review activity, and businesses caught manipulating reviews risk having them removed, losing customer trust and, in some cases, having their business profiles restricted.”

Beyond platform penalties, fake reviews can permanently damage consumer confidence.
Modern consumers are increasingly able to identify reviews that sound generic, repetitive or overly polished, and many will avoid businesses they believe are manipulating customer feedback.

“In today’s market, authenticity wins,” says Mary.
“Customers don’t expect perfection. They expect honesty. A business with genuine reviews, including the occasional criticism that has been handled professionally, is often more trustworthy than one with hundreds of suspicious five-star ratings.”

How SMEs can protect their reputation

Mary recommends businesses take a proactive approach to managing their online reputation.

Monitor reviews consistently

Watch for sudden spikes in reviews, repeated wording, multiple reviews arriving within minutes of each other or accounts with little review history.
Respond professionally

If you receive a suspicious review, remain calm and factual. Public responses demonstrate transparency to future customers while you report the review through the relevant platform.

Generate more genuine reviews

The strongest defence against fake reviews is a consistent flow of authentic customer feedback. Ask satisfied customers to leave honest reviews after purchases, appointments or completed work.

Build reviews across multiple platforms

Avoid relying on a single review platform. Establishing a presence across Google, Facebook, Trustpilot and industry-specific sites reduces the impact of manipulation on any one platform.

Keep detailed customer records

Invoices, booking confirmations, email correspondence and payment records can all help support requests to remove fraudulent reviews more quickly.

According to AnyBusiness.com.au online reviews now influence almost every stage of the customer journey, from whether a business appears in local search results to whether a customer clicks through, makes an enquiry or completes a purchase.

At the same time, advances in AI have made fake reviews faster to produce, more convincing to read and easier to generate at scale than ever before.
Mary Tamvakologos concludes:

“Trust has become a competitive advantage. Businesses shouldn’t be looking for shortcuts because customers are becoming far more sophisticated about spotting them.”

“The businesses that will win over the next few years won’t be the ones with the most perfect reviews. They’ll be the ones with the most genuine relationships with their customers.”

“Yes or No”: The Accountability Trap Politicians Set for Others

‘Yes or no!’ ‘Don’t play with me here.’ ‘Please answer my question.’ ‘Just answer this question.’ ‘We need the truth.’ ‘Can you answer the question please?’ ‘It’s a simple question.’ ‘You still haven’t answered my question.’

For several hours on 19 June 2026, parliamentarians serving on the Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services subjected current and former KPMG executives to scrutiny.

The Committee was examining allegations arising from disclosures made by a KPMG whistleblower. The hearing was uncomfortable and excruciatingly painful viewing. The spectacle was expected.

The questioning was relentless. Many types of elicitation and provocation methods were deployed: open questions, leading questions, loaded questions, rhetorical questions, inimical hypotheticals and preferential treatment exposures.

Committee members dissected answers with clinical precision. They demanded precision and clarification. The careful selection of words by KPMG executives was examined and replacement words of a caustic character were suggested. They challenged qualifications and caveats. They pressed the KPMG witnesses who appeared reluctant to answer directly.

They were not going to accept rejections. More than once, they insisted upon a simple ‘yes or no’ response. At other times, Committee members interrupted. At times they displayed visible frustration with answers they regarded as incomplete, evasive or unresponsive. The KPMG witnesses were pressed repeatedly to respond directly to the question asked.

The unmistakable commitment to accountability displayed by the Committee members on 19 June 2026 is not exceptional. Similar vigour can be observed in other parliamentary inquiries at home, and in select overseas legislatures where committee scrutiny takes on an equally exacting form. One need only look across the landscape in New Zealand and the United States to see a replica of the portrait: the same insistence on precision, and the same intolerance for evasion.

The Committee’s performance, at least in this instance and assuredly in all instances, would almost make the voter proud; the election of such tenacious and inquisitorial parliamentarians holding witnesses to account, despite the occasional distractions from Committee members ranging from the unprofessional to the pettifogging.

However, it was difficult not to be struck by a feature that may have eluded spectators, commentators and reporters who were too intently—and rightly so—focused on the day’s nadir and apogee, and less attuned to the wider dynamic at play.

It is tolerably clear from proceedings of various parliamentary committees that politicians know exactly how an elusive witness acts and what an evasive answer looks like.
Not speculatively. Not approximately. Not probably. Not theoretically. Not as an abstract proposition discussed in a political science textbook. Not in the incubator of a lecture theatre. They recognise it instantly.

The moment a witness begins to wander from the question, politicians notice. The moment a witness seeks refuge in irrelevancies, politicians notice. The moment a witness attempts to answer a different question from the one asked, politicians notice.
They will have none of it, and they rightly object. Attempts at correction are instant, although oftentimes accompanied by theatre.

The KPMG committee hearing—which we may assume to be generally representative of all hearings of committees—demonstrated that politicians possess a highly developed understanding of accountability. They know that meaningful scrutiny requires witnesses to engage inextricably with the question. They know that accountability is undermined when answers become elusive, evasive or equivocative. They know that a person in a position of power should not be permitted to escape examination through clever wordplay or strategic diversion. The theatricality of exposing such tactics is breathtaking.

Yet there is an unforgettable and unforgivable irony at the heart of all this. Parliamentary committees, comprised entirely of parliamentarians, approach their watchdog role characteristically uninhibited by the ‘unclean hands’ doctrine.
While not attempting in any way to engender sympathy for KPMG, many of the parliamentarians who demand direct answers from corporate executives themselves routinely resort to the same forms of evasion when placed under scrutiny by journalists and voters.

How often have we watched a minister refuse to answer a straightforward question? How often have we heard a politician respond to a query with a rehearsed talking point that bears little relation to what was asked? How often have we seen repeated attempts to change the subject, attack the premise of the question or simply consume the available time without providing a meaningful response? The answer, of course, is frequently, if not always. For those preferring quantitative evidence, there are legions of academic studies showing chronic evasion by politicians.

They demand compliance or obedience from witnesses in committees, as much as they engage in evasion of their own in television studios. The contrast is impossible to ignore.
One defence offered by politicians is that government is different. Public issues are complex. Questions cannot always be reduced to a simple ‘yes or no’ answer. Direct answers are impractical, unrealistic or inconsistent with the realities of public life. Context matters. But those features are also writ large within corporate Australia in equal measure. Yet the politicians only are permitted to play the game.

The Committee hearing also exposed a deeper inconsistency.

Parliamentarians are among the fiercest defenders of parliamentary privilege. They regard it as fundamental to democratic government. They insist it protects institutional interests that transcend the interests of individual members. They would rightly resist any suggestion that Parliament should waive its privilege (although waiver might be legally unachievable) simply because outsiders are resolved to questioning proceedings of Parliament outside of Parliament.

Yet when confronted with a claim for legal professional privilege which is often claimed by corporations, calm seas turn choppy.

During the KPMG hearing, enormous pressure was brought to bear upon KPMG to waive privilege. It is one thing to claim legal professional privilege incorrectly. To demand waiver of a properly claimed privilege is quite another. In any case, the message was clear: transparency required disclosure. Public confidence required disclosure. Accountability required disclosure.

Perhaps it did. Perhaps it did not. And yes, the privileges are different. That is not the point. The poignant question is whether the principle is being applied consistently.

Privileges are not tested when the protected information is trivial, but when the information is important, controversial and highly sought after. The true measure of commitment to a privilege is whether one respects it when disregarding it would be politically convenient.
When the privilege belongs to Parliament, it is treated as sacred. When the privilege belongs to somebody else, it transmogrifies into an obstacle to transparency.

This is not an argument for shielding misconduct. Nor is it a defence of KPMG. It is an observation about accountability, and the double standards politicians apply to it.
Watching the hearing, one wonders what might be achieved if ordinary hapless voters and the media possessed similar powers. For the media to be empowered to summon a politician to remain seated for hours while every inconsistency is explored and every qualification examined. It is a Panglossian wonder that will remain in the realm of fairytales. We the people are forever left writing letters, signing petitions, campaigning, protesting and lodging freedom of information requests. Ultimately, we the people are complicit for we have permitted this hypocrisy to live and thrive.
Nilay B. Patel is a lawyer based in Melbourne