I was trying to buy a new set of kitchen scales the other day. Simple enough, you'd think. But as I scrolled through page after page of five-star raves for a model that looked, frankly, a bit plasticky, I had a sudden, vivid memory. It was of my dad, circa 2005, reading a single review for a lawnmower in a paper catalogue. One review. From a magazine. And he trusted it implicitly.
We've come a long way. And not all of it is good. The sheer volume of opinions is staggering, but it's polluted. It makes you nostalgic for the days when 'verified purchase' wasn't a necessary shield against outright fiction.
So, how do you navigate this modern marketplace without getting stung? You learn the signs. Here are the red flags I look for, the patterns that make me hit the back button faster than you can say 'next day delivery'.
1. The Gushing Generic
Real reviews tend to be specific. They mention the colour, the feel, a particular feature they used. Fake ones often read like a marketing brief. 'This product is amazing! It changed my life! The quality is outstanding!' Lots of exclamation marks, zero substance. If it sounds like it was written for the product box, not by a person who actually opened it, be suspicious.
2. The Vague 'Person'
This is a classic. 'I bought this for my husband and he loves it.' Or 'My daughter uses this for school.' Who are these people? What does your husband actually *do* with the allegedly ergonomic potato peeler? Does your daughter use it for art projects or biology homework? The lack of concrete detail is a huge tell. Real people have specifics; fictional characters have roles.
3. The Review That Reviews the Delivery, Not the Product
'Came quickly! Great packaging!' Fantastic. Was the item inside the packaging any good? This is a common filler tactic for fake reviews - focusing on the one universally positive (and irrelevant) aspect of the transaction. To be fair, sometimes real people do this too, but when you see a cluster of them, it's a sign the review pool is shallow.
4. Repetitive Language Across Multiple Reviews
Scroll down the review list. Do you see the same unusual phrase popping up? 'A game changer for my morning routine.' 'Truly a game changer.' 'This game-changing device...' Real people don't unconsciously coordinate their vocabulary. Bot farms or paid review services often use templates, and the same odd adjectives or phrases leak through.
5. An Avalanche of 5-Stars in a Short Time
Check the review dates. A product that's been out for years suddenly getting forty five-star reviews all posted between Tuesday and Thursday last week? That's not organic. That's a campaign. Real review patterns ebb and flow; fake ones look like a tactical strike.
6. The Overly Defensive 1-Star Reply
This is a subtler one. Look at the seller's responses to negative reviews. A genuine response might offer help or an apology. A fake one, or one from a shady seller, often gets weirdly aggressive or uses obviously copied-and-pasted legalistic language to discredit the reviewer. It's a bad sign about the seller's overall ethics.
7. Profiles with a History of Gushing
Click on a reviewer's name. If their entire history is page after page of five-star, one-line reviews for completely unrelated products - dog beds, USB hubs, garden shears, all 'Excellent!!!' - you've likely found a paid reviewer. Real people have a mix of ratings and products that somewhat make sense for a human life.
8. The 'Free Product' Disclaimer (Or Lack Thereof)
Amazon is supposed to tag reviews where the reviewer got the item for free or at a discount. It doesn't always catch them. Sometimes you'll see a suspiciously positive review that ends with 'I received this product for free for my honest opinion.' The 'honest opinion' is almost always bizarrely positive for what the item is. The incentive is baked right in.
9. Photos That Look Too Professional
User photos are usually a good sign, right? Mostly. But be wary of the 'user photo' that looks like it came from a studio shoot - perfect lighting, white background, the product artfully arranged. It might be a genuine enthusiast with a good camera. More often, it's stock imagery from the manufacturer being passed off as a user image.
10. Your Own Gut Feeling
This is the old-school method, and it still works. Does the overall tone feel off? Does the praise seem disproportionate to the product? If something feels like an advertisement rather than a recommendation, it probably is. Trust that instinct. It's your brain recognising the patterns before you can consciously name them.
The Modern Solution: Letting the AI Do the Heavy Lifting
Now, I'll be honest. Manually checking all this for every spatula or set of bookshelves you fancy is exhausting. It turns a five-minute purchase into a half-hour forensic investigation. Who has the time?
This, in a roundabout way, is why I built Review Radar for Amazon. I got fed up with the cognitive load. The extension runs in the background on Amazon, analysing the review patterns against all these red flags and more. It looks at reviewer histories, temporal patterns, language consistency, the lot. Then it gives you a simple trust score and highlights the suspicious stuff.
It's not psychic. No tool can be 100% accurate. But it spots the patterns a human would spot, just much, much faster. It's like having that sceptical, bargain-hunting friend looking over your shoulder, pointing at the screen and saying 'That review looks dodgy, look at the dates.'
You can certainly shop without it - armed with the list above, you're already way ahead of most. But for me, it's reclaimed some of that simple trust my dad had. Not blind trust in a single review, but confidence that the landscape I'm shopping in has been, at the very least, scanned for landmines. And that feels bang on for 2026.