Here’s the number of fraudulent reviews Tripadvisor identified on its site in 2024.

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Around 8% of the 31.1 million reviews submitted to Tripadvisor in 2024 were identified as fake, according to the company’s “Transparency Report 2025.” This number is more than double the amount detected in 2022, based on internal reports. However, Becky Foley, vice president and head of trust and safety at Tripadvisor, clarified that this doesn’t mean the actual quantity of fake reviews doubled. As submissions to the website increased, Tripadvisor also revised its approach to managing fake reviews, adopting a more proactive stance against “incentivized reviews.” These happen when businesses offer customers discounts or freebies for reviews or reward employees whose names appear in them.

“The employees get their mom, best friend, or cousin to submit reviews mentioning their names,” Foley explained. “This results in businesses having reviews that are not genuinely useful to our community.”

### What is a fake review?

According to Tripadvisor, a fake review is defined as “any review submitted by someone who is knowingly submitting biased or non-firsthand content, in an effort to manipulate a property’s reputation.” Foley mentioned that the rise in detections can also be attributed to the improvement of their systems. “Our system is always getting better,” she noted, referring to Tripadvisor’s three-pronged approach that incorporates auto-detection, human review, and community feedback. Approximately 7% of submissions in 2024 were auto-rejected before being posted, and another 5% were flagged for human review.

Tripadvisor’s trust and safety team moderated over 4.2 million reviews, which amounted to more than 13% of all submissions in 2024. Additionally, 244,000 reviews were disputed by members during the third stage of the review process, with around 72% remaining on the site while 28% were ultimately removed.

### How to spot a fake

Tripadvisor categorizes fake submissions into four groups: boosting, vandalism, member fraud, and paid reviews, as explained by Foley. There is a common misconception that vandalism represents the majority of fake reviews. In reality, boosting (54%) and member fraud (39%) have long constituted the bulk of these reviews. Paid reviews (4.8%) represent a smaller but more harmful category, often associated with “review farms,” where authors may also engage in other types of online fraud.

Most paid reviews originate in Asia, despite only 17% of authentic submissions coming from the continent last year. In 2024, more than one-third of all paid submissions detected by Tripadvisor were traced back to Indonesia and Vietnam, while in 2022, the majority came from India.

### A ‘cat and mouse’ game

Identifying fake reviews is an ongoing “cat and mouse” challenge, Foley said. However, Tripadvisor is enhancing its detection capabilities each year. “We are the first to admit that we’re never going to reach absolute perfection,” she acknowledged. “We might not catch a fake the first time, but we’ll catch it eventually.”

Tripadvisor employs its own technology, developed over 25 years, to detect fakes, focusing more on the submission process than the content of the reviews. The company utilizes artificial intelligence and behavioral biometrics to identify patterns that reveal abnormalities, such as submission spikes and attempts to mask IP addresses. To combat paid reviewers, Tripadvisor investigators pose as fake review brokers, gathering extensive data on the first paid review to build profiles that help identify future submissions.

While violators aren’t removed from the site, their listings may incur ranking penalties for a year. Repeat offenders receive a red badge indicating that the property is attempting to deceive users.

### AI reviews: not fake, but not allowed

Most reviews generated by AI are not considered fake, according to Foley, who aims to dispel this myth. Many are written by regular travelers seeking to refine their writing. Nonetheless, for the time being, Tripadvisor does not permit them. In 2024, the platform removed over 200,000 reviews suspected of being authored by AI, as noted in the company’s 2025 transparency report. “We will continue to monitor trends and patterns. However, we want to ensure travelers don’t encounter a repetitive landscape on the platform.”