Online review verification rules in the EU

Omnibus Directive: four rules for traders that show reviews

The Omnibus Directive (EU) 2019/2161 added review rules to the EU's unfair commercial practices law. A trader that gives access to consumer reviews of its products has four rules to follow:

• State whether and how it ensures that published reviews come from consumers who actually used or purchased the product. The directive deems this information material: it is information the customer must receive.
• Never claim that reviews come from such consumers without taking reasonable and proportionate steps to check.
• Never submit, or commission someone else to submit, fake consumer reviews or endorsements.
• Never distort consumer reviews or social endorsements to promote its products.

The last three belong to the list of practices the directive treats as unfair in all circumstances. Leaving out the first one can amount to a misleading omission.

Verified or not: both are allowed, silence is not

France had a more detailed rule before the directive. Article L111-7-2 of the French Consumer Code, in its version in force since February 17, 2024, covers anyone who collects, moderates or publishes consumer reviews, even as a side activity. It requires them to state whether reviews are checked and how, to date each review and its updates, to tell consumers why their review was rejected, and to give businesses a free way to report a doubt about a review's authenticity.

Its implementing decree, issued in 2017, says where. Next to the reviews: whether a checking procedure exists, the publication date of each review and the date of the experience, and the ranking criteria, including chronological order. On an easy-to-find page: whether anything is given in exchange for a review, and the maximum time for publishing and keeping one.

In the United States, the FTC rule on consumer reviews and testimonials, in effect since October 21, 2024, targets fake reviews, reviews paid for a given sentiment and the suppression of negative ones. In the EU, the disclosure itself is required. Writing "these reviews are not checked" is allowed; writing "verified reviews" without a real check is not.

A star rating is enough to be covered

This percentage covers about 10 websites we audited between August 14, 2026 and September 24, 2026, the ones where this point could be checked. Many were audited because a defect showed up quickly, so the figure describes our audits, not websites in general.

The rules cover anyone who publishes reviews, even as a side activity, on a store as on a service business. You do not need a reviews page: an average star rating on a product page, a top bar announcing a number of reviews, or a review platform widget is enough.

In the published report on a sporting goods store, a top bar announces "5708 avis sur Trustpilot" (5,708 reviews on Trustpilot) and product pages show ratings, with nothing on how they are checked. The same report finds that the structured data on some pages gives a product the overall rating of the site, while the stars Google displays must describe the item itself.

The published sample on a B2B business website shows the other kind of social proof: named customer testimonials, with no rating and no review platform. The report does not count them as reviews; it reads them with the rest of the content, and finds the same testimonial attributed to two executives of two different companies.

One sentence near the reviews, one page with the details

Everything here comes down to text and moderation choices, made with whoever runs your site and, if the reviews come from a platform, with the platform:

1. List every place where reviews appear: product pages, home page, top bar, footer, service pages. An average rating or a widget counts as displayed reviews.
2. Decide whether you check reviews, and how: verified purchase, invitation sent after an order, moderation before publication. Not checking them is allowed, as long as you say so.
3. Write a sentence next to the reviews that says whether a check exists, and link to a page that describes its main features, any incentives, the time to publication and retention, and the grounds for refusal.
4. If the reviews come from a platform, ask it how it checks them, and repeat that information, or a link to its page, next to the widget.
5. Only write "verified reviews" if a real check exists, and apply the same rule to negative reviews as to the others.
6. Have the information checked on every type of page that shows reviews, and again after each theme or widget change.

Most of these fixes are text. Reviews also weigh on the credibility readers and Google grant a site, as the guide on Google's E-E-A-T criteria explains. And the review information sits alongside the other items an online store must show, gathered in the list of EU requirements for an online store.

The audit treats a site as showing reviews when it finds a numeric rating, review markup in the structured data, or the name of a review platform. The word "review" alone is not enough: "our review of this vintage" is the merchant's own opinion, not a customer's. The rating is read in the text displayed on the page, not in its code.

When reviews are shown, the audit looks for the information on how they are checked. What counts is that the information is there, as in the law: the audit judges neither the reviews' authenticity nor the quality of the check. Reviews shown without it are counted as a compliance defect, and the report states what was seen: the rating, the widget or the named platform. A widget is also recorded as a third-party service, with the company that runs it, among the other recipients of the visit.