Is Shopify actually addressing the fake review problem?

[Ollie_autoBlogger]

Hey everyone,

Apologies – rant incoming. I know this topic has probably been raised before in other posts, but it’s important to bring it up again, because nothing seems to be changing.

I first raised this on the main Community boards, but I wanted to bring it up here too, because it affects every honest developer on the platform. You can read the original discussion here: https://community.shopify.com/t/is-shopify-ever-going-to-take-fake-app-store-reviews-seriously

The fake review problem on the Shopify App Store has got completely out of hand. I woke up this morning to six new emails offering fake reviews within about twelve hours, which shows just how widespread this has become.

Apps are clearly taking advantage of these offers. Reviews that are obviously fabricated, often posted within minutes of installation and using similar wording — or sometimes wording that isn’t even related to the app at all — are still sitting at the top of their categories month after month. Many of these reviews come from boilerplate “review farm” stores that anyone could identify with a quick check.

Meanwhile, genuine developers who spend months or years building quality products, supporting merchants properly, and earning real feedback are being buried under fake five-star ratings.

Shopify says that reviews are monitored and that suspicious activity can be reported, but in practice nothing seems to change. I’ve personally been reporting fake reviews and suspicious patterns for a good few years now, yet the same apps are still thriving on manipulated reviews. There are community threads going all the way back to 2016 saying exactly what we’re all still saying now, which really shows how long this issue has been ignored.

More transparency is also badly needed. It’s confusing that, rather than improving visibility, Shopify has actually taken steps backwards by removing links to the reviewing stores. That change has made it much harder to verify which reviews are real and which are fake. It feels like we’ve lost one of the few simple tools developers had to spot suspicious activity.

So my question is simple: is Shopify actually doing anything to tackle this problem?

It’s not just hurting honest developers, it’s also damaging merchant trust in the App Store as a whole. I’d really like to hear if anyone has seen any sign of progress or communication from Shopify on this (beyond the quiet removal of non-paid store reviews a few months ago), or if anyone has anything to add.

This isn’t meant as an attack on Shopify or anyone on the team. I know moderation and fraud prevention are challenging, and I completely understand that it’s not a simple problem to solve. But as developers who care deeply about the platform, we just want to see some transparency and real movement on an issue that’s been holding back honest apps for far too long.

Ollie

P.S. Having a dedicated email address or form where developers can forward fake review offers would be a simple and helpful first step for Shopify to take. It’s by no means a complete solution, but it would at least show that the issue is being taken seriously and help gather evidence on where these reviews are coming from.

[zlac]

Agree with everything above.

I also get dozens of emails offering fake reviews. And I struggle with visibility on the app store, although I think I have a quality app. The same app for WordPress and JS has 30k sales on Codecanyon. Here it gets only couple of installs per day, despite having the the free plan, free trial for paid plans, optimized app listing, google ads, youtube videos about the app etc.

[Ollie_autoBlogger]

Hey, completely feel the same. It’s disheartening seeing how much effort goes into building and promoting a genuinely good app, only to be buried under fake five-star listings that everyone knows are dodgy. The lack of visibility for honest apps is a huge problem, and it’s frustrating that Shopify still hasn’t introduced any proper system for reporting or verifying reviews. Hopefully, more of us speaking up will get some attention on it.

[Ollie_autoBlogger]

Just to add — I had another six fake review offer emails come through today, all from the same “marketing” domain. It really shows how automated and widespread this has become. Has anyone else been getting a similar wave lately?

[Ollie_autoBlogger]

Just adding a quick follow-up to keep this in view, as it’s still very much an active issue.

Over the past week I’ve had even more fake review offers come through, and I’m still seeing the same patterns across the App Store. The apps benefiting from these reviews are continuing to climb the rankings, while those of us playing by the rules are left at a disadvantage.

If anyone has heard anything from Shopify, even unofficially, about steps being taken behind the scenes, it would be good to know. At the moment it still feels like we’re all guessing.

Would be great to hear from other developers who are noticing the same thing, or who have ideas on how we can push for more visibility on this. The more noise we make about it, the harder it is for the issue to be ignored.

Ollie

[Ollie_autoBlogger]

Just a quick update from my side. Since posting this, I haven’t seen any movement from Shopify at all. I’m still getting the same stream of fake review offer emails, and there’s still nowhere to send them. Even having a simple address where I could forward these offers would be a small but meaningful first step, yet there’s been no sign of anything like that.

What worries me even more is that a few developers I’ve spoken with privately have said they’re starting to feel the only way to keep up is to use fake reviews themselves. When honest developers reach that point, it shows how badly the system is tilting. I’m sticking with genuine reviews as always, because I’m hoping that if Shopify eventually steps in, it will have been worth holding the line.

If anyone is interested, I’m also looking into setting up a Slack group for developers who want to stay on the honest side of things. It could be a useful place to share information, compare notes, and support each other while this mess continues. If that sounds helpful, let me know and I’ll put something together.

[Ollie_autoBlogger]

No updates or progress at all on the fake review issue. The apps I’ve reported and am monitoring are still growing with obviously fake reviews, and Shopify doesn’t seem interested in taking any action.

Shopify, can you please step in and address this?

[Ollie_autoBlogger]

No movement on fake reviews. The issue only appears to be getting worse…

[Ollie_autoBlogger]

Still no action, even on the most obvious reviews. I’ll keep this post going until something finally starts to happen.

[Kyle_W]

Just posting to personally say thanks for fighting the good fight, @Ollie_autoBlogger.

Part of me wonders if you should start posting each of your findings/examples in some public format? It might help to encourage some more accountability on Shopify’s part

[Ollie_autoBlogger]

Hey @Kyle_W, thanks for the support. Fake reviews are ruining the app market for honest developers and store owners, so I’ll keep drawing attention to it.

Regarding public examples, I’m reluctant to share specific ones, as I wouldn’t want to unfairly single out any particular app without very clear evidence. But here are a few anonymised examples:

In one case a reviewer publicly claimed they were selling fake reviews and had not been paid (this isn’t uncommon). This appeared alongside around nine other negative reviews posted at roughly the same time, which was clearly unusual. Yet Shopify appears to have taken no action.

There are also apps with hundreds of reviews where more than 50% of reviewers have used the app for less than 10 minutes, again with no visible action from Shopify.

In some cases, we see reviews over 1,000 characters long from accounts that have only used the app for two minutes, which naturally raises questions. Once again, no action.

Or another example: no reviews for weeks, then suddenly 40 in a single week, followed by 20 the week after, and then back to none again. Yet still, no action.

I also don’t want to share too much detail, as I don’t want people creating fake reviews learning from the research that’s being done. And as mentioned, I’m not looking to single out individual apps.

I have been developing a tool for “reviewing reviews”, which I’m not planning to share publicly at this stage. However, if you’re interested, feel free to send me a DM. It’s still a work in progress and not yet giving completely accurate signals in my opinion, but it’s a good starting point.

To Shopify, this situation is starting to get seriously out of hand. Merchants rely heavily on reviews when deciding which apps to trust with their stores, and they are often spending real money based on what they read. When those reviews may not be genuine, it undermines trust in the entire ecosystem and puts both merchants and honest developers at a disadvantage. @Liam-Shopify @Alan_G @Paige-Shopify

[Paige-Shopify]

Thanks @Ollie_autoBlogger for taking the time to share your concerns here.

I want you to let you know that we hear you, and this feedback has not gone unnoticed. In fact, we’ve recently built a dedicated taskforce to work on tackling this problem. While I’m not able to share more details at this time, I can assure you that we’re actively working on improvements. When we have something we can share, we’ll be sure to update the community.

In the meantime, I’m interested to learn about what you think would help ensure a good quality review. Should the shop require a certain usage time? Be of a certain age or have made a certain number of orders?

PS: I like your idea of having a dedicated email address or form where fake review offers could be forwarded to.

[Ollie_autoBlogger]

Hey, thanks so much for letting us know this is hopefully going to be taken seriously. It would be great to see the App Store reviews properly cleaned up.

Also, I apologise if I sometimes sound like a squeaky wheel on this. It’s just that I’ve seen the issue being raised for years and, from my perspective and the perspective of other developers, it seems to have been getting worse rather than better. I’m only pushing on it because I genuinely want to see the App Store be a fair place for both Shopify store owners and honest developers. I certainly don’t mean any offence to anyone on the Shopify team, and I hope my messages come across in the constructive spirit they’re intended.

Regarding some of the ideas I have around improving review quality, I’m not sure it’s wise to go into too much detail publicly, as there are likely people involved in fake review farming who read these posts as well. I don’t think it’s possible to send DMs on the developer community, but if anyone from Shopify would like to reach out I’d be very happy to share some of the ideas and patterns I’ve come up with through my research.

Of course, properly identifying fake reviews is much harder without access to the backend data that Shopify has. From Shopify’s side though, I imagine it would be fairly straightforward to determine whether a store leaving a review is actually active or not.

I’ve also noticed review farms have also benefited from a few changes over the years that have made things easier for them. For example, the removal of direct links to the reviewer’s store next to each review has made it much harder for potential app users to quickly check whether a store looks real or active. Although these days many review farm stores can look quite convincing from the front end, having that visibility at least made it possible to do a quick sense check.