What must go with customer reviews?
A sentence that says whether you check that reviews come from real buyers, and if so, how. ‘We only show reviews from customers who ordered from us’ is enough, if it is true. If you say nothing, you leave out information the law calls material.
- Reviews with no word on whether they are genuineArt. 7(6) Directive 2005/29/EC
Art. 7(6) Directive 2005/29/EC
Checked at the source on 27 September 2026.
Who it applies to
Every shop or service provider that shows consumer reviews: on its own site, or through a service such as Trustpilot, Yotpo or Judge.me. If you show no reviews, this rule does not concern you.
- Just me
- Under a conditionIf you show customer reviews.
- 2 to 9
- Under a conditionIf you show customer reviews.
- 10 or more
- Under a conditionIf you show customer reviews.
What the law asks
Art. 7(6) Directive 2005/29/EC
Where a trader provides access to consumer reviews of products, information about whether and how the trader ensures that the published reviews come from consumers who actually used or bought the product is material information.
Art. 7(1) Directive 2005/29/EC
Leaving out material information that the average consumer needs to take an informed decision, so that they take a decision they would not otherwise have taken, is a misleading omission.
Annex I, points 23b and 23c
Always prohibited: claiming that reviews come from real buyers without taking reasonable and proportionate steps to check, and submitting or commissioning fake reviews.
National law
The rule was added by the Omnibus Directive (EU) 2019/2161 and applies in every EU country: the Netherlands in article 6:193e(3) of the Civil Code, Germany in § 5b(3) UWG, France in article L121-3 of the Code de la consommation.
Check it yourself, in five minutes
- Find the places on your site where reviews appear: on products, on the homepage, in a widget.
- Is there, on the spot or one click away, a sentence about how you check that they come from real buyers?
- If you use a service such as Trustpilot, look at what it says about its own checks, and link to it or repeat it, if it is accurate.
- Also say how you handle reviews, for example whether you publish all of them, including the negative ones.
What our scan sees
- Whether there are reviews on the pages we looked at, recognised by fourteen services or by schema.org markup.
- Whether those pages carry a statement about how reviews are checked, and the sentence we found.
What our scan does not see
- Whether the reviews are genuine, and whether your checks do what the sentence promises.
- Reviews that only load after a click.
- Whether a crossed-out ‘was’ price was the lowest of the previous thirty days: a single measurement cannot establish that.
Who enforces it
The consumer authority in your country, such as the ACM in the Netherlands or the DGCCRF in France. In Germany competitors and associations also enforce this through the courts.
Questions
Is a Trustpilot widget enough?
Not automatically. The duty lies with you, as the shop that shows the reviews. If the widget itself says how reviews are checked, that can be enough; otherwise, add a sentence.
What if I do not check?
Then say so. The law asks whether you check, and ‘we do not check whether reviews come from buyers’ is honest information. Claiming to check when you do not is always prohibited.
Read it yourself
- Directive 2005/29/EC (opens in a new tab)
The Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, article 7(6) and Annex I.
- Directive (EU) 2019/2161 (opens in a new tab)
The Omnibus Directive that added the rules on reviews.
See where your site stands
The free scan measures this and the four other rules in one go, from a European address, without clicking anything.