Posting Guidelines

Last updated: 18 July 2026

Every review on Real Reviews is checked by a person before it's published. These are the standards we hold reviews to — they exist to keep the platform useful for consumers and fair to businesses.

Write about your own experience

• Reviews must describe your own, firsthand experience — not a friend's story, something you read online, or a general opinion about a brand you've never dealt with.
• Review the right listing: the product you bought, the service you used, or the business location you visited.
• Keep it recent enough to be relevant. A review of an experience from many years ago may be declined.

Be honest and specific

• Say what happened. Specifics — what you bought, what went right or wrong, how the business responded — make reviews genuinely useful.
• Exaggeration and fabrication are grounds for removal, whatever the star rating.
• Both positive and negative reviews are welcome. We only care that they're real.

What's not allowed

• Fake, paid-for, traded, or AI-fabricated reviews.
• Defamatory claims, threats, abuse, hate speech or discrimination.
• Other people's personal information — full names of staff, phone numbers, addresses.
• Spam, advertising, links to competitors, or off-topic content.
• Reviews written in exchange for payment, discounts or rewards contingent on a positive rating.

Conflicts of interest

• Don't review your own business, your employer, or a business you have a financial interest in.
• Don't review your competitors.
• Current or recent employees may not review the business they work(ed) for.

Evidence for Real reviews

• To be classified as a Real review, attach evidence of a genuine transaction: a receipt, invoice, order confirmation, or photos of the product or completed service.
• Redact sensitive details (card numbers, unrelated personal information) before uploading — we only need to see that the transaction happened.
• Evidence is reviewed privately by our team and is never displayed publicly.

Moderation and appeals

• Reviews that don't meet these guidelines are declined or removed; repeat or deliberate breaches may lead to account suspension.
• If your review was declined and you believe we got it wrong, reply to the notification or contact [email protected] — a person will take a second look.
• Businesses who believe a review breaches these guidelines can flag it the same way. We remove reviews for breaching guidelines, never for being negative.