CMA Review Compliance Checker: Are Your Reviews Legal?
UK CMA regulations on fake reviews, review gating, and misleading ratings are being enforced. Check if your store's reviews comply with UK consumer law - free, instant results, no account needed.
What Our Compliance Checker Analyses
Rating Accuracy
Whether your displayed star ratings match the actual review distribution. Inflated or manipulated ratings violate CMA guidelines.
Schema Compliance
Your AggregateRating and Review schema markup - ensuring structured data accurately reflects your genuine reviews.
Display Practices
How reviews are displayed, filtered, and ordered. Suppressing negative reviews or prioritising positive ones can breach regulations.
Common Review Compliance Issues
- 1Review gating - only requesting reviews from happy customers, filtering out negative feedback before publication
- 2Undisclosed incentivised reviews - offering discounts or freebies for reviews without clear labelling
- 3Fake or fabricated reviews - publishing reviews not written by genuine customers
- 4Misleading aggregated ratings - displaying star ratings that don't match actual review scores
- 5Suppressing negative reviews - hiding, deleting, or de-prioritising negative feedback
- 6Importing reviews from other products - using reviews from different items to boost new product ratings
Why Review Compliance Matters
The CMA has been actively cracking down on fake and misleading reviews since the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. This isn't just guidance - it's enforceable law with real penalties.
Beyond legal risk, non-compliant review practices erode consumer trust. Google has also started penalising sites with mismatched review schema - where the structured data claims a 4.8-star rating but the actual reviews tell a different story.
Getting your reviews compliant isn't just about avoiding fines - it builds genuine trust with customers and protects your search visibility.
Related Resources
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the UK CMA review compliance rules?
The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) regulations prohibit fake reviews, review gating (only soliciting positive reviews), undisclosed incentivised reviews, misleading review summaries, suppressing negative reviews, and hosting reviews for products the reviewer hasn't purchased. Non-compliance can result in enforcement action and fines.
How do I check if my reviews are CMA compliant?
Enter your store URL in PageDiag's review compliance checker above. We analyse your review display practices, structured data accuracy, review schema markup, and visible compliance indicators. You'll get a compliance report with specific issues and fixes in under 60 seconds.
What is review gating and why is it illegal?
Review gating is the practice of asking customers about their experience first, then only directing satisfied customers to leave a public review while routing unhappy customers to private feedback. The CMA considers this a misleading practice because it artificially inflates ratings. If your review solicitation emails use this pattern, you're at risk.
Do incentivised reviews need to be disclosed?
Yes - any review given in exchange for a discount, free product, or other incentive must be clearly labelled as incentivised. This includes reviews from loyalty programs that reward review submissions. The CMA requires clear, upfront disclosure that an incentive was provided.
Does this apply to Shopify and WooCommerce stores?
Yes - UK CMA review regulations apply to all businesses selling to UK consumers, regardless of platform. Whether you use Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, or any other platform, and whether you use native reviews or third-party apps like Judge.me, Loox, or Trustpilot, compliance is your responsibility.
Is this review compliance checker free?
Yes, completely free. Enter your store URL and get a compliance assessment with specific issues flagged and recommendations. No account required.
Check your review compliance now
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