Online Review Statistics - 2024 Survey Data

Online shopping is a big part of our lives, with an estimated 267.83 million digital buyers in the U.S. as of 2024. [1] But just how much do online reviews influence our shopping habits, and how many of us would think twice about buying something if it had negative reviews?

We surveyed 1,014 people to find out their opinions on online reviews, how often they read them, how often they write them, and the impact they have on our shopping journeys.

Key statistics

Three-quarters (76.1%) of people always check reviews before they buy something online, and 92.8% of people say online reviews have impacted their buying decisions.
For every negative review someone writes, they write three positive reviews - people are more likely to review good experiences with products or companies.
The majority of people (74.7%) would trust a product or company with a small number of reviews averaging 5/5 stars more than one with thousands of reviews averaging 4/5 stars.
Younger people (aged 18-26) are more likely to check reviews with 93% avoiding making a purchase without checking reviews, compared with 63% of people aged 59-77.
Four in five (79%) people think that fake reviews are a problem when it comes to online product reviews, with the FTC citing over 700 companies for deceptive endorsements in one year.
Data shows that 43% of reviews for best-selling products on Amazon are not genuine.
Most people (59%) trust online reviews more than personal recommendations from people they know or recommendations from influencers and celebrities.

How often do people buy products online?

Almost all of the people we surveyed (99.2%) said they buy products online at least every few months, with most people (36.9%) making online purchases once a week. A quarter (25.3%) of people say they buy things online multiple times a week, while 30.1% of people buy things online a few times a month.

The majority of shoppers read reviews before they buy

According to our survey, three-quarters (76.1%) of people always check reviews before they buy something. One in five (21.4%) say they sometimes check reviews, and only 2.5% say they never check reviews before buying something.

Younger people are most likely to check reviews before making purchases online, with 93% of people aged 18-26 saying they always look at reviews, compared to 63% of people aged 59-77.

Online reviews influence 9 in 10 people's buying habits

The vast majority of people (92.8%) say they make buying decisions based on online product reviews. Around three-quarters (74.7%) say that reading positive reviews for products makes them more likely to buy them, and 65.8% say that reading negative reviews makes them less likely to purchase a product.

We asked people, on a scale from 1-5 with 1 being not at all and 5 being very much, how much an online review would affect their decision to buy something. Most people (57.8%) chose 4, indicating that online reviews have a heavy influence over people's buying decisions.

Most people write reviews as well as read them

As we mentioned, 97.5% of people read reviews at least some of the time when making purchases. According to our survey, 95.8% of people write reviews for at least some of the products they buy. 44% say they always write product reviews, 37.3% say they write reviews for most things they buy, while 14.5% said they only write reviews some of the time.

The majority of respondents (78.2%) said they would be more likely to post a review of a product or service if they had a positive experience. Only 9.3% said they would be more likely to post a negative review, and 12.5% said their likelihood of posting a review was the same for positive or negative experiences.

Gen Z (people aged 18-26) most commonly write reviews for products they buy, with 89.2% saying they write reviews for most or all of their purchases.

Most popular platforms for review posters

We asked respondents which online platforms they used most often when posting product reviews.

Of those who said they did write reviews online, the most common platform they posted them on is the website they purchased the product or service from, with 56% of reviewers saying they post here. This was closely followed by independent review sites like Trustpilot (55.3%).

Trust in online reviews

Not all online reviews are created equally and certain factors make people more or less likely to trust the reviews they read about a product or company.

When asked which platforms they would trust the most when reading online reviews, most people (54.7%) said they would trust product reviews from an online retailer's website the most, followed by reviews on the company's own website (52.5%).

People were least likely to trust reviews from Facebook with only 16.2% selecting this as their most trusted review platform.

People trust ratings more than the number of reviews

We asked our survey respondents whether they would trust a product or company with a small amount of reviews averaging 5/5 stars, or a large amount of reviews averaging 4/5 stars.

Almost three-quarters (74.7%) of people said they would be more likely to trust a product or company with ten 5-star reviews, rather than a product or company with over 2000 reviews averaging 4 stars.

Online reviews are more trusted than personal recommendations

When asked which type of review or recommendation they would trust the most, the majority of people (59%) chose online reviews, while 38.7% say they are more likely to trust personal recommendations from people they know. Only 2.4% of people say they have the most trust in recommendations from celebrities or influencers. This echoes other research into this topic which found that nearly 90% of consumers don't trust influencers. [2]

The average online review is 200 characters long

In 2010, the average online review length was 600 characters. This has reduced by 65% with data now showing that the average review is just 200 characters. Yelp and TripAdvisor reviews are generally the longest, with Facebook and Google reviews typically being shorter. [3]

How negative reviews impact buying decisions

Of our respondents, 78% said that if they saw a company had a lot of negative reviews, it would put them off buying from them, however, 14.5% said it wouldn't put them off, and 7.5% said it might but it'd depend on what they were buying.

Additionally, 84.5% say they would be less likely to be put off by a negative review if they were already familiar with the brand.

Most off-putting words and phrases in online reviews

Certain words and phrases can have more of an impact on buying decisions than others when it comes to online reviews. We asked our respondents which phrases they would find the most off-putting if they saw them in a review for a product they were thinking of buying.

People found the phrase "it stopped working after a week" the most off-putting with 32.3% saying this would make them rethink buying a product, followed closely by "dangerous" at 32.1%.

Other common words and phrases in reviews that would turn people off buying something include "dirty", "not suitable for kids" and "delivery took too long".

Reviewing hotels and accommodation

We asked our respondents whether they write reviews after they have stayed at a hotel or other type of accommodation. Almost seven in ten (69.3%) people say they always post reviews of hotels they stay at, while 22.8% said they only post reviews of hotels that encourage them to.

The vast majority (90.4%) said that reading negative reviews of a hotel would stop them from visiting.

TripAdvisor review statistics

In 2022, 30.2 million reviews were submitted by TripAdvisor members, surpassing 1 billion reviews in total. According to their Review Transparency Report, around 2.3 million reviews were manually reviewed by moderators, and 1.3 million reviews were identified as fake and removed from the site.

The average rating on TripAdvisor reviews is 4.35/5, with the largest percentage of reviews (71%) being 5/5. [4]

Fake online reviews

When it comes to looking up online reviews before making a purchase, fake reviews can cause issues and create a misleading picture of a product or company. 79% of our respondents think that fake reviews are a problem when it comes to reading reviews for products.

In fact, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) cited over 700 companies for deceptive endorsements in 2021. These include offenses such as claiming a third party has endorsed a product when they haven't, misrepresenting an endorser as a current or recent user of a product, and using testimonials to make unsubstantiated or deceptive claims. [5]

The FTC also proposed a ban on fake reviews in 2023 to stop marketers from using illicit review and endorsement practices to deceive customers. [6]

Google said in 2020 that it removed or blocked 55 million reviews that violated its review policy, and removed nearly 3 million fake business profiles. [7]

Amazon's fake review problem

A study by Circuit analyzed 33.5 million reviews and found that 43% of Amazon's best selling products had unreliable feedback. Products in the clothes, shoes, and jewelry category fared the worst with 88% of the reviews being fake, this was followed by electronics with 53% fake reviews.

Amazon's own-brand products had the most fake reviews with 1.5 million, followed by Apple products which had 1 million fake reviews. [8]

Survey methodology

We surveyed 1,014 Americans in January 2024 to ask questions about online reviews, how often people read and write them, and how much they impact people's buying decisions.