The original post: /r/travel by /u/pcetcedce on 2025-08-03 21:23:11+00:00.

I’m sure you are all like I am in being suspicious of travel reviews, but I thought this was particularly insidious. Google reviews have a category called Local Guide, which is supposed to be local people you can trust for reviews. I started to look at some reviews for places I know very well, and it became clear that many of the local reviewers had never been to the restaurant or hotel.

One observation is that they would give everything five stars. Another pattern was they would use the same words for multiple listings such as “great people and food” for multiple fast food restaurants. It was kind of pitiful because you would see that they would change the words after a while because they probably thought people might notice, like “clean and friendly”.

I was able to confirm that one local guide was a citizen of the small town where I am and used to live, yet she gave the local hotel five stars and said that it was romantic, good for kids, high-tech. First why would she stay in a hotel in her own hometown? Second this was a Marriott Courtyard which was not romantic nor high-tech, whatever high-tech actually means. All of her reviews were five stars.

Google says that if you become a local guide you get some kind of benefits from them but it is not clear what it is. I’m wondering if giving high rating somehow boosts the ability for them to get these benefits. You can also “thumbs up” these reviews anonymously, And I would find a McDonald’s with five stars saying great food and people from a local guide and getting multiple thumbs up. Maybe that is a metric that local guides get credit for as well.

Like I said, savvy travelers know to be wary of reviews that are either way too good or way too bad, But I thought this Google local guide concept was pretty lame and transparent.

Note: I am sure there are legitimate local guides, so I’m not disparaging them, but clearly most of them aren’t.