Are unflattering reviews on comparison sites or user-generated content potentially libelous?

i'm not a lawyer either, but my clients build review sites and this is a question that has come up on occasion. the "best practice" in order to cover yourself seems to be to perform due diligence to ensure that the reviews are real, and not fakes that are lodged to besmirch competition. also, you will want to offer any company the right to add a reply on your site in response to any bad review that is posted by a user about the company or any of its products.

i have a client who runs a big hostel reviews site and his legal counsel advised him to ensure that hostel owners could respond to any review about their establishment that they disagreed with. however, he's operating out of Australia and the advice you get from a lawyer elsewhere may vary.

so the unflattering reviews that would cause you the most problems are not from real customers with legitimate grievances, but those from people whose agenda is to destroy the reputation of their competition. to reduce the likelihood of these reviews being posted to your site you do things like ensuring your reviewers aren't anonymous, and where possible, you get them to provide their real names (not always possible, but it can be done in some instances). you also post warnings about how if a fake review is posted on your site you'll eventually figure it out and make sure everyone is informed about what you did (because the press is always looking for a good story!)

Stephen Carter
creator of Review Foundry