How Reviews get verified
Understanding Verified Reviews
Understanding Verified Reviews
Reviews marked Verified display a checkmark badge next to the reviewer's name — both in your admin review list and on your storefront. This article explains what "Verified" actually means today, how a review earns that badge, and how you can control it yourself.
What "Verified" means
The Verified badge is a label on each review, and it can be turned on or off per review — either automatically, depending on how the review was submitted, or manually by you. It is not currently tied to a cryptographic or line-item-level check against a specific Shopify order. Think of it as "this review came from a trusted source (or was confirmed by you)" rather than "this exact order was matched to this exact review."
How a review becomes Verified
Whether a review starts out Verified depends on where it came from:
Source | Verified by default? |
|---|---|
Submitted through your storefront's "Write a Review" widget | ✅ Yes, automatically |
Submitted via a post-purchase "Leave a review" email link | ❌ No — starts unverified |
Imported from a CSV file | ❌ No, unless the |
Imported via the AliExpress/CJ Dropshipping bookmarklet | ❌ No |
On-site widget submissions: Any review a customer writes directly on your product page through the review widget is automatically marked Verified. This is the simplest and most common path, but keep in mind it doesn't check whether that visitor actually bought the product — anyone who can load the page can submit a review, and it will still be marked Verified.
Post-purchase email reviews: If you send review-request emails after an order ships, and a customer clicks through to leave a review, that submission is linked to a real order behind the scenes — but it is not automatically marked Verified today. If you want these to show the badge, you'll need to verify them manually (see below).
Imported reviews: Reviews brought in through CSV import start out unverified, unless you explicitly set verified to true/1/yes for a row in your CSV file. Reviews captured via the AliExpress or CJ Dropshipping bookmarklet always come in unverified, since there's no way to confirm those were real purchases from your store.
Marking a review verified or unverified yourself
You're always in control of the final badge, regardless of how a review came in:
Open the reviews manager in your admin.
Find the review you want to update.
Use the Mark verified / Unverify action on that review to toggle the badge on or off.
This is useful for:
Confirming a review that came from a post-purchase email link (since those don't auto-verify).
Removing the badge from a widget submission you can't confirm was a real customer.
Correcting an imported review's status after the fact.
Where the badge appears
Storefront widget: A checkmark badge appears next to the reviewer's name on verified reviews.
Admin review list: The same checkmark appears in the review table so you can see verification status at a glance while managing reviews.
Good to know
There is currently no store-wide setting like "require a purchase to leave a review" or "auto-verify all reviews" — verification is decided per review, either by the submission source or by your manual toggle.
Because widget submissions are verified by default and post-purchase email submissions are not, don't assume the badge always means "confirmed purchase." If accuracy matters for your store (for example, if you rely on the badge for trust signals), periodically review recently submitted reviews and adjust verification manually where needed.
Related
Importing and Exporting Reviews — see how the
verifiedcolumn works when bringing in reviews from a CSV file.