is it legit?

fake review checker for google maps

Google says 5 stars. The reviews say otherwise. We run the stats, and tell you whether the rating is earned, with the evidence to back it up.

or connect your ai agent

use with your ai agent

Step 1: connect it once
in claude code
```
claude mcp add --transport http isitlegit https://isitlegitreviews.com/mcp
```
in claude.ai, cursor or any other mcp client

claude.ai: Settings Connectors Add custom connector. Everything else takes the same URL (Streamable HTTP).
```
https://isitlegitreviews.com/mcp
```
Your client signs you in the first time; free accounts score up to 100 listings a month.
Step 2: ask it about a place

“Are the Google reviews for the Blue Lantern Cafe on Main Street legit?”

“Compare the 4.5+ star hotels in Hoi An under $80 a night and tell me which ratings are actually earned.”

“Is the top-rated dentist near me rated honestly, or is it padded with fake reviews?”

The agent collects the listing's reviews with its own browser and sends them to us; the answer comes back with the grade and the evidence, and the place appears here for everyone. Google usually wants that browser signed in before it will sort or load more reviews, so the agent reads Maps through your account, much like scrolling the listing yourself; if you plan to check many places, a secondary Google account is a sensible choice.

how it works

what signals do we look for?

We read a place's full review history and weigh the signals that are costly for a review farm to fake:

Burst campaigns: clusters of 5 star reviews dumped on a single day by low-history accounts. A genuine surge keeps a place's normal share of Local Guides, so it isn't counted against it.
Drip-feed farms: reviews arriving nearly every day at a pace no organic business sustains, a paid stream spread thin to dodge obvious spikes.
Cross-posted text: the same review copied word-for-word onto other businesses, a farm seeding a whole chain.
Throwaway accounts: single-review profiles padding the average up.
Review solicitation: reviewers themselves reporting that the business rewards, pressures, or steers reviews (“free dessert if you leave 5 stars”). An LLM reads every such mention; only firsthand reports of policy-violating practices count, and the penalty deepens with each independent witness. Politely asking for a review is allowed by Google and never counted.
Too-perfect records: a spotless, unanimous 5 star history often signals curated or incentivized reviews, so it can't earn a top grade, even when we can't prove fraud.

what's the “adjusted rating”?

What hard-to-fake reviewers actually give, vs the headline number. A gap means the rating is inflated. Two groups qualify:

Credible reviewers are Local Guides who also wrote a substantive review. The badge alone is gameable (farms run Local Guide accounts that drop bare 5 star ratings), so we only count ones that put real words behind the stars.
Established accounts have 30+ lifetime reviews, regardless of badge or text. Farms pad accounts with a handful of reviews to look plausible, but aging thousands of accounts past 30 is the expensive part.

Each place is anchored to whichever group gives the more conservative rating. When a place corrects the headline number, the “per credible reviewers” / “per established accounts” label tells you which.

what does a high score mean?

It means we found no evidence the business is manipulating or inflating its own reviews. It does not promise the rating is accurate: a clean place can still be mis-rated by too few reviews, reviewers who self-select, or honest reviews that just don't match your experience. We measure whether the number looks gamed, not whether it's right.