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Publishing and hiding reviews

Automatically publishing reviews or choosing to moderate them manually.

Updated this week

Publishing all reviews, including negative ones, shows that your brand values honesty and transparency. Shoppers are more likely to trust stores that don’t filter out negative feedback.

Judge.me makes it easy to build trust by publishing customer reviews automatically or manually. By default, all reviews are published automatically to help you share feedback quickly and transparently. You can also switch to manual moderation if you prefer to review each submission first.

Auto-publish reviews

Auto-publish all reviews (default)

By default, Judge.me automatically publishes all reviews to help you earn that trust with every purchase.

To publish all new reviews automatically:

  1. From your Judge.me admin, go to Manage reviews > Moderation.

  2. In the Auto publish reviews section, select "Publish new reviews automatically".

  3. Click Save.


See the steps for the new app design (coming soon)

To enable auto-publishing for new reviews:

  1. From your Judge.me admin, go to Settings > Publishing and moderation.

  2. In the Auto publish reviews section, select Publish new reviews automatically.

  3. Click Save.


Auto-publish reviews with certain ratings

Available on the Awesome plan. Start with a 15-day free trial!

To auto-publish reviews with specific ratings (e.g., 4 or 5 stars):

  1. From your Judge.me admin, go to Manage reviews > Moderation.

  2. In the Auto publish reviews card, select "Publish new reviews automatically".

  3. Under Auto publish rating criteria, choose your criteria and click Save.

Option

What it means

Publish all reviews automatically

All reviews will be auto-published (default)

At least 2 stars

Only 2, 3, 4, 5-star reviews will be auto-published

At least 3 stars

Only 3, 4, 5-star reviews will be auto-published

At least 4 stars

Only 4 and 5-star reviews will be auto-published

At least 5 stars

Only 5-star reviews will be auto-published

Reviews that don't meet the criteria you choose will be set as Pending. Pending reviews don't show in your live store.

To comply with Shopify's regulations:

  • From the time the review is submitted, you have 14 days to change the status of the Pending review to Published or Hidden.

  • After 14 days, Pending reviews that are not moderated will be published automatically.

  • Pending reviews cannot be hidden automatically. You'd need to manually publish or hide them.

We strongly encourage you to publish all valid reviews as soon as possible.


See the steps for the new app design (coming soon)

To enable auto-publishing based on rating:

  1. From your Judge.me admin, go to Settings > Publishing and moderation.

  2. In the Auto publish reviews section, select Publish new reviews automatically.

  3. Under Auto publish rating criteria, choose the minimum star rating you want to publish automatically (e.g., 4 or 5 stars).

  4. Click Save.


Don't auto-publish new reviews

If you want to check the reviews before they appear on your store, you can enable manual moderation.

  1. From your Judge.me admin, go to Manage reviews > Moderation.

  2. In the Auto publish reviews section, select "Publish reviews manually".

  3. Click Save.


See the steps for the new app design (coming soon)

To turn on manual review moderation:

  1. From your Judge.me admin, go to Settings > Publishing and moderation.

  2. In the Auto publish reviews section, select Publish reviews manually.

  3. Click Save.


Publish reviews

To publish a review:

  1. From your Judge.me admin, go to Manage Reviews > Reviews Dashboard.

  2. Choose the review you want and click on its status dropdown.

  3. Select "Publish reviews" to change the status to Published.

To publish multiple reviews at once:

  1. From your Judge.me admin, go to Manage Reviews > Reviews Dashboard.

  2. Check the box on the left of the reviews you want to publish, then click the Publish reviews button at the bottom of the page.


See the steps for the new app design (coming soon)

To publish a review:

  1. From your Judge.me admin, go to Reviews.

  2. Find the review you want to publish and click the Status dropdown.

  3. Select Publish review to change its status to Published.

To publish multiple reviews at once:

  1. From your Judge.me admin, go to Reviews.

  2. Check the box next to each review you want to publish.

  3. Click the Publish reviews button at the bottom of the page.


Hide and archive reviews

We believe that authentic customer feedback builds credibility. While we don’t support deleting all types of reviews, we do offer tools to manage reviews that are duplicated, inaccurate, or imported incorrectly.

  • Imported reviews can be permanently deleted — learn how to delete them here.

  • All other reviews cannot be deleted but they can be hidden or archived instead.

    • Hiding or archiving non-verified reviews will not affect your Judge.me medals. However, doing so for verified reviews may lower your Transparency level.

Hide reviews

Sometimes you need to hide a review to maintain a safe, relevant, and transparent review environment for your shoppers. Hiding a review make the review hidden on your storefront, but it still appears in your Reviews dashboard.

To align with review transparency policies and consumer protection laws, you need to select a reason from a predefined list when hiding a review.

To hide a review:

  1. From your Judge.me admin, go to Manage Reviews > Reviews Dashboard.

  2. Choose the review you want and click on its status dropdown.

  3. Select a reason for hiding that review.

  4. Once you select a reason, the review status will change to Hidden, with the selected reason.

To hide multiple reviews at once:

  1. From your Judge.me admin, go to Manage Reviews > Reviews Dashboard.

  2. Check the box on the left of the reviews you want to hide, then click the Hide reviews button at the bottom of the page.

  3. Select the reason to hide from the drop-down menu and click Hide reviews.

To hide all reviews for a product:

  1. From your Judge.me admin, go to Manage Reviews > Products & Groups.

  2. Find the products you want to hide the reviews.

  3. In the Reviews column, click the number of reviews, which will show you all reviews of that product in the Reviews dashboard.

  4. Check the box on the top left of to select all reviews, then click the Hide reviews button at the bottom of the page.

  5. Select the reason to hide from the drop-down menu and click Hide reviews.


See the steps for the new app design (coming soon)

To hide a review:

  1. From your Judge.me admin, go to Reviews.

  2. Find the review you want to hide and click the Status dropdown.

  3. Select a reason from the list to hide the review.

  4. Once you select a reason, the review status will change to Hidden, with the selected reason.

To hide multiple reviews at once:

  1. From your Judge.me admin, go to Reviews.

  2. Check the box next to each review you want to hide.

  3. Click Hide reviews at the bottom of the page.

  4. Select a reason from the dropdown menu.

  5. Click Hide reviews to confirm.

To hide all reviews for a product:

  1. From your Judge.me admin, go to Reviews.

  2. Search for the product you want to hide the reviews.

  3. Click the number in the Reviews column to view all reviews for that product.

  4. Select all reviews using the checkbox at the top left.

  5. Click the Hide reviews button at the bottom of the page.

  6. Choose a reason from the dropdown menu and click Hide reviews to confirm.


List of reasons

Reason

What it means

Unrelated to the product

The review discusses something unrelated to the product itself (e.g., delivery or packaging).

Legal reasons

The review contains potentially defamatory or legally sensitive statements.

Inappropriate language

The review includes offensive, abusive, or discriminatory language.

Foreign language

The review is in a language not supported or understood by your store’s audience.

Contains private information

The review shares personal data like full names, emails, or order numbers.

False or misleading

The review spreads inaccurate information about the product.

Duplicated review

The same review has been posted multiple times.

Fake

The review is suspected to be fabricated or written by a bot or a non-genuine user.

Other

A reason that doesn’t fit the above categories but still warrants moderation.

Archive a review

Archiving a review will hide the review from your storefront and move it to the Archive tab in your Reviews dashboard. This is useful when a review is outdated, submitted by mistake, or no longer relevant.

To archive a review:

  1. From your Judge.me admin, go to Manage Reviews > Reviews Dashboard.

  2. Find the review you want to archive.

  3. Click the 3-dots icon (...) on the right of the review and select Archive.

  4. Since the archived review will be hidden, select a reason for hiding and click Archive review.

To see the reviews that you archived:

  1. From your Judge.me admin, go to Manage Reviews > Reviews Dashboard.

  2. Go to the Archive tab.


See the steps for the new app design (coming soon)

To archive a review:

  1. From your Judge.me admin, go to Reviews.

  2. Find the review you want to archive.

  3. Click the three-dot icon () next to the review and select Archive.

  4. Choose a reason for hiding the review, then click Archive review button to confirm.

To view archived reviews:

  1. From your Judge.me admin, go to Reviews.

  2. Click the Archive tab to see all archived reviews.


Troubleshoot


Some reviews are published without my consent

Issue:

Some reviews got published automatically, even though they were hidden before and you did not manually publish them.

Why it happens:

When you enable auto-publish with certain ratings, reviews that don't meet the criteria you choose will be set as Pending.

To comply with Shopify's regulations, any review that remains in Pending status for more than 14 days is automatically published. That means, within that 14 days, if you don't manually publish or hide that review, it will be automatically published after that.

How to fix:

To make sure pending reviews are not published automatically, regularly check and curate your Pending reviews before the 14-day window ends.


I can’t click "Hide Review"

Issue:

After clicking the status dropdown, you try to click Hide review but it appears to be unresponsive.

Why it happens:

Hide review here is just a heading. You need to select a specific reason underneath it to proceed. Simply clicking the heading won’t take any action.

How to fix:

Make sure to select 1 of the listed reasons (e.g. Spam, Fake, Legal reasons). Once you select a reason, the review will be hidden accordingly.


The Hide/Publish button is greyed out for me

Issue:

You're trying to hide a review but the status dropdown is greyed out and you can't change its Published status. When hovering over the status dropdown, you see a message: "Shop App reviews can't be hidden, but you can disable the syndication instead."

Why it happens:

Under the customer name on the left of the review, check the source of the review. If the source says "via Shop app", it means the review was syndicated from Shop App and cannot be hidden.

How to fix:

While you can’t hide Shop App reviews individually, you can stop the reviews from syncing from Shop App to Judge.me.


I already hid a review but it's still showing

Issue:

You hid a review and its status already changed to Hidden, but the review is still showing in your live store (e.g. in the Review Widget or Reviews Carousel).

Why it happens:

After you hide a review, it can take up to 5 minutes for the change to reflect on your storefront.

How to fix:

Wait a few minutes, then refresh your storefront or check in an incognito window.


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