• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, April 19, 2023

Reviews left on Tripadvisor in 2022 rose more than 20%, compared with the prior year, to 30.2 million as the world's explorers return after two years of lockdowns, and restrictions.

People are traveling. The higher price for airline tickets reflects the demand. Hotels are packed. Rest stops on highways across the United States are crowded with trucks, cars and travelers.

The key, however, on the site is for businesses to respond to those reviews, either positive or negative. Many people have.

More than 73 million reviews and opinions were submitted to the platform by 23 million members in 2022, but August saw the most reviews -- about 3,841,144.

This included 30.2 million reviews and 31.6 million photos and videos shared by the Tripadvisor community for the year. Owners responded to 10 million reviews, and community members asked and answered more than 940,000 questions from fellow users. Forum posts exceeded 3.8 million.

Those numbers are part of Tripadvisor’s third annual Review Transparency Report.

Not all reviews submitted were truthful, forcing the platform to take a more direct stance against fraud. The data reveals that 4.4% of Tripadvisor reviews were fraudulent, and 72% of these were caught before being published.

Some 1.3 million reviews were identified as fake and removed, with 72% of these caught before being posted -- up from 67% in 2020.

Reviews from paid review companies represent an even smaller proportion of fraudulently submitted content, but have the capability to negatively impact consumer trust.

Tripadvisor, in total, removed 24,521 reviews associated with paid review companies in 2022. Nearly half of these originated from India, Russia, U.S. Turkey, Italy, and Vietnam.

When Tripadvisor identifies fraudulent content it is not only removed, but the business receives content bans and ranking penalties. For the most severe cases, the business is given a red badge on the site.

The Review Transparency Report reveals that Tripadvisor applied a ranking penalty to more than 33,000 businesses for fraud and issued 341 red badge warnings in 2022, each of these enforced with a ranking penalty.

Reviews that report a serious issue are 10 times more likely to be read than typical reviews, as the platform seeks to warn travelers about safety concerns.