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
Available on the Free plan
By default, we automatically publishes all reviews to help you earn that trust with every purchase.
To publish or hide all new reviews automatically:
From your Judge.me admin, go to Settings > Publishing and moderation.
In the Auto publish reviews section, select from the following options:
"Publish new reviews automatically"
"Publish reviews manually" to moderate and publish reviews manually.
Click Save.
Auto-publish reviews with certain ratings
Available on the Awesome plan. Start with a 15-day free trial!
If you select "Publish new reviews automatically", you can also automatically published only reviews with specific ratings (e.g., 4 or 5 stars):
From your Judge.me admin, go to Settings > Publishing and moderation.
In the Auto publish reviews section, make sure "Publish new reviews automatically" is selected.
Then, in the Auto publish rating criteria dropdown, choose from the following options 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.
You can use filter to see all Pending reviews in the Reviews dashboard.
Publish reviews
To publish a review:
From your Judge.me admin, go to Reviews.
In the Reviews dashboard, find the review you want and click the Hidden status dropdown.
Select Publish review to change its status to Published.
To publish multiple reviews at once:
From your Judge.me admin, go to Reviews.
Check the box on the left of each review you want to publish.
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.
Hiding or archiving 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:
From your Judge.me admin, go to Reviews.
In the Reviews dashboard, find the review you want and click the Published status dropdown.
Select a reason from the list to hide the review.
Once you select a reason, the review status will change to Hidden, with the selected reason.
To hide multiple reviews at once:
From your Judge.me admin, go to Reviews.
Check the box on the left of each review you want to hide.
Click Hide reviews at the bottom of the page.
Select a reason from the dropdown menu.
Click Hide reviews to confirm.
To hide all reviews for a product:
From your Judge.me admin, go to Settings > Product review groups.
Search for the product you want to hide the reviews.
Click the number in the Reviews column to view all reviews for that product.
Select all reviews using the checkbox on the top left.
Click the Hide reviews button at the bottom of the page.
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 is the same as hiding reviews, but besides hiding the review from your storefront, archiving the review also moves it to the Archive tab in your Reviews dashboard.
To archive a review:
From your Judge.me admin, go to Reviews.
In the Reviews dashboard, find the review you want to archive.
Click the three-dot icon (⋯) on the right of the review and select Archive.
Choose a reason for hiding the review, then click Archive review button to confirm.
To view archived reviews:
From your Judge.me admin, go to Reviews.
In the Reviews dashboard, go to the Archive tab to see all archived reviews.
Troubleshoot
Some reviews are published without my consent
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"
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
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
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.