Scroll to the bottom of almost any small business website and you will find a row of badges. Five stars from somewhere. An award logo. A "verified" tick. A "secure checkout" shield.
Some of those are real and checkable. Some are pictures someone downloaded. From the outside they look the same.
You do not need to be technical to tell them apart. You need two minutes and a habit of clicking.
Why fake badges work
Badges work because people do not check them. A familiar logo gives a quick feeling of safety, and most visitors move on. That is exactly why they get copied. A pasted badge costs nothing and borrows trust that someone else earned.
It is also why rules have caught up. The US Federal Trade Commission's rule on consumer reviews and testimonials, in force since October 2024, bans fake reviews and misleading claims about reviews. A badge that implies reviews or ratings that do not exist can fall squarely into that territory. We explain the rule in the FTC's fake review rule, explained.
The two-minute check
1. Click it
A real trust badge almost always links to a page on the issuer's own website. Click and look at the address bar.
- If it opens nothing, or opens a picture of itself, be cautious.
- If it opens a page on the business's own site that just repeats the claim, that proves nothing.
- If it opens a page on the issuer's site, for example reputfy.com or the award organisation's domain, you are getting somewhere.
2. Check the name and the date
On the issuer's page, look for the business name, the website address and a date. A certificate without dates is not much of a certificate. A real one says when it was issued and until when it is valid.
3. Check the address matches
This is the step most people skip. The certificate should name the website you are actually on. If the badge on "best-plumbers-now.example" links to a certificate for a different company, that badge has been borrowed.
4. Search the issuer directly
Do not trust a link alone. Open the issuer's website yourself, in a new tab, and look the business up. If the issuer has no record, that is your answer.
Checking a Reputfy seal
We built the Reputfy seal so that you do not have to do most of that by hand.
- The seal on a business's website is live. It checks its own certificate every time the page loads, and it only shows "Reputfy verified" on the website the business registered. A copied seal shows "Not verified for this site".
- You can check any website or certificate number at reputfy.com/verify.html. The answer comes straight from our records.
- The free Reputfy Seal Check browser extension shows a green seal next to the address bar on sealed sites, and a small tag beside sealed sites in search results. More on that in your seal beyond your website.
Other badges worth knowing about
Star ratings from review sites. Click through to the business's actual profile on that site. Compare the number of reviews and the average. If the website says "4.9 from 600 reviews" and the profile shows 4.1 from 90, something does not add up.
Award logos. Real awards have a public list of winners. Find the list on the organiser's site and look for the business.
Security and payment badges. The padlock in your browser's address bar is the reliable signal that a connection is encrypted. A shield picture on a page is not. For payments, the real check is where you end up: a genuine checkout page from a payment provider you recognise, at an address you recognise.
"As seen in" press logos. Search the publication's website for the business name. If there is no article, the logo is decoration.
What to do if you find a fake
- Do not buy on the strength of it. A business willing to fake a badge may cut other corners too.
- Tell the issuer. Every serious issuer wants to know. For Reputfy seals, send us the website through our contact page and we will look into it.
- Leave an honest review of your experience if you were a customer. Stick to what happened.
- In the US, you can report deceptive practices to the Federal Trade Commission at reportfraud.ftc.gov.
If you run a business
The best defence against someone copying your badge is a badge that cannot be copied usefully. Live, checkable seals turn your reviews into evidence instead of decoration. And when customers learn to click badges, the businesses with real ones win.
