Judge.me Review Guide

Who uses Judge.me

Shopify merchants who install the app to collect product and store reviews, and their customers, who write reviews and manage them through a Judge.me reviewer account.

Claim your profile

1. There is no listing to claim: a store's reviews live in its own Judge.me account.
2. Install Judge.me from its listing on the Shopify App Store and follow the setup steps, then add the Review Widget and Star Rating Badge to your theme.
3. Judge.me offers a Free plan and an Awesome plan at 15 USD per month, billed through Shopify (stores billed in other currencies see the converted amount).
4. Import existing reviews from another app, a marketplace or a CSV file if you have them; imported reviews are not marked as verified.
5. Review requests are sent automatically after an order is fulfilled, 14 days after fulfillment by default.
6. Your store page on the Judge.me Reviews site follows your app data; you can customize its address in the store info settings.

Official guidelines: judge.me

Replying to reviews

In the Judge.me admin, go to Reviews, find the review and click Reply. Choose Publicly in widgets, write your answer (or generate one with the AI reply tool) and click Send reply. The reply shows under the review in your Review Widget within a few minutes, headed with your store name.

• Public replies are available on the Free plan and can be edited or deleted later from the three-dot menu next to the reply.
• The customer can get a reply notification email, which you turn on or off under Settings, Email templates, Reply notification; editing a reply does not send a new email.
• A reply is one-way on the review itself; to continue the conversation, use Reply privately via email.
• Public replies sync to the Shop app but are not included in the Google Shopping product ratings feed.
• After resolving a problem, you can send an Ask customer to update review email from the review's menu.

Official guidelines: judge.me

Review rules

In our own words. The official page is the rule that applies.

• Reviews should describe the reviewer's own experience with the product or the business's support within the last 12 months, not delivery companies or other third parties.
• Family members, owners and employees of a direct competitor, and anyone else with a special relationship to the business, should not review it; reviews must not be falsely positive because of a personal relationship or payment.
• Offensive, hateful or harassing content, unsolicited promotion, private information and content that infringes intellectual property are not allowed.
• Merchants may offer a small discount on a future purchase for leaving a review; Judge.me labels such reviews as rewarded on its Reviews site.
• Merchants can fix small errors (body edits of up to 30 characters) or add media, but cannot change a collected review's rating, reviewer name or date; the reviewer is emailed and can undo the edit.
• Reviews publish automatically by default. Merchants can moderate manually or auto-publish only by rating, sentiment, verification or media, but pending reviews publish on their own after 14 days unless the merchant acts.
• Hiding a review requires choosing a reason from a set list, and hidden reviews are left out of ratings and counts. Hiding or archiving verified reviews can lower the store's Transparency medal.
• Judge.me marks reviews as verified automatically, for example when submitted through its review request email or confirmed by the customer, and says it may suspend or close merchant accounts that fabricate or manipulate reviews.

Official guidelines: judge.me

Reporting a review

Judge.me's own process, step by step.

1. Judge.me's help pages describe moderation by the merchant, not a report to Judge.me: in Reviews, open the review's status dropdown and choose a reason to hide it (such as fake, duplicated, spam, unrelated to the product, legal reasons, inappropriate language or private information).
2. Customer-written reviews cannot be deleted by the merchant; only the customer can delete them, from the My Reviews tab of the Judge.me Reviews site. Imported reviews can be deleted by the merchant.
3. For duplicated imported reviews, Judge.me's FAQ says its support team at support@judge.me can help remove them.
4. Policy questions and enforcement appeals go to support@judge.me.

Official guidelines: judge.me

Tips

• Publish all genuine reviews, including negative ones; Judge.me itself encourages publishing valid reviews as soon as possible.
• Reply to critical reviews with a short, factual public answer, then follow up privately to resolve the issue.
• If you reward reviews, offer the same reward whatever the rating and let it be disclosed.
• After fixing a customer's problem, send a review update request instead of hiding the original review.