Should You Approve Reviews Before They Publish?
Short answer: Yes, keep a queue — but only to catch spam, fake contact info, and reviews about the wrong product, never to filter by star rating; publishing everything above a threshold automatically and reading the rest is usually the right middle ground.
Every review platform asks you the same question early on: does a new review need your okay before anyone sees it?
The honest answer is "some of them, for reasons that have nothing to do with the rating."
Should every review wait for you to approve it?
Not by default, and not forever. A queue that holds every single review means every good review is also sitting unpublished for as long as it takes you to notice it, which for a business owner running the counter and the books is often days.
A five-star review that goes live a week late has done nothing for the customer who was deciding whether to book you this weekend. Delay is a cost, even on the reviews you were always going to publish.
What is a moderation queue actually for?
Spam. A review that's really an ad for something else, or a string of links, doesn't belong on your page whatever it says about you.
Contact information in the text. A phone number or an order number typed into a review is usually a customer trying to reach you the wrong way, not feedback for other readers — pull it out or hold it back and reach out directly.
The wrong product or service. A review clearly about a different item, a different location, or someone else's business entirely needs a human to catch it before it goes live under your name.
Abuse. Threats, slurs, anything that isn't actually about the transaction. This is the one everyone agrees on.
None of those reasons look at the star rating. That's the line.
Why you can't filter by rating
The moment a queue exists to hold back reviews you don't like, it stops being moderation and becomes something else — hand-picking only the flattering ones for the page, while the rest sit unpublished indefinitely. Here's why that specifically breaks the rules, not just the spirit of them.
It also doesn't work the way it seems to. A page of nothing but five-star reviews reads as curated, not honest, and a shopper who has used the internet before knows it.
What does moderating everything actually cost you?
Two things, and both are quiet. Reviews go live late, which mutes exactly the good news you wanted showing up fast. And a queue that's mostly rubber-stamping "yes, this is fine" stops getting read carefully — which is exactly when the one spam entry or the one review about the wrong location slips through.
There's a second cost that's easy to miss: the queue itself stops getting checked as often. If ninety percent of what lands in it is obviously fine, opening it every day starts to feel like a chore with no payoff, so it slides to weekly, then to "whenever." The customer who wrote a real complaint buried in that queue is now waiting on your schedule instead of theirs.
What's the middle path?
Set a star threshold and publish anything at or above it automatically, so a five-star review posts the moment it arrives instead of waiting on you. Kudo calls this auto-publish, it's off by default, and everything below the threshold still lands in your queue to read — not because it's bad, but because it's the review most worth your actual attention.
One rule matters here: don't tell customers this is "approval." A review that posts itself because it cleared a star threshold was never read by a person first, and saying otherwise is the same dishonesty as filtering by rating, just automated.
Can you take a review down after it's published?
Yes, and it should mean what it says. Taking a review down has to remove it everywhere it could appear at the same moment — the page itself, any widget on your site, the public API, the Google feed — not just off the page while it's still sitting somewhere a link can reach. If "hidden" only means hidden in one place, it isn't hidden.
The Two-Minute Version
Kudo's queue holds every review by default, and its auto-publish setting lets you publish anything at or above a star threshold automatically while keeping the rest in the queue to read — never the reverse.
Start free at getkudo.co.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should small businesses approve reviews before they're published?
Only to catch spam, fake contact details, or reviews about the wrong product — not to decide which ratings get to appear.
Is it legal to only publish good reviews?
Filtering out reviews because of their rating is treated as review gating, which is against the rules platforms and regulators set for review collection.
What should a moderation queue actually catch?
Spam, a phone or order number typed into the review text, reviews about the wrong product or location, and abusive content — never the star rating itself.
Does moderating every review slow anything down?
Yes. Every review, including the good ones, waits until someone checks the queue, which on a busy day can mean days before a five-star review is visible.
What is auto-publish?
A setting that publishes any review at or above a star threshold you choose the moment it's submitted, while everything below the threshold still goes into your queue.
Can you remove a review after it's live?
Yes. Taking one down should remove it from the page, any widget, and any feed it appeared in — not just hide it in one place.