Who Actually Checks Amazon Reviews? What Our Global Traffic Data Reveals

We run a free Amazon review checker. People paste a product link, and we tell them how trustworthy the reviews are. Simple enough.

But when we looked at where our users actually come from, the data told a story we weren't expecting. Over 150 countries. Some patterns made perfect sense. Others made us rethink who's actually using these tools and why.

The United States Dominates, But Not By As Much As You'd Think

About half of our traffic comes from the US. That tracks. Amazon.com is the largest Amazon marketplace, American consumers are increasingly skeptical of online reviews, and "how to spot fake reviews" is a distinctly American Google search pattern.

But here's what's interesting: half of our users are from somewhere else. For a tool that started as an Amazon.com review checker, that's a significant international footprint.

India at 16% Is Fascinating

India makes up roughly one in six of our users. That's a massive share for a country where Amazon.in, while growing fast, is still competing with Flipkart and local marketplaces.

A few theories on why India punches so far above its weight:

Tech-savvy, price-conscious consumers. Indian Amazon shoppers tend to be younger, more tech-literate, and extremely research-driven. Spending money on a product that turns out to have fake reviews stings harder when you've comparison-shopped across five platforms before deciding.

A growing seller ecosystem. India has become one of Amazon's largest seller bases. Many Indian sellers use review analysis tools to understand what competitors are doing, whether their own reviews look healthy, and how to position products in increasingly competitive categories.

General skepticism toward online marketplaces. India's e-commerce market has had well-publicized issues with counterfeit products and fake listings. That breeds a consumer culture that double-checks before buying.

China at 6% Is the Most Interesting Data Point

Here's where it gets really interesting. China accounts for roughly 6% of our global traffic. That's approximately the same as Canada, despite the fact that Amazon essentially pulled out of China's domestic market in 2019.

So why are tens of thousands of Chinese users checking Amazon review authenticity?

Amazon sellers monitoring their own products. An estimated 50-60% of Amazon's third-party sellers are based in China. For these sellers, reviews are everything. A drop from 4.5 to 4.2 stars can mean thousands of dollars in lost daily revenue. Chinese sellers use tools like ours to monitor their product ratings, track whether competitors are buying fake reviews, and assess the overall health of their review profiles.

Competitive intelligence. Before launching a new product on Amazon US, smart sellers research the landscape. How many reviews does the top competitor have? What's the fake review percentage in the category? Is this a market where review manipulation is rampant (which means you'll need to spend more on legitimate review generation), or is it relatively clean?

Sourcing and quality control. Some Chinese Amazon sellers also work with factories that produce goods for multiple brands. Checking reviews across different products from the same factory helps them identify quality issues before they show up in their own listings.

The China traffic is almost certainly not consumers shopping on Amazon. It's the supply side of the Amazon marketplace doing competitive research.

And these numbers are probably understated. VPN usage is extremely common in China, meaning some Chinese traffic likely shows up as US, Singapore, or Hong Kong traffic in our data.

Europe's Fragmented But Consistent Pattern

Amazon operates separate marketplaces across Europe: Germany (.de), UK (.co.uk), France (.fr), Italy (.it), Spain (.es), Netherlands (.nl). Each shows up in our traffic data at 1-4%.

Germany leads European traffic at about 4%, which makes sense. Amazon.de is the second-largest Amazon marketplace globally, and German consumers are notoriously thorough product researchers. The German word "Stiftung Warentest" (their consumer testing foundation) is practically a cultural institution. Checking review authenticity fits that mindset perfectly.

The UK matches Germany at around 4%, with France, Italy, Spain, and Netherlands each contributing 1-2%. Combined, European users account for roughly 14% of our global traffic, making Europe collectively our second-largest region.

The Most Popular Product People Check Isn't What You'd Expect

Here's a fun one. One of the most consistently analyzed products on RateBud falls into Amazon's "Sexual Wellness" category. Specifically, male masturbation products are among our highest-traffic product pages.

Why? It actually makes perfect sense when you think about it:

You can't return them. Amazon marks these products as non-returnable for safety reasons. If you buy one and it's junk, you're stuck with it. That raises the stakes of the purchase decision considerably.

You can't ask friends for recommendations. With headphones or a coffee maker, you might ask a coworker what they use. That's a harder conversation with adult products. Online reviews become the primary information source, which makes their authenticity critically important.

The category is flooded with generic products. Dozens of nearly identical products from unknown brands, all with suspiciously perfect ratings. The brand on this product, for example, has 64 reviews with a 4.7-star average. Is that real? At $17.99 with "100+ bought in past month," the incentive for review manipulation is high.

High markup margins. These products often cost a few dollars to manufacture and sell for $15-40 on Amazon. Like supplements, the margin math makes fake reviews extremely profitable.

It's also worth noting that Amazon excludes these products from its Associates Program (no affiliate commissions), which means there's less organic review coverage from deal sites and bloggers who typically write about products they can earn from. The review ecosystem for these products is almost entirely organic buyers and manipulation. There's very little in between.

Small Countries With Outsized Page Views

Japan is a fascinating outlier. With fewer than 300 visitors, Japanese users generated over 3,500 page views. That's roughly 13 pages per visitor, compared to the global average of about 2-3.

What that suggests: Japanese users who find our tool use it intensively. They're not checking one product. They're checking ten or twenty. This matches the generally meticulous Japanese consumer research culture, where buying decisions involve significant pre-purchase investigation.

Singapore shows a similar pattern. About 3% of our traffic, which is remarkable for a country of 6 million people. Singapore is a major Amazon seller hub for Southeast Asian manufacturers, so like China, a chunk of this traffic is likely sellers rather than consumers.

What the VPN Problem Means for This Data

Any traffic analysis comes with a giant asterisk: VPN usage.

Roughly 30% of internet users worldwide use VPNs regularly. In some countries (like China, UAE, and Turkey), VPN usage rates exceed 50%. This means our geographic data almost certainly undercounts some countries and overcounts others.

China's real traffic share is likely higher than 6%. Some Chinese users are routing through US, Singapore, or Hong Kong VPNs. India's share might be similarly affected, though to a lesser degree.

The countries least affected by VPN distortion are probably the US, UK, and Germany, where VPN usage is lower and there's less motivation to mask your location when checking Amazon reviews.

What This All Means

The global distribution of our traffic reveals something important about the fake review problem: it's not just a consumer issue. It's an ecosystem issue.

Consumers in the US and Europe use review checkers to protect themselves while shopping. Sellers in China, India, and Southeast Asia use the same tools for competitive intelligence and product monitoring. Both groups are responding to the same underlying problem, just from different sides of the transaction.

Fake reviews cost consumers an estimated $770 billion globally in unwanted purchases. But they also cost legitimate sellers revenue and market share when competitors manipulate their way to higher visibility.

Whether you're a shopper in Ohio checking if those supplement reviews are real, or a seller in Shenzhen monitoring your competitor's review pattern, the tool is the same. The motivation is the same. Trust matters, no matter which side of the buy button you're on.