How to use AI tools to filter fake 5 star Google Maps reviews

The unfortunate truth about most 5-star reviews on Google Maps and Yelp is that most aren't exactly honest. They're often given in exchange for a free coffee/tea, or collected with a little friendly pressure right outside the door and a smiling guilt-trip.

My sister gets targeted constantly. They'll walk out, hand her a tablet, and just wait awkwardly until you do it. I sometimes think the language barrier even adds to the pressure.

I at least try to negotiate something (my favorite so far: a magnet for the Hội An memories show). It's just part of the game. Our parents haggle in night markets. I do my haggling with Google Maps review page open.

Me floating a lantern at night in Hội An after the show in my Ao Dai.

This is all fine when you're standing on the street and can just look inside. Or do what Jason does and hit up every single free promotion on the block and save the drinks in the fridge (which never get finished anyway).

But it's close to useless when you're sitting at home trying to figure out where to eat in Chiang Mai in November.

Take these two. Both coffee shops, both highly rated, both the kind of place that shows up first when you search.

Little HaNoi Egg Coffee, Saigon. (Yes, the name says Hanoi — egg coffee is a northern thing, but this one is in Saigon.) 4.8 stars across 5,353 reviews. That's a lot of happy customers, or a very active review program.

Twenty Mar, Chiang Mai. 4.9 stars. The rating is almost suspiciously clean.

Are they good? Maybe. Are some of those reviews from people who got a free drink and a tablet shoved in their face? Almost certainly. The number doesn't really tell you which.

Using AI tools to help you

We have some genuinely impressive AI tools now and one of the better ways to use them is building smarter review filters that think like you.

One technique that works pretty well is to have an AI agent scan reviews for patterns that signal fake or incentivized feedback.

A simpler technique to try first is to copy-paste a bunch of reviews into your favorite chatbot and use a prompt.

Example prompt to try:

You are helping me evaluate Google Maps reviews for a restaurant in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Here are 50 recent reviews: [paste reviews]

Flag any reviews that show these patterns:
- Very short, generic praise with no specific details ("Great place! Loved it!")
- All 5 stars with no text
- Mentions of a free drink, discount, or gift in exchange for the review
- Posted in clusters (many reviews on the same day from accounts with no history)
- Language that sounds translated or templated

Give me a summary of how trustworthy this review set looks, and highlight the 5 most useful genuine reviews if any exist.

The patterns vary by city and shop type. Coffee shops in Saigon have different fake-review signatures than street food stalls in Hanoi or clothing shops in Bangkok. It's worth building a prompt that's specific to where you're going and what you're looking at.

The Rate Limit Problem

If you try to automate this across a lot of places, Google Maps and Yelp will notice. They are not fans of web scrapers, and they will slow you down or block you before you get very far.

There are ways around it. You can have the AI agent open web pages in an actual web browser (playwright/selenium), add delays, rotate approaches. It's doable.

Example prompt for a more careful approach:

I want to research 10 restaurants in Hội An, Vietnam without triggering rate limits on Google Maps.

For each restaurant, open the Google Maps page in a browser, wait 15-30 seconds, collect the reviews visible on the first page without scrolling (to avoid triggering lazy-load detection), then move to the next.

For each restaurant give me:
- Overall rating and total review count
- The 3 most detailed positive reviews
- Any reviews that mention concerns or red flags
- Your assessment of review authenticity (1-10, 10 = looks genuine)

You've either hit Valhalla or...

Once you're managing rate limits, writing custom prompts per city and shop type, and burning through Claude Max tokens on a research task that still requires human judgment to interpret, you're doing a lot of work.

If you enjoy this kind of thing, super cool. These tools are genuinely fun to build with and you'll get good at it and maybe even get a new job.

But if you'd rather have someone else do your oil change, that's what we're here for. We've done this research for the destinations we cover. We know which spots hold up, which ones are review-farmed, and which ones are worth the extra 20 minutes in a Grab. Book a free call and tell us where you're headed.

Ironically, once you've been, you stop needing any of this. You just follow your favorite spots on Instagram and the people they repost, always have other places worth going. Social media is basically required in SE Asia to be a successful business, especially for places targeting English-speaking customers.

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Bonus: One I'll Actually Vouch For

If you like cats and you're in Đà Nẵng, go to Meow Coffee (115 Lê Hữu Trác, An Hải). Good cà phê sữa đá. Even better cats. Very chill, cool owner, and most of the cats are rescues. The kind of place that earns its 4.9.

4.9 stars, 94 reviews. Small enough that the reviews are probably real. That's the other thing worth knowing: lower review counts at smaller places are often more trustworthy than 5,000 reviews at a tourist staple.

Two cats, zero hesitation. They climbed up on their own.

This one owns the chair.

New arrival. Also a rescue.

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Skip the research

Filtering reviews is a few hours of work per city, and it only tells you where to eat. Planning where to stay, how to move between regions, and what fills the days takes a lot longer.

That's the part we handle. Book a free call and tell us your dates and who's going. We'll shape a trip around the places that actually hold up, in Thailand, Vietnam, and Japan.