WooCommerce verified owner reviews: how to stop reviews from people who did not buy

Can you stop people who did not buy from reviewing WooCommerce products?

Yes, and the switch is one box. WooCommerce verified owner reviews are a setting under WooCommerce, Settings, Products, in the General section: tick Reviews can only be left by “verified owners”, save, and only customers who bought the product can post a review.

On a new store that box is off. WooCommerce’s documentation describes it as the box to tick “if you want to restrict everyone except for product buyers from leaving reviews”.

What does a new WooCommerce store allow by default?

We opened the settings on a fresh store on 13 Oct 2026 (WooCommerce 11.2.1, WordPress 7.1.3) before changing anything. Four boxes were ticked:

• Enable product reviews
• Show “verified owner” label on customer reviews
• Enable star rating on reviews
• Star ratings should be required, not optional

The fifth box, Reviews can only be left by “verified owners”, was empty.

So reviews are open to anyone who can fill in a name and an email address. The label is the only thing that tells a shopper which reviews came from a buyer.

Is the verified owner label enough?

Not if your aim is to keep non-buyers out. The label marks a review. It does not block one.

We tested it. With the default settings, we sent a review as a guest who had bought nothing, then one as a customer with a completed order. WooCommerce saved both. The buyer’s review was flagged as from a verified owner and the guest’s was not. Both would sit on the product page side by side once approved.

Checking review and comment settings like these after a store goes live is part of our WordPress maintenance plan.

How do WooCommerce verified owner reviews work once the box is ticked?

The review form goes away for anyone who has not bought the product. We ticked the box, saved, and rendered the product’s review area as a guest. The form was gone. In its place was one line: “Only logged in customers who have purchased this product may leave a review.”

Hiding a form is not the same as blocking a request, so we also sent a review straight to the address the form posts to, as a guest. WooCommerce refused it with the same sentence, on an error page titled Reviews can only be left by “verified owners”. Nothing was saved.

The buyer, logged in to their account, sent a second review and it went through, again marked as from a verified owner.

That second test is the one that matters for spam. A spam script does not need to see your form to send a request to its address, and in our lab the check held there too.

Who does WooCommerce count as a verified owner?

A customer who bought the product. In our lab, WooCommerce matched the logged in customer to a completed order for that product, by account and by email address.

One result follows from that. A buyer who checked out as a guest and is not logged in when they come back looks like any other visitor. If most of your orders are guest checkouts, a verified owners only store will collect fewer reviews, because those buyers have no account to log in to.

Why were all the reviews pending?

Every review our lab saved, from the guest and from the buyer, waited as pending, not approved. That came from WordPress, not WooCommerce.

Under Settings, Discussion, the box Comment author must have a previously approved comment was ticked on our fresh install. Product reviews are comments to WordPress, so a first-time reviewer waits until you approve them under Products, Reviews.

If reviews seem to vanish after customers post them, check that queue before you change anything else.

Should you limit reviews to buyers?

Both settings have a case.

Open reviews collect more of them. That is our view, not a WooCommerce claim: anyone who used the product, including people who got it as a gift, can say so.

Limiting reviews to verified owners stops reviews from people who never bought the product. In our lab it also refused reviews sent straight to the form’s address.

Whichever you pick, read your last ten reviews today. If some came from people with no order, you have your answer.

How do you check the change worked?

Test it the way we did, before a customer finds the gap:

1. Open a product page in a private window, logged out. With the box ticked, you should see the “Only logged in customers” line, not a form.
2. Log in as a test customer with a completed order for that product. The form should be there, and the review should save.
3. Approve the test review under Products, Reviews and check for the verified owner label on the product page.

Reviews are one of the settings a store owner rarely reopens after launch. Tax is another, and we tested it the same way in our post on why WooCommerce is not charging sales tax on a new store.

Seeing reviews from people who never ordered? Tell us which product they are on and how many came in, and we will reply with the settings to check on your store.