as a B&B owner I can appreciate the forum, "are tripadvisor reviews verified? and I can tell you the simple answer is NO they are not, it is correct that TA send a link to the email address to verify the IP address from which the review is posted, but with the amount of travel people do, that is a simple thing to overcome, no telephone number is requested, no address and if you do register you are ask to state where you would like your profile to say you are from, so you could be from Paris but click on Timbucktoo and that is what will appear. Tripadvisor have developed an unhealthy approach to the owners & managers of properties and this is why I believe the european properties are specifically asking NOT to be reviewed on Tripadvisor. Many of the really good travel sites who also have booking engines will only allow persons who have made a reservation on their booking engine site leave a review and this is gauranteed a genuine review as they know that the person made the reservation. Regarding what happens if a review is not true, Tripadvisor have deemed themselves Judge & Jury over reviews and they do not accept any documentation from owners to support cases of fake negative reviews by competitors or disgruntled employees, they decide the wording of the response that is posted under the review and if they do not like the response they will not post it, so who decided if the tagline "Get the truth, then go" is true, Tripadvisor decide what they believe is true and then they pass the book onto the reviewer in the event of a claim, by stating that they are not responsible for the site content, if you want the truth from a really good travel site, go to the ones that verify the reviews as being from real travellers and a real traveller will have no problem giving their name postal address, telephone number etc, a proper travel site will have no problem conversing and communicating with the owners and managers and a proper site will encourage people with problems to make contact with owners to resolve problems not encourage them to post anonymous, malicious reviews so that the site continues to get hits on the world wide web thereby making it the no1 travel site. The forum is very true Tripadvisor do NOT verify reviews, it is only a matter of time before we will see tripadvisor hang a reviewer out to dry over a malicious or fake review because they will not be responsible for the literary words of some person and take the brunt of a defamation case. O and by the way, the tripadvisor forums are censored also, many owners and managers are blocked from contributing because when they address the problem of false or fake reviews or suggest that reviews need more verification, such as landline contact, Tripadvisor get tetchy and block them on the system, Hows about that for censorship!!!