By Welton Hong, founder and CEO of Ring Ring Marketing
It started, as many things do today, with a phone call that felt slightly off.
A funeral director recalls speaking with a family who had already “done their research.”
They mentioned glowing online reviews — dozens of them — praising another funeral home across town. Every comment was positive. Every experience sounded seamless. Yet when pressed, the family struggled to recall a single specific detail from what they had read. No staff names. No dates. No mention of a particular service or memorial. Just five stars, over and over again.
Within weeks, that competing firm’s online presence quietly changed. Several reviews disappeared. The listing slipped in search rankings. The sudden shine faded almost as quickly as it appeared.
This Could Really Happen
The story above is hypothetical, but it demonstrates what a growing number of local businesses — including funeral homes, crematories and cemeteries — are confronting right now: the potential for fake reviews to be generated by artificial intelligence.
It may already be happening in funeral service … and we may just not know.
The reality is this: What once required overseas “review farms” can now be produced in seconds, at scale, and with language polished enough to pass a casual glance via bots and artificial intelligence.
Fortunately, there ways to recognize fake reviews when reviewing them as either a business owner or a consumer.
AI-generated reviews, by design, tend to:
- Smooth over complexity.
- Emphasize perfection (or they go to the other extreme and emphasize how horrible a business is).
- Eliminate nuance.
Thankfully, I have not heard of any funeral homes or cemeteries trying to game the system by leveraging AI to generate positive reviews for themselves (or even worse, to generate negative reviews directed at competitors), but we know it happens in other industries, which is why it’s so important to shine a spotlight on this topic.
The Repercussions
Fortunately, search engines and review platforms are investing heavily in detecting fake online reviews.
Patterns that feel invisible to most — repeated phrasing, improbable timelines, reviewer accounts with no history and sudden bursts of activity — are increasingly easy for algorithms to flag.
When manipulation is suspected, platforms do not simply remove the offending reviews. They may suppress visibility for the offending party, suspend listings, or require reverification that disrupts inbound inquiries for weeks or months.
For funeral homes, cemeteries and crematories, the downstream impact can be severe. Clergy, hospice partners, hospitals, and referral sources are acutely sensitive to ethical lapses. A reputation for cutting corners online can quietly erode trust offline, where referrals are still won or lost.
If you’re a funeral home or a member of the public for that matter trying to determine if a review is, in fact, “real,” here are some things to keep in mind:
- Reviews that mention real interactions, staff members, or specific services tend to be authentic.
- Reviews that read like marketing copy, appear in large clusters, or lack any personal texture deserve scrutiny.
Some deathcare establishments are beginning to include short guidance on their websites or in preplanning materials, explaining how to interpret online reviews thoughtfully. Done well, this does not undermine confidence — it reinforces transparency.
The bottom line is this: If you want to maintain your integrity AND your market share, any fleeting thought about leveraging AI to generate fake online reviews to promote your business should be quickly thrown out the window.
If that is not enough to make you toss the thought, it’s worth noting that in some jurisdictions, deceptive reviews may also attract attention from consumer protection authorities – and penalties for violating the law can be quite severe.
In a digital environment increasingly polluted by artificial praise, the firms that stand out will be those whose reputations – and integrity – are unmistakably real.
Welton Hong is the founder and CEO of Ring Ring Marketing, which has helped thousands of funeral homes and cemeteries grow their revenue through online marketing strategies. Visit RingRingMarketing.com and follow the company on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and X.
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