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ecommercePATCH 2026.10.15

How to Approve or Unapprove Product Reviews in WooCommerce

By VGSources Team 10 min read

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In current WooCommerce, product-review moderation is handled from Products > Reviews in the WordPress administrator. Hover over a review waiting for moderation and choose Approve to publish it. To take an approved review back offline without deleting it, hover over that review and choose Unapprove; WooCommerce returns it to moderation. You can select several reviews and run the matching command from Bulk actions.

The same screen also provides filters and actions such as Reply, Quick Edit, Edit, Spam and Trash. Store-wide review behavior is configured under WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Reviews, while an individual product has its own Product data > Advanced > Enable Reviews control.

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What approval changes in WooCommerce

A review awaiting moderation is not publicly approved. Selecting Approve changes its moderation state so it can appear on the product page according to your store’s theme and review display. Selecting Unapprove reverses that decision: the review is retained in WooCommerce but is returned to moderation instead of being permanently removed.

Approval is different from deletion. Use Trash when the review should be removed from normal review management, and use Spam for content you have identified as spam. If you only need to pause a legitimate review while checking it, Unapprove is the reversible option.

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WooCommerce documents the current review list and moderation actions in its Product Reviews documentation.

Approve one product review

Use the Reviews list

  1. Sign in to the WordPress administrator with an account that can manage WooCommerce products and reviews.
  2. Open Products > Reviews. This is WooCommerce’s current list for viewing, filtering and moderating product reviews.
  3. Find the review you want to publish. If the list is long, use the available filters for review type, rating or product.
  4. Hover over the row for a review awaiting moderation. The row actions appear beneath the review.
  5. Select Approve.

The review is now approved. Refresh the list if necessary and check the review’s available row actions to confirm that its state has changed. If you need to check the public result, open the associated product in a separate browser tab and view its review area using the same visibility and pagination rules your storefront normally applies.

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What to check before approving

  • Confirm that the review belongs to the product shown in the row, especially when several products have similar names.
  • Read the complete text, including any content revealed by an edit view, before approving it.
  • Check the rating against your store’s policy. A low rating is not, by itself, a reason to reject a review; moderation should focus on whether the contribution meets your rules.
  • Look for personal information, unrelated advertising, abusive language or duplicate submissions. Use the appropriate moderation action rather than changing a customer’s opinion simply because it is unfavorable.

Unapprove an approved review

Return it to moderation without deleting it

  1. Go to Products > Reviews in WordPress admin.
  2. Locate the approved review. Use the product, rating or review-type filters when that is faster than scanning the full list.
  3. Hover over the review row.
  4. Select Unapprove.

WooCommerce returns the review to moderation. This is useful when a review was approved by mistake, needs a policy check, or must be temporarily hidden while you investigate a report. Because the review remains in the review-management system, you can review it again and approve it later if it passes your criteria.

Approve or unapprove several reviews at once

For a queue of reviews, moderation does not have to be performed one row at a time.

  1. Open Products > Reviews.
  2. Use the filters first so the list contains the group you intend to process. Filtering by product, rating or review type reduces the risk of selecting unrelated reviews.
  3. Select the checkbox beside each target review.
  4. Open the Bulk actions menu.
  5. Choose the corresponding approval or unapproval command.
  6. Apply the action and inspect the resulting list for any items that were not processed.

Bulk moderation is efficient, but it is less granular than reading each review in context. Use a filtered batch for reviews that have already been checked under the same rule; do not approve an entire unreviewed queue merely because one item is acceptable.

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Other actions in the review row

The Reviews screen exposes more than the approval state. Depending on the review and your installed WooCommerce features, row actions include:

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  • Reply — respond to the customer from the review-management interface.
  • Quick Edit — make supported changes without opening the full editor.
  • Edit — open the full review-editing view for more control.
  • Spam — mark content as spam rather than approving it.
  • Trash — remove the review from the normal active workflow.

These actions have different consequences. Approval and unapproval change whether the review is accepted for display; spam and trash are moderation or removal decisions. Replying to a review does not itself approve a review that is still awaiting moderation.

Configure store-wide review moderation settings

Open the Products settings

  1. In WordPress admin, go to WooCommerce > Settings.
  2. Open the Products tab.
  3. Scroll to the Reviews section.
  4. Review the options, change the settings you need, and save the page using WooCommerce’s save control.

WooCommerce lists the core review controls in its Products Settings documentation. The available controls include the following:

Setting What it controls Moderation implication
Enable product reviews Whether the store’s product-review feature is available. If reviews are disabled, customers cannot use the normal product-review feature even though existing review records may remain in administration.
Show a “verified owner” label Whether WooCommerce identifies a reviewer as a verified owner. This is a label, not an approval decision. A verified-owner label does not automatically approve a review.
Limit reviews to verified owners Whether only verified owners may submit reviews. Changing this affects who can submit future reviews; it does not replace the moderation step for reviews that require approval.
Enable star ratings Whether customers can submit a star rating with a review. When ratings are enabled, the rating can be used as a filter while moderating.
Require a star rating Whether a rating is mandatory when a customer submits a review. This affects submission requirements. It does not publish a review automatically.

Do not confuse a submission requirement with publication. Requiring a rating can make a review form reject an incomplete submission, while approval still determines whether a submitted review is accepted for display.

Turn reviews on or off for one product

Store-wide settings are not the only control. To change review availability for a single product:

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  1. Open Products and edit the product.
  2. In the product editor, open Product data.
  3. Select the Advanced tab.
  4. Use Enable Reviews to turn customer reviews on or off for that product.
  5. Update or save the product.

WooCommerce describes this per-product control in its Product Editor settings documentation. It controls whether customers can review that item; it is separate from approving or unapproving review records that already exist.

Why a product review is pending

A pending review normally means the store’s moderation rules require an administrator to approve it before publication. The customer-facing status is not an error: when manual approval is required, WooCommerce tells the customer that the review is pending approval.

Check these points when a customer asks why a review has not appeared:

  • Open Products > Reviews and search for the review instead of assuming it was lost.
  • Check filters for review type, rating and product; an active filter can hide the item you expect to see.
  • Look at the review’s current state. It may be awaiting moderation, marked as spam or in the trash rather than approved.
  • Confirm that product reviews are enabled globally under WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Reviews.
  • For the specific product, verify Product data > Advanced > Enable Reviews.
  • After approval, check the product page while accounting for your theme’s review layout, pagination and caching behavior.

A review-request email or other review-request flow does not create a separate publication rule. WooCommerce’s review-request documentation states that submissions from that flow use the store’s normal moderation settings. If manual approval is required, the customer sees that the submission is pending.

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Set a consistent moderation policy

WooCommerce supplies the controls, but your store needs a repeatable decision rule. A simple workflow prevents accidental publication and makes bulk actions safer.

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  1. Collect: Let the review enter the normal WooCommerce review list.
  2. Identify: Confirm the product, reviewer context and current moderation state.
  3. Screen: Check for spam, personal data, threats, unlawful content, irrelevant promotion and duplicate material according to your published policy.
  4. Decide: Approve content that meets the policy; use Unapprove when an already approved review needs to be held; use Spam or Trash when those actions are appropriate.
  5. Respond: Use Reply for a customer-service response when one is needed. Keep the response separate from the approval decision.
  6. Record internally: If your team has escalation rules, note why a review was held or removed in your normal support or moderation record.

Do not use Unapprove as a substitute for a documented takedown policy. It is a reversible moderation state, not a statement that the review is spam or permanently unacceptable.

Moderate additional contribution types with Product Reviews Pro

The official WooCommerce Product Reviews Pro documentation describes an expanded moderation workflow. Its settings include Contributions must be manually approved, and its moderation list is available under WooCommerce > Reviews.

In addition to standard product reviews, the extension documentation describes moderation for contribution types such as questions, photos and videos. It supports approving, unapproving, editing, replying, filtering and moderating those contributions.

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Capability Core WooCommerce workflow Product Reviews Pro documentation
Standard product-review approval Approve and unapprove from Products > Reviews. Provides an expanded moderation list and controls.
Manual-approval setting Uses the store’s normal review moderation behavior. Documents a Contributions must be manually approved setting.
Contribution types Core product reviews. Reviews plus questions, photos, videos and other documented contribution types.
Filtering and response tools Review filters plus Reply, Quick Edit and Edit actions where available. Documents broader filtering, editing, replying and moderation controls.

Choose the extension only when its additional contribution types or moderation controls match your workflow. It is not required for the basic Approve and Unapprove actions described earlier.

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Automate moderation through the REST API

Stores that need custom dashboards, queue integrations or programmatic moderation can use WooCommerce’s product-review REST API. The official Product reviews REST API documentation represents review status with values including approved, hold, spam, unspam, trash and untrash.

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The API supports creating, viewing, updating, deleting and batch-managing product reviews. That makes it possible to connect a moderation queue to an internal tool, but automation should preserve the same distinctions as the administrator interface:

  • Use the approved state when your rule has accepted the review for publication.
  • Use the hold state when the review should remain under moderation.
  • Use spam or trash only when your policy calls for those outcomes.
  • Use the documented unspam or untrash transitions when recovering a review from those states.

Before enabling an automated approval rule, restrict the credentials and test against a non-production workflow. A script that updates the wrong review IDs or applies a broad batch request can change many moderation states at once. Keep an audit trail outside the API response if your organization needs to explain who or what approved a contribution.

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Troubleshoot an approval that does not appear to work

The Approve action is missing

Make sure you are hovering over a review that is actually awaiting moderation. An already approved review exposes Unapprove instead. Also check that your account has the WordPress capabilities required to manage WooCommerce reviews and that another administrator has not changed the state while you were viewing the list.

The review cannot be found

Clear product, rating and review-type filters, then search the full list again. If it is still absent, check whether it was moved to spam or trash. Review-request submissions still follow the normal moderation workflow, so a customer email alone does not prove that a review is currently approved.

The review is approved but not visible on the product page

Verify that product reviews remain enabled globally and that the product’s Enable Reviews setting is on. Then check the storefront’s review pagination, sorting and caching. The administrator’s approved state and the front-end presentation are related but not identical: a theme or cache can affect when and where an approved review is displayed.

Bulk approval produced an unexpected result

Return to the Reviews list, remove restrictive filters and inspect each affected row. For future batches, filter first, select only the intended rows, and apply one moderation command at a time. If a batch was applied through a custom integration, review the API log and compare the submitted IDs with the resulting states.

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Practical moderation checklist

  • Open Products > Reviews.
  • Clear or set filters deliberately.
  • Read the review and verify its product.
  • Choose Approve for a review that meets your policy.
  • Choose Unapprove to return an approved review to moderation.
  • Use Reply, Quick Edit, Edit, Spam or Trash only for their intended purposes.
  • Check global controls at WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Reviews.
  • Check an individual product at Product data > Advanced > Enable Reviews.
  • For automated workflows, map your process to the REST API’s documented moderation states.

Where each control lives

Task Location Result
Approve a pending review Products > Reviews, hover the row, choose Approve. The review is approved for storefront display.
Unapprove an approved review Products > Reviews, hover the row, choose Unapprove. The review returns to moderation.
Process several reviews Select rows, then use Bulk actions. The selected reviews receive the chosen batch command.
Set store-wide review behavior WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Reviews. Controls review availability, verified-owner labeling and star-rating requirements.
Disable reviews for one product Edit product > Product data > Advanced > Enable Reviews. Customer reviews are turned off or on for that item.
Moderate via an integration WooCommerce product-review REST API. Reviews can be created, viewed, updated, deleted and batch-managed using documented statuses.

Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.

ecommerceProduct Reviewsreview moderationWooCommerceWordPress

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