I have a couple of reviews from a close friend. She is also an Airbnb host (in fact she’s the one who encouraged me to start hosting) and even though I had no intention to charge her anything to stay and told her it wasn’t necessary (I stay at her place a lot for free when I go to Canada, however I do chip in for utilities), she had a $100 voucher to use up and insisted on booking the amount of days that would cover, then just continued her stays for another 10 days, for which I blocked off dates.
I don’t know if others would consider those “fake” reviews- they were very brief, nothing gushing, and don’t read any differently than the reviews I get from regular guests. I already had lots of good reviews, so it wasn’t as if she was trying to counter bad ones for me or trying to help me get booked on a new listing.
Her bookings did prove to be useful in terms of getting enough bookings to keep Superhost status, but that wasn’t either her or my intention at the time.