How to Spot Fake Reviews

Online retail has a picaresca problem: plenty of sellers believe the best defence is a good attack. Well, no. The best defence is doing good work. A clear example is the flood of anonymous, unverified comments from “buyers” you find on some online stores. Sometimes they prop up certain products unconditionally, and other times they sink the competition's products. Conveniently, the two always go hand in hand. In short, creating fake reviews has become a key part of the “strategy” for many online businesses. WRONG.

Cyberbullying

We've said it before: companies that operate this way are getting it badly wrong. If you've started propping up your business with fake reviews and bullying your competitors, you're doing something wrong. Or worse, you're failing to do something right. It's a small shift in perspective. You can't build trust if you don't trust yourself. That's not how it works. A common pattern: a company gets a negative review on an open review site, and instead of responding and talking to the customer, it “buries” the negative comment under a pile of super-mega-ultra-positive reviews that reek of being self-generated. Bad, very bad. This is astroturfing, and it isn't cool at all. The same thing happens with stores that run on-site review services without certifying that the reviews come from verified customers. Look, if the people posting reviews can keep their anonymity by using fake names, the number of reviews shoots up — and probably the average rating too. Sounds like a sweet deal. One. It's not right that sellers and casual visitors can leave reviews on a page and have them carry the same weight as reviews from people who actually bought the product. Two. I don't think any of these sites will change their review policy, because it would drastically cut their review count — and that's hardly on the agenda for businesses this strategy works perfectly for. Personally, I see this kind of move as plain cyberbullying. Every online shopper should help fight fake reviews. That means gradually learning how to spot fake reviews — and, from experience, I know plenty of reviews look fake and then turn out to be genuine. Only by verifying that all of a store's online reviews come from real buyers can we shake off that distrust. People tend to distrust every review before they trust any of them, so posting fake reviews doesn't get you very far.

A way to spot fake reviews

Look for comments that clearly spell out why the customer chose that product, what they like most and what they like least. Some products lend themselves to this more than others, of course, but it's a good clue for learning to tell genuine reviews from fake ones. Be suspicious of online stores that only have five-star ratings. Nobody can be 100% perfect at everything. Even if they're few, fake reviews threaten to undermine the trust customers place in an online store, tarnishing its good image. Fake reviews are definitely a problem for any retailer. Online shoppers look for reviews, yes — but genuine ones. And these practices are increasingly being challenged, even in court. So… enough already! Fake reviews are dragging down the world of quality, genuine online reviews. It's time to call out the snake-oil sellers. Consider yourselves warned.