Online reviews have never been more important for any business. They have the power to attract customers or to drive customers away. Other people know this and fake reviews can run rampant on the web as well affecting nearly every company in one way or another. So why do people feel the need to write fake reviews and what can you do about them?
Negative Fake Reviews
For most negative fake reviews they are easy to spot. There is just something about them that does not seem right. They might have a detail about the place wrong. They might just write a one line commentary that is vague. There might be no comments at all and just a rating. Something seems fishy about them and as a business owner you can probably spot them. The problem is that potential customers may not be able to and that can hurt you.
Some businesses also engage in the practice of writing negative reviews of competitors to boost their own standing. This is of course unethical and can cause a great deal of harm to a company’s reputation but not everyone who runs a business is an ethical person. They can’t get ahead by making a better product or providing a better service so they try to bring their competition down in another way.
Positive Fake Reviews
There are also people that are paid to write fake reviews. For the most part these are just people who are being paid a small amount to supplement their income or to get free stuff but these glowing reviews often skew the needle in the other direction falsely. It could be a company having its employees write glowing reviews for their business to boost their ratings or it could be a friend that just wants to help too.
It could also be people writing reviews in the hopes of making a commission for every sale. In a study the Harvard Business School showed that by merely boosting a company’s online rating by one star sales can increase by 5-9%. That kind of boost can easily offset the small commission that is paid to someone to write a glowing review and large businesses are well aware of that.
It is also possible that the review is about another business of a similar name and was just misplaced. It’s a legitimate review, just not for you.
A Problem All Over The Internet
With this in mind, some people are beginning to not trust review websites at all or to aggregate several sites before making a decision. Some people will not trust them at all. Large sites like Amazon and Google have become flooded with fake reviews as companies jockey for customers in the online marketplace. It is a potentially serious issue and one that persists even though paid reviews are forbidden.
Social media sites like Facebook are a major source of fake reviews and when a site like Amazon presses back these “reviewers” just move on to other sites. Even then the damage can be done to someone legitimately trying to sell a product in those marketplaces but there is no good way to stop them.
How Are Fake Reviews Detected
AI and other software is helping to combat fake reviews. Metadata can be examined to spot “sock puppet” accounts that use stock language or post a large number of reviews at one time. If a large number of reviews for a product or from a reviewer uses the same kind of language there is a good chance that the reviews are illegitimate, just the same way as if a large number of reviews by a person appear all at once.
Several services are able to audit reviews in an effort to weed out fake reviews or paid reviews but the issue is only getting worse and not every company has the money to utilize such a service. Amazon has also taken several people to court over the issue of paid reviews but that has not seemed to stop the practice. Amazon also has plenty of money to hire lawyers, you probably do not.
Also a company’s own policy can help. Some companies openly state that they are giving away or offering a discount on a product in exchange for a review. By now large companies like Amazon and Google have removed those companies from their marketplaces but that is not true all across the Web.
What Can I Do About A Fake Review?
So what can you do if you think you are being targeted with fake or illegitimate reviews? The best thing is to try to have the review removed which can be easier said than done. You should be able to flag a post or report a post but that may not be enough to get it removed. In some cases if the review does not violate the platform’s policies it will not be removed, even if it is false.
If the review cannot be removed and if you feel up to it, respond back. Be polite, call attention to what you feel is false and ask the reviewer to contact you. If they said they had a poor experience in your store but you do not have a brick-and-mortar store point this out, politely of course. If they claimed to have had a poor breakfast at your restaurant but you are not open for breakfast, point this out.
Assume that the review is legitimate, just in case it is. It could be a case of the reviewer writing a review for the wrong business and that can be straightened out easily. People do make mistakes, you’re not perfect either. In the end if no one responds you will appear on record as being professional and most smart people will be able to figure out that the review is false. The only hit to you is the ratings hit and that can be smoothed out with other positive responders.
Last, try to get more positive reviews. If you have 99 positive reviews and only one negative review that one will usually be ignored. While people tend to be drawn to the negative reviews it is hard to ignore so many positive reviews in a case like that. Just don’t pay for positive reviews! If your customers are happy they will be more than happy to help you out.