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UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

375 points by leephillips 6y ago

tpmx 6y ago
The BBC didn't dare to name the businesses? Weak as hell. I remember when the BBC was a shining beacon of broadcasting excellence via shortwave radio. How the mighty have fallen.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  If many companies are doing it, and many are forced (or feel forced) to do it in order to compete, then it isn't fair to just single one or two of them for public shaming via a publicly funded broadcaster. There's also libel ... maybe the threshold of evidence is high enough to write an article about some unnamed company buying reviews, but not high enough to hold up in court.
  - abraae 6y ago
    > If many companies are doing it, and many are forced (or feel forced) to do it in order to compete, then it isn't fair to just single one or two of them for public shaming via a publicly funded broadcaster. Sorry but if you're doing shady shit, it's no defence that everyone else is doing it too.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      In a corrupt society, you get nowhere being morally absolute. There’s different shades of shady, but you only have one life to live, and depending on the circumstances, your best option might be to play ball. Push comes to shove, people are going to choose to feed their family. Apple doing fake reviews and a struggling low profit restaurant because all the other restaurants are inflating their reviews are different circumstances.
      - boneitis 6y ago
        Not a direct reply to anything in the thread, but I felt it's fairly on-topic to point out something I just realized with myself on seeing the n+1st headline and now wonder how long ago my default reaction evolved to this. Watching the ever-normalizing review gaming and incentives to _not_ fix them, I am well past caring about finding out a business has bought a review. My favorite local tasting room? I imagine they have the resources to invest in gaming, but I figure they'd stand their ground as long as possible out of a sense of integrity (and I would appreciate them all the more for this). Either way, good for them; I hope to enjoy many more years of their service[0]. My favorite m&p hole-in-the-wall? They don't exactly have a line out the door of raving, excited customers. And, I don't think they have the financial means to play ball. I root for them all the same. [0] ...provided it doesn't turn for the worse.
    - remram 6y ago
      If everybody is doing it, it is known, and Google doesn't address it, what do you do as a business? Sue Google, who certainly has a "no warranty" clause in their ToS about reviews? No, of course you buy fake reviews too. I have trouble blaming them here. Losing customers for the sake of your sense of righteousness helps no one.
  - abstractbarista 6y ago
    "In American courts, the burden of proof rests with the person who brings a claim of libel. In British courts, the author or journalist has the burden of proof, and typically loses." (https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/03/21/394273902/on-libel-and-the-law-u-s-and-u-k-go-separate-ways https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/03/21/394273902/...)
    - tpmx 6y ago
      This a well-known issue with british libel law. The UK needs to reform to stay relevant.
      - Sebb767 6y ago
        I'm not sure this would be better. I could claim you murdered 5 puppies last year, how would you go on to proof that you did not?
        tpmx 6y ago
        And I could claim that you love Madonna's latest album. Somehow the rest of the world gets by with the opposite burden of proof just fine.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  The BBC are reporting on the actions of the Which? consumer group. I got the impression Which? have not released that information.
- thih9 6y ago
  At this point there seems to be little benefit in shaming individual companies. At best it's a relatively minor cleanup, at worst you risk harming innocent people[1]. It looks like Which? focused on Google, this seems an appropriate long term approach. [1]: There's no guarantee that a fabricated review has been paid for by the business owner; or that all reviews from a given account are forged reviews (some might be genuine).
jhatemyjob 6y ago
how is this news?
- jackson1442 6y ago
  Same here. I'm not surprised in the slightest; this is common practice on Amazon already, and Yelp/BBB have allowed businesses to pay to remove negative reviews for years. I'm not sure if that's the case on Google reviews yet.
- dylan604 6y ago
  because as tuned in as you might be, the majority of people out there still have their collective heads in the sand and put a lot of weight on the reviews on commerce sites.
- dazc 6y ago
  Many people still believe online reviews are mostly authentic. I've heard more cynical people state that they can spot the fakes. They are wrong, or course, which is why this is news.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  This article is really about (the group) Which? asking for regulatory action i.e. the purpose of journalism isn't only to tell you that the building fell over, but also what the consequences for wider society are.
Daho0n 6y ago
At least Google didn't build their rating system specifically to blackmail businesses into paying for tools that can get negative ratings removed. Unlike Trustpilot.
- dazc 6y ago
  And you can have your Trustpilot 'stars' included in your Google search result snippet, paid and organic. Maybe Google don't know about the practices of Trustpilot or maybe 'there is no evidence'?
  - nguyenkien 6y ago
    Maybe they just dont care.
- dsnr 6y ago
  > Google didn't build their rating system specifically to blackmail businesses into paying for tools that can get negative ratings removed Quite the opposite, Google is constantly being harassed by lawyers employed by businesses with bad ratings, using legal tricks to have legitimate reviews removed. Then what‘s left is a very distorted picture of the actual consumer ratings, so the system is quite skewed in businesses favor.
  - Daho0n 6y ago
    That's not the same as Trustpilot. Their rating system is specifically built so paying businesses can remove ratings themselves while nonpaying can't . They can ask for proof of purchase and then only accept those that have both proof and a good rating. That's what most do.
    - thepete2 6y ago
      I've never used trustpilot, but how do they get away with it? Why are they used at all? Search rankings? But how did they get those?
    - 6y ago
MattGaiser 6y ago
I've been offered so many goodies for good reviews on everything from Amazon to restaurants that want good reviews on Yelp. Sometimes they will even offer you a coupon for a 5* review on a receipt. That aside, why is it that people get to commit fraud and Google gets the blame?
- toss1 6y ago
  Because Google, Yelp, Trustpilot, Amazon, etc. actually run the services, and they have the technology to validate it, but simply can't be bothered to get it right. So, they sell you allegedly good information, but deliver fraud. From the examples in the article where the reviewers covered multiple businesses hundreds of miles apart like they were next to home, Google certainly has the location data to see if they were ever there, or for local businesses, knows who lives in range to be customers. Amazon and others have massive data on their users, and could apply a lot of AI tech to validate reviews for credibility, if they wanted to bother to do it right.
- jjulius 6y ago
  It's both. The individuals themselves are to blame for the fraudulent reviews, and Google and other services are to blame for fostering environments that allow fraudulent reviews to be so prevalent.
snapetom 6y ago
I'm shocked, I tell you. /s This is common with any company with a social media strategy, and pretty essential for certain companies in the B2C sector to get off the ground.
- capableweb 6y ago
  > pretty essential for certain companies in the B2C sector to get off the ground Which "certain companies" are you talking about? I'm running a software company, restaurant and a SaaS, all B2C and neither have "buying fake reviews" as a part of their social media budget. Neither does any of my acquaintances who also run a different set of businesses.
stormqloud 6y ago
I've had people leave 1 star reviews, then call up and demand payment to change the rating.
- thepete2 6y ago
  That's a good one. Reviews are so abused by now, it's almost comical.
- Someone1234 6y ago
  Most places that's actually a crime (extortion). Now if the police will investigate it is another matter.
marshmallow_12 6y ago
I can't blame these companies, they are people, they have to make a living. It's not like they are actively harming anyone. So who should we blame? Google are also just trying to make money, they are also not hurting anyone over here.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  > It's not like they are actively harming anyone. How am I not harmed if I buy a product that is no good?
  - marshmallow_12 6y ago
    I'm saying when they write the reviews, there's only some abstract harm to consider. I'm not justifying it, just putting it into perspective
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - toss1 6y ago
      If you are going to try to put it in perspective, do it right. They are, for their own personal gain, using deceit to affect the behavior of others in a way that can cause harm to them. It is fraud. Just because each incident is a small scale, does not mean that it is not corrosive to society. Moreover, the point of the article is that this IS being done at scale, and scaled-up fraud is definitely corrosive to society. At the very least, it undermines trust in society, which is a prerequisite to a functioning society. Stop trying to minimize it. Having to make a living is no excuse to perpetrate fraud. If the business, or their fake reviewers need to perpetrate fraud to make a living, they should do something else.
ghoward 6y ago
I once wrote a negative review of a business on Google, and it went up, but when I went to look at the business's reviews under my wife's Google account, it was not there. I waited an hour and checked. Then a couple hours and checked. Then a day. It never showed up. I posted the review under her account and did the same checks for my account. It never showed up. I do not know why it didn't show up, but I wouldn't be surprised if the business had been able to pay money to Google to be able to check reviews before they went live and mark them as spam. Edit: Because some commenters did not seem to get the implied message, what I am actually implying is that in this context, or any context, I don't trust Google. I have no evidence of what commenters said I have claimed. (I have not claimed anything; I just said I wouldn't be surprised.)
- ipsum2 6y ago
  > but I wouldn't be surprised if the business had been able to pay money to Google to be able to check reviews before they went live and mark them as spam. Do you have any evidence of this claim? Have you seen businesses be able to do that? Surely, the hundreds of thousands of businesses on Google, one of them has talked about the ability to remove reviews.
  - donaldo 6y ago
    Yeah agreed. Do they think Google just has some checkout button to block bad reviews for $299.
    - zaphirplane 6y ago
      Of course not, you need to be logged in to a google account and solve a captcha ;)
  - ghoward 6y ago
    Nope. No evidence. That's why I said that "I would not be surprised if..." which doesn't make a concrete claim. To me, it means, "I don't know, but it seems plausible in my limited experience." I am making no claim other than pure speculation, and I know it. Edit: typo.
zwass 6y ago
I've noticed a number of fake seeming reviews on local businesses here in Vancouver, BC. The accounts seem to be leaving fake reviews across Canada. It's particularly suspicious to me given the improper grammar and almost entire lack of reference to anything specific to the business. The accounts also seem to give 100% 5 star reviews. There's no option in Google Maps to report these users for being fraudulent. For example: https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/104557996396454013599/reviews/@47.3222007,-101.0638456,5z?hl=en-CA https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/104557996396454013599/re... https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/109949503069363340417/reviews/@46.4049788,-101.254097,5z?hl=en-CA https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/109949503069363340417/re...
- z0r 6y ago
  I've seen this too - a fake business (one selling bait-and-switch low quality services through online storefronts) had many 5 star reviews, and if you clicked into their profiles you'd see a smattering of 5 stars reviews all across the country, sometimes in different countries. Some of them also gave a few 1 star reviews to a few places, probably the flip side of the same review selling business.
rococode 6y ago
An interesting thing about paid reviews - you can prove that the reviews are fake, but you usually can't prove that the business itself actually paid for those reviews. In a hypothetical world where companies with fake reviews are regularly discovered and lambasted in public, it's easy to imagine a sinister metagame where unscrupulous small businesses can buy bad good reviews (i.e. 5-star reviews that are obviously fake) for their competitors to make them seem sketchy. The folks selling the fake reviews certainly don't care who's paying. There's no obvious solution to me for that potential problem aside from stopping fake reviews before they're posted (which feels like the kind of thing that's much harder than it sounds); thankfully it doesn't appear to be a very common thing yet.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  That's fine. Just charge the fake reviewers and fake review companies with FCC violations, and remove their reviews. Have them hand over their books for lighter penalties, then hit the companies buying fake reviews with enforcement orders as well. Of course, all this is complicated by the fact that most of these companies are probably overseas . . .
  - kofejnik 6y ago
    don't think FCC will prosecute bodyshops in India and Phillippines
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
      I wonder the extent to which it's possible for such body shops to get accounts that are believed by Google to live in the U.S. (or fake-review destination country of choice). I see sites that purport to offer such accounts for 30-50 cents per account. So I guess it's not that expensive. I wonder how often these accounts get burned and how much revenue they generate with each account beforehand.
      - RileyJames 6y ago
Traster 6y ago
Trusted review website Which? Investigates review website and find they're not as good as Which? I do actually think Which? is a fairly good company that does a good thorough job (and I've bought a subscription before), but this is hardly news. Online review companies have no incentive to make their reviews accurate and their customers (the people who they're actually reviewing) are highly incentivised to cheat.
jedberg 6y ago
If feels like this could be solved if Google/Yelp/Etc wanted to solve it, but it would cut into their profits. Give the business an app to generate unique QR codes for each customer, and then have that customer use the code to make the review. Now everyone knows that the review comes from a person who actually bought the product, the reviewer is more likely to be honest because their identity is known to the seller, and the business can even remediate the issue because they know which customer left the review. To those saying anonymity equals honesty in the review, I really don't think that's the case, nor is it fair to the business. Much like our courts require an accuser to identify themselves to their attacker so their attacker can defend themselves, businesses should at least know who their accuser is, even if the rest of us don't.
- tenebrisalietum 6y ago
  How do I know the QR codes really came from a customer and weren't simply created and submitted by the business owner? Also how do I know the seller didn't bribe the buyer with a discount or something to create a positive review?
  - jedberg 6y ago
    Well, those problems happen now, so it's not strictly worse than what we have now, but those are good points. For the first one, it would have to be tied into the payment system somehow so the money would have to change hands. It doesn't totally solve the problem, but it certainly adds a cost, especially if the payment system requires unique customers. Heck, Google could make money like this by only allowing reviews for purchases via Google Pay. For the second one, I'm not really sure, but if they bribe everyone with the same discount, it's not really a bribe anymore, it's just the new price. And if they don't offer everyone the bribe, then they will quickly get bad reviews.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    Because all reviews are tied to an active Google account which is pseudo-tied to an IRL identity. I don't really care about the second point because it doesn't scale, people will do it anyway, and you can cozy right up to the line of literally paying for a good review in a million different "above board" ways.
schnevets 6y ago
I'm surprised more of these comments aren't focused on how glaringly flawed the 5-star democratic rating system has become. I felt like the rise of Uber made it abundantly clear that anything less than a 5.0 means you were not satisfied with the service and don't think the business should continue.
- drstewart 6y ago
  And then people act surprised Netflix moved to a thumbs up/down model for this very reason
- jedimastert 6y ago
  As always relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/937/ https://xkcd.com/937/
- 3np 6y ago
  This drives me nuts. Im operating under the assumption of a linear distribution. 4/5 still means in the 80th percentile. It’s better than average. 3/5 is “not amazing, not bad, what I would expect, an utterly normal experience”. In some platforms I am happy with everything, leaving a 4, getting the follow up question “what went wrong?” Nothing went wrong, they still exceeded expectations but I reserve my 5s for those “once in a year, best in class” experiences. I refuse to shift my MO to “less than 4 means something was bad”.
  - fairity 6y ago
    Why not adjust your ratings to fit the prevailing perception? Presumably the reason you're leaving reviews is not for yourself, but to help others, be it the business or future customers. To that end, it seems an adjustment is in order.
    - 3np 6y ago
      If the platform clearly communicates "this is what different rankings mean in our system" before I submit the input sure, but that is yet to happen.
boyesm 6y ago
If you could opt-in to change Amazon and other online retailer's customer aggregated reviews to an authoritative nonpartisan review created by a professional product reviewer, would you do it? Why (not)?
- Proziam 6y ago
  That probably depends on how this nonpartisan reviewer was selected. Are they paid? By whom? By what standard are they considered authoritative?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
Symbiote 6y ago
The original article from Which? Magazine is here: https://www.which.co.uk/news/2021/03/fake-google-reviews-boosting-uk-businesses/ https://www.which.co.uk/news/2021/03/fake-google-reviews-boo... (Which? is a charity which publishes a magazine with independent reviews. My parents were subscribers for years, and would always use the Which? ratings when purchasing a new appliance, insurance or similar.)
Hasz 6y ago
Reviews are now so gamified as to be completely worthless. Most users don't have much experience, and the experience they do have with the item might be completely out of line with how it was intended to be used or operated. There's a great quote from Michael Crichton I will repeat here, as it's quite accurate. Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray [Gell-Mann]’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
glaucon 6y ago
Online reviews; chocolate tea pots. Each about as useful as the other.
- abraxas 6y ago
  Yes, the inflation of ratings has been ridiculous. It's meaningless even in supposedly heavily guarded services like Audible. Just about every audio book is 4.3 stars out of 5 or higher. I just use what's behind the fractional number as a rough guide (since everything will be 4.something) and go with that. Except even then it appears that many titles are inflated via click farms.
fny 6y ago
This is so pervasive, and so easy to access its hardly news: https://www.facebook.com/search/groups/?q=google%20review%20exchange https://www.facebook.com/search/groups/?q=google%20review%20...
Lerc 6y ago
I got an an offer to give me five star reviews for a modest fee. When that happened I had a look around to see what I could do to report them to stop their behaviour. I found absolutely nothing. Much like when the algorithmic banhammer hits you, the options for actively communicating with Google in a meaningful manner are close to non-existent.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
hikerclimber 6y ago
google deletes reviews so there is nothing new in this. https://www.slashgear.com/why-google-deleted-100k-reviews-of-robinhood-overnight-29657338/ https://www.slashgear.com/why-google-deleted-100k-reviews-of...
mkl95 6y ago
I have caught several businesses doing the same thing in my country. The difference is that they don't buy them, they have their own employees write them. This results in patterns that make it obvious they were written by the same person. Google couldn't care less.
- genericposter18 6y ago
  Noticed similar. Had a pretty acrimonious hire experience with a large Thrifty Car rental franchise based out in suburban Melbourne (Australia) regarding admin fees for damage/repair not being disclosed in the written legal documentation. Conversation ultimately ended with "Thanks for your feedback on disclosure" Upon coming to place a review, recognised several names (in relation to above) of known staff including the franchise manager against numerous 5 star reviews. Mentioning the acronyms ACCC and CAV (Consumer Affairs Victoria) saw multiple false reviews removed in haste. Needless to say, a comment was included to that effect in my own review (with screen shots linking the offending reviews to staff)
cmckn 6y ago
I can't help but wonder if reviews should just be eliminated. I don't have a guess as to how Google would handle that. But for something like Amazon -- surely it would be easier for Amazon to vet the products they list than to vet all the reviews for those products? When I shop on Amazon, the only reason I read the reviews is to determine if a product is shitty or not. If Amazon had a decent standard of product quality, I don't really need the review section. Besides, I can always return it if Amazon (or the reviews) are wrong.
- joshstrange 6y ago
  I have to assume this would lead to a worse end outcome for everyone. I don't trust the reviews on any website completely but reading through enough of them tends to give me a decent idea of how good a product is. I'll read the top, bottom, and middle reviews and read them across multiple sites if possible. I don't do this for everything but for larger purchases or long-use items I do. I don't really trust Amazon/Google to actually review items themselves and I'm sure that would cause all sorts of other issues like Amazon/Google either lying/fudging to keep a big client or certain items not being popular enough for Amazon/Google to spend the time to vet. I've literally had a single lone review on a product be immensely helpful. I was looking for RAM that would work in my Synology and I found it by model number but I wasn't sure if the listing was accurate (blurry image, bad description, etc). I scrolled down to the reviews and there was 1 single review that said something like "If you are buying this for the XXXXX Synology it will work, expect ~5min on first boot for it to check/scan/test the RAM and then you will be good to go". I bought it and it worked perfectly for me. Without that review I might not have bought from that seller and instead paid ~20%+ more on another site. Reviews have problems for sure but I don't think getting rid of them or giving complete control to Amazon/Google/etc is the right fix.
- kmeisthax 6y ago
  If you only host known-quality product, then the scope of what you sell is greatly reduced. This isn't because you're filtering out bad product, but because you do not have the resources to actually vet everything flowing through your store. And this isn't so much an Amazon thing, or restricted to particular verticals. Steam used to work this way, and they were a massive bottleneck for people who wanted to sell indie games on PC simply because they were being swamped with unsolicited content submissions. They lost out on Minecraft because of this. That's why they tried having users do their content vetting for them (see Steam Greenlight), which itself was a disaster but in a different way. Now it's just an app store: you register with Steam Direct and pay a filing fee and you can be on Steam. This is the only model that actually scales. This is the dilemma every platform holder eventually hits: it's far more lucrative to just open yourself up to all comers and ban abusive sellers than to validate that someone is above-board before selling their stuff. The latter involves losing out on business opportunities. Traditional publishing models have to vet the content they sell because it's their money they're risking on what is effectively an investment into a copyrighted work. And they lose out on a lot of opportunities. However, platforms don't need to do this: the risks they take are far lower, so it makes far less sense to review content in advance. Remember: Amazon's business model was built on the "long tail" - making any sort of subjective quality judgment contrary to the spirit of the company. And the judgment is subjective. There's very few instances where you can say a product is objectively terrible, and those are better covered by making them illegal and making platforms liable for selling such product.
teekert 6y ago
I used to use and love a fintech app, they pivoted (in a way) from targeting banking nerds (with features like on the fly coupling of cards to accounts, an API, unlimited simple payment websites, etc, really nice, innovative features) to targeting "the Green crowd" (integrated their Insta feed into the app, pushed a more expensive subscription with social features that planted trees as you spend money, etc). I saw them go from 4.5 to below 2 stars over the course of a couple of days. But then after some days they were back at 4.7 with the CEO gloating that everyone loved the new version even more than the old one. The forum and the play store were filled with emotional complaints and even new users must have been bothered by all the bugs the new version introduced. I don't believe any of the play store reviews anymore since then. The pivoting is fine and I can see that it is annoying when your early adopters "cripple" the launch of your all new app with a sub 2 star rating. But imo it was justified in this case because where the old app was super stable and fast, the new app was littered with bugs and features became much more difficult to find.
amelius 6y ago
Is anyone conducting research to make reviews more trustworthy?
milin 6y ago
Thats why Tripadvisor reviews are most trustable. reason? It's not google.
bikamonki 6y ago
There is a global ethics pandemic. No?
tasssko 6y ago
I feel for business owners today, reviews are gamed more than ever and as a result have become much less valuable, harder to use for consumers, and with this fraud a few bad reviews can tarnish what is an unblemished customer service record. When making purchases i find i skip over dozens of reviews to find one or two that have some quality to them i can relate to based on the product and my expectations. When i see a really bad review i weigh it for much less than i used to especially if it lacks all the necessary components of a review. Does anyone else do this? Have you noticed that some reviews just look the same even the bad ones?
- wyldfire 6y ago
  For at least the last couple of years I ignore them entirely. I just have zero faith in any of them anymore. The problem some ten-ish years ago were bogus computer-generated reviews. But now the bogus reviews are written by humans and are smart enough to sound balanced. I don't know what to do. But for now, I subscribe to Consumer Reports and use price as a proxy for quality.
  - osrec 6y ago
    On Amazon, they could just make the refund/returns rate for a product public. That would probably be a pretty good quality indicator for physical goods.
    - Nextgrid 6y ago
      They'd just start buying their own product (which then goes right back into the supply chain) to skew the numbers. However, I do agree this is a good next step as it ups the costs significantly (the transaction fees as well as logistics of having to move your product in a loop) compared to buying fake reviews.
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        They probably do it already. I know for a fact this is an existing practice on Allegro - Polish eBay equivalent. What happens is a boss gets their employees to order their products with on-site pickup, or post + payment on delivery, wait few days, and upload a five-star review. Rinse, repeat. The product is, of course, never sent. The company loses on platform fees, but it's profitable if used to fabricate social proof for new listings, or to compensate for the few negative reviews weren't able to bribe away, that drag down your total rating too close to the point the platform may cancel your privileges or ban your account. Being a witness to all of this, I no longer trust any particular review. At this point, I strongly prefer to spend a little bit more money, and buy a product straight from a recognizable and reputable brand name.
luigeus 6y ago
Unfortunately, the companies doing this gain advantage for their apparent excellent service but often provide a poor customer experience. It just raises people's expectations which will not be satisfied and create the false idea that their competitors must be worse for their lower rating. This whole problem is damaging the market.
qwerty456127 6y ago
Today business is all about reviews and search results. You need to be in the top of your segment and have good reviews. You have to manipulate the reviews this or that way and have a budget for that. As a customer - just don't take reviews too serious. I personally also prefer to avoid the very top and always take a look at subsequent pages of search results, also results from alternative search engines when I'm looking for a company to hire.
deleted 6y ago
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particlestudy 6y ago
I have a friend that's working as a sales agent for a company that is putting pressure on the sales agents to make the customers at any cost leave a good review on multiple platforms, some of them became really crafty and did anything necessary in order to make the customers leave a 5 star review. In the past I've bought multiple products from them and there is 50% chance to get a really bad product but their Terms and Conditions + Lawyers and their activity make the return impossible for the customers and any complaints are attacked. From latest news they are still going strong with millions and billions in investments.
cube00 6y ago
> Google says it has "significantly" invested in tech to tackle the issue. Hope it's better then the same "tech" that locks people out of their accounts.
jxramos 6y ago
There were a few google reviews for a service I recently used that I wondered about... Response from the owner This is spam and I reported it to google There were a handful of those review responses. Made me wonder if spam features could be abused to mask bad reviews. I think at least in Yelp you can still see the data right?
emodendroket 6y ago
I think we’re kidding ourselves if we don’t imagine that every review platform anyone uses is riddled with fake reviews. My experience with Yelp is that business owners may also take to harassing you personally for writing a negative one.
asdff 6y ago
I find the distribution of the reviews far more telling. Apartment complex has a ton of 5 star reviews, but the distribution is bimodal with a huge peak on the 1 star reviews? I'll trust the 1 star reviews as the 5 star reviews were clearly written by the leasing office to bring up the mean rating: overtly flowery and glowing. No one writes a google review for their apartment unless the landlord is awful. Of course, I didn't take my own wisdom and signed the lease anyway, thinking "How bad can it be? I bet only really pissy people write these negative reviews anyway." Little did I know that in a year I would be writing my own multiparagraph 1 star review, documenting all the egregious behavior brought on by awful management during my year of suffering in that god forsaken "luxury" apartment, hoping to warn nameless others who might come after me. Pretty much every single thing I was warned about in those negative reviews came true. So at least for rooting out awful property management companies, I find google reviews very useful if the distribution of the reviews are bimodal between 5 and 1 stars.
nikolay 6y ago
I also just recently bought YouTube subscribers so that I can get a custom URL. Not sure why Google doesn't allow people to buy their name if they don't have 1,000 subscribers. Or at least let verified businesses and nonprofits which they sponsor get a custom channel URL. Sometimes, people are forced to game a system if it's built in a nonsensical way. I've been using Fakespot for years, so the fake reviews only matter to Google and their ranking.
agsamek 6y ago
My personal experience as a business owner. We do not care about reviews since we are a B2B software house. Our customers are mid- to large-size companies so they do not play reviews but lawyers if our service wasn't of highest quality :) My personal preference would be to prevent 3rd party companies like google from publishing reviews if the business owner doesn't want them. Anyway - no customer gave us any review on google and our website is full of recommendation letters. But at some point google started nagging our employees to put reviews since they visited our office. Guess what happened. We got our first review from an employee we were not happy with and planned to gracefully close our cooperation with. This is against Google policy. So we complained. We had to spend significant time to get to a real person at Google and get this removed. After a year similar situation happened. I thought ok - this should be easy the second time. No way - this time all the emails we knew did not respond, we could not reach anybody. We flagged the review several times. We could not do anything about that. It is like a person can just put a shit on your office wall and you could not clean it. And shit owner - Google doesn't care. We were forced to play by the rules and we bought 50 reviews to paint our wall. The company that provided this service was a Google partner. They explained that 80-90% of reviews of everything is written for money. And the best thing - once we started getting our reviews, the flagged reviews were finally removed. Seems like AI decided the we are a good company. Do you think we did something wrong? Immoral? Or just played business on a not leveled field? And to summarize. I do not care about reviews. And we have money to fight back with lawyers or PR. But it is sad that some businesses don't have this option and somebody (Google) can harm them through reviews they did not ask for.
- blub 6y ago
  If you're in the EU, maybe you can sue Google? I read about a case of (I think it was) a hair salon owner where Facebook automatically created a Facebook business page for them. They sued and they were forced to delete it.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - vasco 6y ago
martin_a 6y ago
Anecdotal but whatever: We worked with a software developer for some Magento stuff. Bought a plugin from him, support was awful, waited several weeks for a reply on our tickets, didn't respond to mails at all. So I wrote a 1 star Google review, stating, very politely, that the service was not what we expected, that our problems were not fixed, our mails not responded to etc. and that someone might think about this before doing business with him. In less than five minutes the developer replied to two tickets, wrote me a mail and threatened me to remove the rating from Google, otherwise he would take legal action. I added to the review that after posting the review I received a reply in 5 minutes and was threatened by the developer. Still stands today. And it's not the only 1 star rating for that business with a case like that. So... Not sure about Google ratings after all...
iainmerrick 6y ago
I remember when Google started requiring reviewers to publish their real names, 10 or 12 years ago (slightly before the concerted push behind Google+). I’m pretty sure the review quality was better back then, though probably only because the scammers and spammers hadn’t yet flooded the system. You might think non-pseudonymous reviews would at least offer some protection against fake reviews, but it doesn’t seem to have helped in the slightest. The other thing that annoys me is that nobody seems to be doing any kind of normalisation or calibration of ratings -- we just get simple average ratings, maybe with outliers filtered out. Whatever happened to all the ratings algorithms that were developed for the Netflix Prize? That seemed like important work at the time, but it seems to have almost completely ignored.
habosa 6y ago
This sucks for customers but as a business owner it's pretty rational behavior. If everyone is going to judge your business based on some 3rd-party rating and someone offers to boost that rating for you for a few hundred dollars ... you have to be very confident and moral to say no. As a consumer I am conscious of how often I choose a particular restaurant because it has many high-star Google ratings. In a big city the difference between 4.0 stars (100 ratings) and 4.3 stars (700 ratings) is probably tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in revenue.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
“Gee...dat dere’s a damn nice reputation ya gots. It’d be a cryin' shame if sumptin’ wuz t’ happin to it. Ain’t dat right, Louie?” The Internet has given the classic protection racket a whole new dimension (and legal cover). It is sad, because real reviews could be extremely valuable (and they were, for a short time). I guess this was inevitable.
yrro 6y ago
I know of a couple of businesses (owned by the same person) whose reviews are full of glowing testimonials - all posted by employees. He's even stupid enough to post them under his own name! All reported, all ignored by Google! As a result I trust nothing I read on Google maps.
dzonga 6y ago
the whole comprehensive reviews don't work. time has proven it. at the moment, I'm building a service, where you don't rate the business but rate the actual service you got. no star ratings. but text which is native to every literate individual and can be easily read by machine. reach out, if you wanna sign up for the beta list.

375 points by leephillips 6y ago

tpmx 6y ago

The BBC didn't dare to name the businesses? Weak as hell. I remember when the BBC was a shining beacon of broadcasting excellence via shortwave radio. How the mighty have fallen.

macspoofing 6y ago
If many companies are doing it, and many are forced (or feel forced) to do it in order to compete, then it isn't fair to just single one or two of them for public shaming via a publicly funded broadcaster. There's also libel ... maybe the threshold of evidence is high enough to write an article about some unnamed company buying reviews, but not high enough to hold up in court.
- abraae 6y ago
  > If many companies are doing it, and many are forced (or feel forced) to do it in order to compete, then it isn't fair to just single one or two of them for public shaming via a publicly funded broadcaster. Sorry but if you're doing shady shit, it's no defence that everyone else is doing it too.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    In a corrupt society, you get nowhere being morally absolute. There’s different shades of shady, but you only have one life to live, and depending on the circumstances, your best option might be to play ball. Push comes to shove, people are going to choose to feed their family. Apple doing fake reviews and a struggling low profit restaurant because all the other restaurants are inflating their reviews are different circumstances.
    - boneitis 6y ago
      Not a direct reply to anything in the thread, but I felt it's fairly on-topic to point out something I just realized with myself on seeing the n+1st headline and now wonder how long ago my default reaction evolved to this. Watching the ever-normalizing review gaming and incentives to _not_ fix them, I am well past caring about finding out a business has bought a review. My favorite local tasting room? I imagine they have the resources to invest in gaming, but I figure they'd stand their ground as long as possible out of a sense of integrity (and I would appreciate them all the more for this). Either way, good for them; I hope to enjoy many more years of their service[0]. My favorite m&p hole-in-the-wall? They don't exactly have a line out the door of raving, excited customers. And, I don't think they have the financial means to play ball. I root for them all the same. [0] ...provided it doesn't turn for the worse.
  - remram 6y ago
    If everybody is doing it, it is known, and Google doesn't address it, what do you do as a business? Sue Google, who certainly has a "no warranty" clause in their ToS about reviews? No, of course you buy fake reviews too. I have trouble blaming them here. Losing customers for the sake of your sense of righteousness helps no one.
- abstractbarista 6y ago
  "In American courts, the burden of proof rests with the person who brings a claim of libel. In British courts, the author or journalist has the burden of proof, and typically loses." (https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/03/21/394273902/on-libel-and-the-law-u-s-and-u-k-go-separate-ways https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/03/21/394273902/...)
  - tpmx 6y ago
    This a well-known issue with british libel law. The UK needs to reform to stay relevant.
    - Sebb767 6y ago
      I'm not sure this would be better. I could claim you murdered 5 puppies last year, how would you go on to proof that you did not?
      - tpmx 6y ago
        And I could claim that you love Madonna's latest album. Somehow the rest of the world gets by with the opposite burden of proof just fine.
MaxBarraclough 6y ago
The BBC are reporting on the actions of the Which? consumer group. I got the impression Which? have not released that information.
thih9 6y ago
At this point there seems to be little benefit in shaming individual companies. At best it's a relatively minor cleanup, at worst you risk harming innocent people[1]. It looks like Which? focused on Google, this seems an appropriate long term approach. [1]: There's no guarantee that a fabricated review has been paid for by the business owner; or that all reviews from a given account are forged reviews (some might be genuine).

jhatemyjob 6y ago

how is this news?

jackson1442 6y ago
Same here. I'm not surprised in the slightest; this is common practice on Amazon already, and Yelp/BBB have allowed businesses to pay to remove negative reviews for years. I'm not sure if that's the case on Google reviews yet.
dylan604 6y ago
because as tuned in as you might be, the majority of people out there still have their collective heads in the sand and put a lot of weight on the reviews on commerce sites.
dazc 6y ago
Many people still believe online reviews are mostly authentic. I've heard more cynical people state that they can spot the fakes. They are wrong, or course, which is why this is news.
mhh__ 6y ago
This article is really about (the group) Which? asking for regulatory action i.e. the purpose of journalism isn't only to tell you that the building fell over, but also what the consequences for wider society are.

Daho0n 6y ago

At least Google didn't build their rating system specifically to blackmail businesses into paying for tools that can get negative ratings removed. Unlike Trustpilot.

dazc 6y ago
And you can have your Trustpilot 'stars' included in your Google search result snippet, paid and organic. Maybe Google don't know about the practices of Trustpilot or maybe 'there is no evidence'?
- nguyenkien 6y ago
  Maybe they just dont care.
dsnr 6y ago
> Google didn't build their rating system specifically to blackmail businesses into paying for tools that can get negative ratings removed Quite the opposite, Google is constantly being harassed by lawyers employed by businesses with bad ratings, using legal tricks to have legitimate reviews removed. Then what‘s left is a very distorted picture of the actual consumer ratings, so the system is quite skewed in businesses favor.
- Daho0n 6y ago
  That's not the same as Trustpilot. Their rating system is specifically built so paying businesses can remove ratings themselves while nonpaying can't . They can ask for proof of purchase and then only accept those that have both proof and a good rating. That's what most do.
  - thepete2 6y ago
    I've never used trustpilot, but how do they get away with it? Why are they used at all? Search rankings? But how did they get those?
  - 6y ago

MattGaiser 6y ago

I've been offered so many goodies for good reviews on everything from Amazon to restaurants that want good reviews on Yelp. Sometimes they will even offer you a coupon for a 5* review on a receipt. That aside, why is it that people get to commit fraud and Google gets the blame?

toss1 6y ago
Because Google, Yelp, Trustpilot, Amazon, etc. actually run the services, and they have the technology to validate it, but simply can't be bothered to get it right. So, they sell you allegedly good information, but deliver fraud. From the examples in the article where the reviewers covered multiple businesses hundreds of miles apart like they were next to home, Google certainly has the location data to see if they were ever there, or for local businesses, knows who lives in range to be customers. Amazon and others have massive data on their users, and could apply a lot of AI tech to validate reviews for credibility, if they wanted to bother to do it right.
jjulius 6y ago
It's both. The individuals themselves are to blame for the fraudulent reviews, and Google and other services are to blame for fostering environments that allow fraudulent reviews to be so prevalent.

snapetom 6y ago

I'm shocked, I tell you. /s This is common with any company with a social media strategy, and pretty essential for certain companies in the B2C sector to get off the ground.

capableweb 6y ago
> pretty essential for certain companies in the B2C sector to get off the ground Which "certain companies" are you talking about? I'm running a software company, restaurant and a SaaS, all B2C and neither have "buying fake reviews" as a part of their social media budget. Neither does any of my acquaintances who also run a different set of businesses.

stormqloud 6y ago

I've had people leave 1 star reviews, then call up and demand payment to change the rating.

thepete2 6y ago
That's a good one. Reviews are so abused by now, it's almost comical.
Someone1234 6y ago
Most places that's actually a crime (extortion). Now if the police will investigate it is another matter.

marshmallow_12 6y ago

I can't blame these companies, they are people, they have to make a living. It's not like they are actively harming anyone. So who should we blame? Google are also just trying to make money, they are also not hurting anyone over here.

MattGaiser 6y ago
> It's not like they are actively harming anyone. How am I not harmed if I buy a product that is no good?
- marshmallow_12 6y ago
  I'm saying when they write the reviews, there's only some abstract harm to consider. I'm not justifying it, just putting it into perspective
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - toss1 6y ago
    If you are going to try to put it in perspective, do it right. They are, for their own personal gain, using deceit to affect the behavior of others in a way that can cause harm to them. It is fraud. Just because each incident is a small scale, does not mean that it is not corrosive to society. Moreover, the point of the article is that this IS being done at scale, and scaled-up fraud is definitely corrosive to society. At the very least, it undermines trust in society, which is a prerequisite to a functioning society. Stop trying to minimize it. Having to make a living is no excuse to perpetrate fraud. If the business, or their fake reviewers need to perpetrate fraud to make a living, they should do something else.

ghoward 6y ago

I once wrote a negative review of a business on Google, and it went up, but when I went to look at the business's reviews under my wife's Google account, it was not there. I waited an hour and checked. Then a couple hours and checked. Then a day. It never showed up. I posted the review under her account and did the same checks for my account. It never showed up. I do not know why it didn't show up, but I wouldn't be surprised if the business had been able to pay money to Google to be able to check reviews before they went live and mark them as spam. Edit: Because some commenters did not seem to get the implied message, what I am actually implying is that in this context, or any context, I don't trust Google. I have no evidence of what commenters said I have claimed. (I have not claimed anything; I just said I wouldn't be surprised.)

ipsum2 6y ago
> but I wouldn't be surprised if the business had been able to pay money to Google to be able to check reviews before they went live and mark them as spam. Do you have any evidence of this claim? Have you seen businesses be able to do that? Surely, the hundreds of thousands of businesses on Google, one of them has talked about the ability to remove reviews.
- donaldo 6y ago
  Yeah agreed. Do they think Google just has some checkout button to block bad reviews for $299.
  - zaphirplane 6y ago
    Of course not, you need to be logged in to a google account and solve a captcha ;)
- ghoward 6y ago
  Nope. No evidence. That's why I said that "I would not be surprised if..." which doesn't make a concrete claim. To me, it means, "I don't know, but it seems plausible in my limited experience." I am making no claim other than pure speculation, and I know it. Edit: typo.

zwass 6y ago

I've noticed a number of fake seeming reviews on local businesses here in Vancouver, BC. The accounts seem to be leaving fake reviews across Canada. It's particularly suspicious to me given the improper grammar and almost entire lack of reference to anything specific to the business. The accounts also seem to give 100% 5 star reviews. There's no option in Google Maps to report these users for being fraudulent. For example: https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/104557996396454013599/reviews/@47.3222007,-101.0638456,5z?hl=en-CA https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/104557996396454013599/re... https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/109949503069363340417/reviews/@46.4049788,-101.254097,5z?hl=en-CA https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/109949503069363340417/re...

z0r 6y ago
I've seen this too - a fake business (one selling bait-and-switch low quality services through online storefronts) had many 5 star reviews, and if you clicked into their profiles you'd see a smattering of 5 stars reviews all across the country, sometimes in different countries. Some of them also gave a few 1 star reviews to a few places, probably the flip side of the same review selling business.

rococode 6y ago

An interesting thing about paid reviews - you can prove that the reviews are fake, but you usually can't prove that the business itself actually paid for those reviews. In a hypothetical world where companies with fake reviews are regularly discovered and lambasted in public, it's easy to imagine a sinister metagame where unscrupulous small businesses can buy bad good reviews (i.e. 5-star reviews that are obviously fake) for their competitors to make them seem sketchy. The folks selling the fake reviews certainly don't care who's paying. There's no obvious solution to me for that potential problem aside from stopping fake reviews before they're posted (which feels like the kind of thing that's much harder than it sounds); thankfully it doesn't appear to be a very common thing yet.

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
That's fine. Just charge the fake reviewers and fake review companies with FCC violations, and remove their reviews. Have them hand over their books for lighter penalties, then hit the companies buying fake reviews with enforcement orders as well. Of course, all this is complicated by the fact that most of these companies are probably overseas . . .
- kofejnik 6y ago
  don't think FCC will prosecute bodyshops in India and Phillippines
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    I wonder the extent to which it's possible for such body shops to get accounts that are believed by Google to live in the U.S. (or fake-review destination country of choice). I see sites that purport to offer such accounts for 30-50 cents per account. So I guess it's not that expensive. I wonder how often these accounts get burned and how much revenue they generate with each account beforehand.
    - RileyJames 6y ago

Traster 6y ago

Trusted review website Which? Investigates review website and find they're not as good as Which? I do actually think Which? is a fairly good company that does a good thorough job (and I've bought a subscription before), but this is hardly news. Online review companies have no incentive to make their reviews accurate and their customers (the people who they're actually reviewing) are highly incentivised to cheat.

jedberg 6y ago

If feels like this could be solved if Google/Yelp/Etc wanted to solve it, but it would cut into their profits. Give the business an app to generate unique QR codes for each customer, and then have that customer use the code to make the review. Now everyone knows that the review comes from a person who actually bought the product, the reviewer is more likely to be honest because their identity is known to the seller, and the business can even remediate the issue because they know which customer left the review. To those saying anonymity equals honesty in the review, I really don't think that's the case, nor is it fair to the business. Much like our courts require an accuser to identify themselves to their attacker so their attacker can defend themselves, businesses should at least know who their accuser is, even if the rest of us don't.

tenebrisalietum 6y ago
How do I know the QR codes really came from a customer and weren't simply created and submitted by the business owner? Also how do I know the seller didn't bribe the buyer with a discount or something to create a positive review?
- jedberg 6y ago
  Well, those problems happen now, so it's not strictly worse than what we have now, but those are good points. For the first one, it would have to be tied into the payment system somehow so the money would have to change hands. It doesn't totally solve the problem, but it certainly adds a cost, especially if the payment system requires unique customers. Heck, Google could make money like this by only allowing reviews for purchases via Google Pay. For the second one, I'm not really sure, but if they bribe everyone with the same discount, it's not really a bribe anymore, it's just the new price. And if they don't offer everyone the bribe, then they will quickly get bad reviews.
- Spivak 6y ago
  Because all reviews are tied to an active Google account which is pseudo-tied to an IRL identity. I don't really care about the second point because it doesn't scale, people will do it anyway, and you can cozy right up to the line of literally paying for a good review in a million different "above board" ways.

schnevets 6y ago

I'm surprised more of these comments aren't focused on how glaringly flawed the 5-star democratic rating system has become. I felt like the rise of Uber made it abundantly clear that anything less than a 5.0 means you were not satisfied with the service and don't think the business should continue.

drstewart 6y ago
And then people act surprised Netflix moved to a thumbs up/down model for this very reason
jedimastert 6y ago
As always relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/937/ https://xkcd.com/937/
3np 6y ago
This drives me nuts. Im operating under the assumption of a linear distribution. 4/5 still means in the 80th percentile. It’s better than average. 3/5 is “not amazing, not bad, what I would expect, an utterly normal experience”. In some platforms I am happy with everything, leaving a 4, getting the follow up question “what went wrong?” Nothing went wrong, they still exceeded expectations but I reserve my 5s for those “once in a year, best in class” experiences. I refuse to shift my MO to “less than 4 means something was bad”.
- fairity 6y ago
  Why not adjust your ratings to fit the prevailing perception? Presumably the reason you're leaving reviews is not for yourself, but to help others, be it the business or future customers. To that end, it seems an adjustment is in order.
  - 3np 6y ago
    If the platform clearly communicates "this is what different rankings mean in our system" before I submit the input sure, but that is yet to happen.

boyesm 6y ago

If you could opt-in to change Amazon and other online retailer's customer aggregated reviews to an authoritative nonpartisan review created by a professional product reviewer, would you do it? Why (not)?

Proziam 6y ago
That probably depends on how this nonpartisan reviewer was selected. Are they paid? By whom? By what standard are they considered authoritative?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

Symbiote 6y ago

The original article from Which? Magazine is here: https://www.which.co.uk/news/2021/03/fake-google-reviews-boosting-uk-businesses/ https://www.which.co.uk/news/2021/03/fake-google-reviews-boo... (Which? is a charity which publishes a magazine with independent reviews. My parents were subscribers for years, and would always use the Which? ratings when purchasing a new appliance, insurance or similar.)

Hasz 6y ago

Reviews are now so gamified as to be completely worthless. Most users don't have much experience, and the experience they do have with the item might be completely out of line with how it was intended to be used or operated. There's a great quote from Michael Crichton I will repeat here, as it's quite accurate. Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray [Gell-Mann]’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

glaucon 6y ago

Online reviews; chocolate tea pots. Each about as useful as the other.

abraxas 6y ago
Yes, the inflation of ratings has been ridiculous. It's meaningless even in supposedly heavily guarded services like Audible. Just about every audio book is 4.3 stars out of 5 or higher. I just use what's behind the fractional number as a rough guide (since everything will be 4.something) and go with that. Except even then it appears that many titles are inflated via click farms.

fny 6y ago

This is so pervasive, and so easy to access its hardly news: https://www.facebook.com/search/groups/?q=google%20review%20exchange https://www.facebook.com/search/groups/?q=google%20review%20...

Lerc 6y ago

I got an an offer to give me five star reviews for a modest fee. When that happened I had a look around to see what I could do to report them to stop their behaviour. I found absolutely nothing. Much like when the algorithmic banhammer hits you, the options for actively communicating with Google in a meaningful manner are close to non-existent.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

hikerclimber 6y ago

google deletes reviews so there is nothing new in this. https://www.slashgear.com/why-google-deleted-100k-reviews-of-robinhood-overnight-29657338/ https://www.slashgear.com/why-google-deleted-100k-reviews-of...

mkl95 6y ago

I have caught several businesses doing the same thing in my country. The difference is that they don't buy them, they have their own employees write them. This results in patterns that make it obvious they were written by the same person. Google couldn't care less.

genericposter18 6y ago
Noticed similar. Had a pretty acrimonious hire experience with a large Thrifty Car rental franchise based out in suburban Melbourne (Australia) regarding admin fees for damage/repair not being disclosed in the written legal documentation. Conversation ultimately ended with "Thanks for your feedback on disclosure" Upon coming to place a review, recognised several names (in relation to above) of known staff including the franchise manager against numerous 5 star reviews. Mentioning the acronyms ACCC and CAV (Consumer Affairs Victoria) saw multiple false reviews removed in haste. Needless to say, a comment was included to that effect in my own review (with screen shots linking the offending reviews to staff)

cmckn 6y ago

I can't help but wonder if reviews should just be eliminated. I don't have a guess as to how Google would handle that. But for something like Amazon -- surely it would be easier for Amazon to vet the products they list than to vet all the reviews for those products? When I shop on Amazon, the only reason I read the reviews is to determine if a product is shitty or not. If Amazon had a decent standard of product quality, I don't really need the review section. Besides, I can always return it if Amazon (or the reviews) are wrong.

joshstrange 6y ago
I have to assume this would lead to a worse end outcome for everyone. I don't trust the reviews on any website completely but reading through enough of them tends to give me a decent idea of how good a product is. I'll read the top, bottom, and middle reviews and read them across multiple sites if possible. I don't do this for everything but for larger purchases or long-use items I do. I don't really trust Amazon/Google to actually review items themselves and I'm sure that would cause all sorts of other issues like Amazon/Google either lying/fudging to keep a big client or certain items not being popular enough for Amazon/Google to spend the time to vet. I've literally had a single lone review on a product be immensely helpful. I was looking for RAM that would work in my Synology and I found it by model number but I wasn't sure if the listing was accurate (blurry image, bad description, etc). I scrolled down to the reviews and there was 1 single review that said something like "If you are buying this for the XXXXX Synology it will work, expect ~5min on first boot for it to check/scan/test the RAM and then you will be good to go". I bought it and it worked perfectly for me. Without that review I might not have bought from that seller and instead paid ~20%+ more on another site. Reviews have problems for sure but I don't think getting rid of them or giving complete control to Amazon/Google/etc is the right fix.
kmeisthax 6y ago
If you only host known-quality product, then the scope of what you sell is greatly reduced. This isn't because you're filtering out bad product, but because you do not have the resources to actually vet everything flowing through your store. And this isn't so much an Amazon thing, or restricted to particular verticals. Steam used to work this way, and they were a massive bottleneck for people who wanted to sell indie games on PC simply because they were being swamped with unsolicited content submissions. They lost out on Minecraft because of this. That's why they tried having users do their content vetting for them (see Steam Greenlight), which itself was a disaster but in a different way. Now it's just an app store: you register with Steam Direct and pay a filing fee and you can be on Steam. This is the only model that actually scales. This is the dilemma every platform holder eventually hits: it's far more lucrative to just open yourself up to all comers and ban abusive sellers than to validate that someone is above-board before selling their stuff. The latter involves losing out on business opportunities. Traditional publishing models have to vet the content they sell because it's their money they're risking on what is effectively an investment into a copyrighted work. And they lose out on a lot of opportunities. However, platforms don't need to do this: the risks they take are far lower, so it makes far less sense to review content in advance. Remember: Amazon's business model was built on the "long tail" - making any sort of subjective quality judgment contrary to the spirit of the company. And the judgment is subjective. There's very few instances where you can say a product is objectively terrible, and those are better covered by making them illegal and making platforms liable for selling such product.

teekert 6y ago

I used to use and love a fintech app, they pivoted (in a way) from targeting banking nerds (with features like on the fly coupling of cards to accounts, an API, unlimited simple payment websites, etc, really nice, innovative features) to targeting "the Green crowd" (integrated their Insta feed into the app, pushed a more expensive subscription with social features that planted trees as you spend money, etc). I saw them go from 4.5 to below 2 stars over the course of a couple of days. But then after some days they were back at 4.7 with the CEO gloating that everyone loved the new version even more than the old one. The forum and the play store were filled with emotional complaints and even new users must have been bothered by all the bugs the new version introduced. I don't believe any of the play store reviews anymore since then. The pivoting is fine and I can see that it is annoying when your early adopters "cripple" the launch of your all new app with a sub 2 star rating. But imo it was justified in this case because where the old app was super stable and fast, the new app was littered with bugs and features became much more difficult to find.

amelius 6y ago

Is anyone conducting research to make reviews more trustworthy?

milin 6y ago

Thats why Tripadvisor reviews are most trustable. reason? It's not google.

bikamonki 6y ago

There is a global ethics pandemic. No?

tasssko 6y ago

I feel for business owners today, reviews are gamed more than ever and as a result have become much less valuable, harder to use for consumers, and with this fraud a few bad reviews can tarnish what is an unblemished customer service record. When making purchases i find i skip over dozens of reviews to find one or two that have some quality to them i can relate to based on the product and my expectations. When i see a really bad review i weigh it for much less than i used to especially if it lacks all the necessary components of a review. Does anyone else do this? Have you noticed that some reviews just look the same even the bad ones?

wyldfire 6y ago
For at least the last couple of years I ignore them entirely. I just have zero faith in any of them anymore. The problem some ten-ish years ago were bogus computer-generated reviews. But now the bogus reviews are written by humans and are smart enough to sound balanced. I don't know what to do. But for now, I subscribe to Consumer Reports and use price as a proxy for quality.
- osrec 6y ago
  On Amazon, they could just make the refund/returns rate for a product public. That would probably be a pretty good quality indicator for physical goods.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    They'd just start buying their own product (which then goes right back into the supply chain) to skew the numbers. However, I do agree this is a good next step as it ups the costs significantly (the transaction fees as well as logistics of having to move your product in a loop) compared to buying fake reviews.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      They probably do it already. I know for a fact this is an existing practice on Allegro - Polish eBay equivalent. What happens is a boss gets their employees to order their products with on-site pickup, or post + payment on delivery, wait few days, and upload a five-star review. Rinse, repeat. The product is, of course, never sent. The company loses on platform fees, but it's profitable if used to fabricate social proof for new listings, or to compensate for the few negative reviews weren't able to bribe away, that drag down your total rating too close to the point the platform may cancel your privileges or ban your account. Being a witness to all of this, I no longer trust any particular review. At this point, I strongly prefer to spend a little bit more money, and buy a product straight from a recognizable and reputable brand name.

luigeus 6y ago

Unfortunately, the companies doing this gain advantage for their apparent excellent service but often provide a poor customer experience. It just raises people's expectations which will not be satisfied and create the false idea that their competitors must be worse for their lower rating. This whole problem is damaging the market.

qwerty456127 6y ago

Today business is all about reviews and search results. You need to be in the top of your segment and have good reviews. You have to manipulate the reviews this or that way and have a budget for that. As a customer - just don't take reviews too serious. I personally also prefer to avoid the very top and always take a look at subsequent pages of search results, also results from alternative search engines when I'm looking for a company to hire.

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particlestudy 6y ago

I have a friend that's working as a sales agent for a company that is putting pressure on the sales agents to make the customers at any cost leave a good review on multiple platforms, some of them became really crafty and did anything necessary in order to make the customers leave a 5 star review. In the past I've bought multiple products from them and there is 50% chance to get a really bad product but their Terms and Conditions + Lawyers and their activity make the return impossible for the customers and any complaints are attacked. From latest news they are still going strong with millions and billions in investments.

cube00 6y ago

> Google says it has "significantly" invested in tech to tackle the issue. Hope it's better then the same "tech" that locks people out of their accounts.

jxramos 6y ago

There were a few google reviews for a service I recently used that I wondered about... Response from the owner This is spam and I reported it to google There were a handful of those review responses. Made me wonder if spam features could be abused to mask bad reviews. I think at least in Yelp you can still see the data right?

emodendroket 6y ago

I think we’re kidding ourselves if we don’t imagine that every review platform anyone uses is riddled with fake reviews. My experience with Yelp is that business owners may also take to harassing you personally for writing a negative one.

asdff 6y ago

I find the distribution of the reviews far more telling. Apartment complex has a ton of 5 star reviews, but the distribution is bimodal with a huge peak on the 1 star reviews? I'll trust the 1 star reviews as the 5 star reviews were clearly written by the leasing office to bring up the mean rating: overtly flowery and glowing. No one writes a google review for their apartment unless the landlord is awful. Of course, I didn't take my own wisdom and signed the lease anyway, thinking "How bad can it be? I bet only really pissy people write these negative reviews anyway." Little did I know that in a year I would be writing my own multiparagraph 1 star review, documenting all the egregious behavior brought on by awful management during my year of suffering in that god forsaken "luxury" apartment, hoping to warn nameless others who might come after me. Pretty much every single thing I was warned about in those negative reviews came true. So at least for rooting out awful property management companies, I find google reviews very useful if the distribution of the reviews are bimodal between 5 and 1 stars.

nikolay 6y ago

I also just recently bought YouTube subscribers so that I can get a custom URL. Not sure why Google doesn't allow people to buy their name if they don't have 1,000 subscribers. Or at least let verified businesses and nonprofits which they sponsor get a custom channel URL. Sometimes, people are forced to game a system if it's built in a nonsensical way. I've been using Fakespot for years, so the fake reviews only matter to Google and their ranking.

agsamek 6y ago

My personal experience as a business owner. We do not care about reviews since we are a B2B software house. Our customers are mid- to large-size companies so they do not play reviews but lawyers if our service wasn't of highest quality :) My personal preference would be to prevent 3rd party companies like google from publishing reviews if the business owner doesn't want them. Anyway - no customer gave us any review on google and our website is full of recommendation letters. But at some point google started nagging our employees to put reviews since they visited our office. Guess what happened. We got our first review from an employee we were not happy with and planned to gracefully close our cooperation with. This is against Google policy. So we complained. We had to spend significant time to get to a real person at Google and get this removed. After a year similar situation happened. I thought ok - this should be easy the second time. No way - this time all the emails we knew did not respond, we could not reach anybody. We flagged the review several times. We could not do anything about that. It is like a person can just put a shit on your office wall and you could not clean it. And shit owner - Google doesn't care. We were forced to play by the rules and we bought 50 reviews to paint our wall. The company that provided this service was a Google partner. They explained that 80-90% of reviews of everything is written for money. And the best thing - once we started getting our reviews, the flagged reviews were finally removed. Seems like AI decided the we are a good company. Do you think we did something wrong? Immoral? Or just played business on a not leveled field? And to summarize. I do not care about reviews. And we have money to fight back with lawyers or PR. But it is sad that some businesses don't have this option and somebody (Google) can harm them through reviews they did not ask for.

blub 6y ago
If you're in the EU, maybe you can sue Google? I read about a case of (I think it was) a hair salon owner where Facebook automatically created a Facebook business page for them. They sued and they were forced to delete it.
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- vasco 6y ago

martin_a 6y ago

Anecdotal but whatever: We worked with a software developer for some Magento stuff. Bought a plugin from him, support was awful, waited several weeks for a reply on our tickets, didn't respond to mails at all. So I wrote a 1 star Google review, stating, very politely, that the service was not what we expected, that our problems were not fixed, our mails not responded to etc. and that someone might think about this before doing business with him. In less than five minutes the developer replied to two tickets, wrote me a mail and threatened me to remove the rating from Google, otherwise he would take legal action. I added to the review that after posting the review I received a reply in 5 minutes and was threatened by the developer. Still stands today. And it's not the only 1 star rating for that business with a case like that. So... Not sure about Google ratings after all...

iainmerrick 6y ago

I remember when Google started requiring reviewers to publish their real names, 10 or 12 years ago (slightly before the concerted push behind Google+). I’m pretty sure the review quality was better back then, though probably only because the scammers and spammers hadn’t yet flooded the system. You might think non-pseudonymous reviews would at least offer some protection against fake reviews, but it doesn’t seem to have helped in the slightest. The other thing that annoys me is that nobody seems to be doing any kind of normalisation or calibration of ratings -- we just get simple average ratings, maybe with outliers filtered out. Whatever happened to all the ratings algorithms that were developed for the Netflix Prize? That seemed like important work at the time, but it seems to have almost completely ignored.

habosa 6y ago

This sucks for customers but as a business owner it's pretty rational behavior. If everyone is going to judge your business based on some 3rd-party rating and someone offers to boost that rating for you for a few hundred dollars ... you have to be very confident and moral to say no. As a consumer I am conscious of how often I choose a particular restaurant because it has many high-star Google ratings. In a big city the difference between 4.0 stars (100 ratings) and 4.3 stars (700 ratings) is probably tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in revenue.

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

“Gee...dat dere’s a damn nice reputation ya gots. It’d be a cryin' shame if sumptin’ wuz t’ happin to it. Ain’t dat right, Louie?” The Internet has given the classic protection racket a whole new dimension (and legal cover). It is sad, because real reviews could be extremely valuable (and they were, for a short time). I guess this was inevitable.

yrro 6y ago

I know of a couple of businesses (owned by the same person) whose reviews are full of glowing testimonials - all posted by employees. He's even stupid enough to post them under his own name! All reported, all ignored by Google! As a result I trust nothing I read on Google maps.

dzonga 6y ago

the whole comprehensive reviews don't work. time has proven it. at the moment, I'm building a service, where you don't rate the business but rate the actual service you got. no star ratings. but text which is native to every literate individual and can be easily read by machine. reach out, if you wanna sign up for the beta list.