When shopping online, just about every single person out there has been burned by a fake review at some point. Even if they do not know it at the time, there are definitely fake reviews online been written on a daily basis. There is a lot of motivation to writing fake reviews, and a lot of businesses have tried to get away with this tactic for several years.
Spotting fake reviews can sometimes be easy, but things are getting a little bit more complicated in recent years. It seems like businesses are really putting in a lot of time and effort to make them sound as convincing as possible. So, what are some warning signs to look out for when it comes to fake reviews?
High Ratings with Few Actual Reviews
One of the most obvious ways to tell if a business might be using fake reviews is by looking at their rating and then seeing very little detail being covered in actual reviews. The easiest way to rate a product is to simply give it a star rating out of five on Amazon. While it is very easy, a lot of positive reviews without any detailed reviews can be pretty suspicious.
If a product is really doing well, there will be a few customers who will take the time to write an actual review. Getting spammed by possibly hundreds of reviews without any written information is definitely going to be suspicious.
A Lot of Positive Reviews in a Short Amount of Time
If a product has one positive review after another in a matter of days, it could very well be some type of bulk order made online to help pay for reviews. This is especially true for a smaller company that might only have a few different options currently being sold. It is just in possible for a company like that all of a sudden get hundreds of people leaving positive reviews at seemingly the same time.
Wording Doesn’t Make Sense
A common practice for a lot of businesses out there is to use and outsourcing company to get help with fake reviews online. Since the pay is usually not much, they tend to be outsourced to writers who do not know the English language fluently. This can lead to some broken English and some weird wording throughout the review. Look for tendencies in the reviews to also see if they were given some type of script to go off of.
Keywords are always going to be a major focus for fake reviews. If the same keyword or two shows up every single time, it is a definite red flag.
Suspicious Photos That Don’t Show Much
This is one of the more advanced ways businesses are actually using product reviews to their advantage. By perhaps taking a few photos and handing them off to other reviewer‘s, it makes things look pretty genuine. However, the photos do need to be examined.
For example, if the photos look like they are professionally done or do not show much, it might mean that they are fake. It also needs to once again be examined whether or not they are being posted one after another. Getting a flood of user photos in a matter of days is definitely going to be suspicious.
A Lot of Negative Reviews
A company might be going through some damage control if they are dealing with negative reviews on Amazon and other websites. It is always important to look at the most recent reviews, but also the reviews left during the lifetime of the product. In most cases, the real truth will likely come out on Amazon. While a business can still get away with writing a lot of positive reviews that might be fake, there is no way to scrub bad reviews off of Amazon at this time.
Use Common Sense
Finally, a lot of figuring out fake reviews comes down to using common sense. If a deal seems too good to be true, chances are it most likely is. Not only are there fake reviews out there, but there are fake products as well. Everyone is trying to make money off of the platform, so it seems impossible that fake reviews will ever be truly illuminated.
By being A smarter consumer, a person is much more likely to have a positive experience shopping online. The best products are going to have pretty in-depth reviews left by people who are genuinely happy about the product. There are always going to be some new launches that don’t have positive reviews written yet for them, but most establish products are going to stand out based off of the reviews
Sports. Music. Philly Native. Not Rude.
