Looking at the Review Websites with New Eyes

Online reviews where would we be without them? More to the point, where would Amazon be without them to lots of people who come to Amazon, the user reviews they find there for their millions of products are an important reason to keep coming back. And yet, Amazon and dedicated review websites like TripAdvisor have long been questioned for the integrity of their reviews. Hotels that have been panned by users have for years complained that those negative reviews are the work of nasty competitors trying to trash them using underhanded means. Normally, when people read about these reactions from unhappy hotel owners, they think they are just sore losers. From news coming out these days though, one begins to wonder if perhaps those hotel owners weren't sore losers after all.

The problem really is what those hotel owners have been suggesting all along review websites are crawling with fake reviews fake positive reviews that sellers publish about themselves, and fake negative reviews that they have published to run their competitors down.

Are these big businesses going to actually get down and muck about like that? You'd be surprised. What would surprise you even more is a little they have to spend to do it how about 10 cents a fake review? Of course, you get what you pay for such a low-paid review would be barely literate. But a well-written review doesn't run much costlier about one dollar should do the trick. The funny thing is, it's Amazon's Mechanical Turk that all these morality-challenged businessmen use to to order up their fake reviews. If you haven't heard of Amazon's Mechanical Turk, it's a freelance website that Amazon runs. You just place an order for whatever mindless task you want done that can be done online, and some poor starving working stiff in Africa or Southeast Asia who is glad for any work at all, will do it for you. And be grateful for the privilege.

Sadly, there are all kinds of major multinational corporations that indulge in this (presumably, still paying pennies for their fake reviews). Well, while you let the Federal Trade Commission catch the big corporations at their fun and games, how do you protect yourself from such sleaze on the review websites that you need to rely on to make informed purchases?

Well, usually, you just have to use a bit of common sense. For instance, think of how you would write a review you're not going to offer a feature list that you've copied straight from the manufacturers website. You respect yourself too much to rave over the product too. Usually, you just say something about your personal experience with the product. You're not going to use buzzwords, you're not going to use very descriptive language, and you're not going to put in links to other websites. Look for that kind of thing in an online review that you wouldn't ever think of doing, and usually, you'll be able to spot the fakes.

Some people think that they can just spot the fake reviews by looking at the reviewers accounts. If one reviewer has hundreds of product reviews going, they feel they couldnt be for real. But a lot of better-paid reviewers take the trouble to open a new account every time they need to write a review. So that wouldn't really be the perfect clue that something funny is going on.

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