Reader beware of fake peer reviews

John Blaise
August 23, 2011
3 Comments
trashed hotel

Five stars hey?

Have you ever been in a situation where after reading a review on peer review sites like TripAdvisor or Yelp, you stay in a recommended hotel that turns out to be a dive where the cockroaches are bigger than the rats? Vacation ruined. Or have you ever read a recommended book by Amazon only to find it’s like reading a book written in crayon by some babbling bloke?

In either case, it’s the same feeling you get, you feel you’ve been had, you feel you’ve been betrayed. The truth is you’ve been hoodwinked.

According to the New York Times, those “trusty” reviews you read aren’t so trustworthy and may have been paid for. The Times reported finding an ad on Craigslist that read: “If you have an active Yelp account and would like to make very easy money please respond.”
Additionally, the times cited a woman who worked for one of these review sites who had been paid $10 each to pump out five-star reviews. The woman said she wasn’t required to put out great reviews but, if the review wasn’t going to be favourable, she was asked to turn down the assignment.

There is some method to the madness. Some people write grossly negative and unfair reviews and paid reviews serve to counteract against the biased ones. However, bias vs bias still equals bias. Online retailers know the value of having their brand liked by their peers on social media and according to the times, many are willing to pay to make sure it happens. You can’t be mad, but I guess it’s time to put a disclaimer on all peer reviews.

So now who can you trust? Is everyone on the take? Since when did review writers become lobbyists? Everyone has an agenda.

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Tags: Amazon, Article, peer review, travel, Yelp
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  • http://www.facebook.com/calvinayre Calvin Ayre

    You mean like what Covers.com did when they ranked their own scam site BetED number one and sank all their customers into it and then folded pretending that the US Government “stole” all the player deposits when in fact it was all well invested in the Halifax homes of Paul Lavers and Joe MacDonald, the covers founders?  

  • Harry

    I guess those reviews are really PAID reviews. So whether the product is nice or not, if it paid the reviewer a nice amount, then there you go.

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