[HN Gopher] UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews
___________________________________________________________________
UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews
Author : leephillips
Score : 198 points
Date : 2021-03-09 19:18 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| teekert wrote:
| 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.
| jedberg wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| suddenexample wrote:
| There are often a variety of overly simplistic solutions to a
| problem that address one issue but sacrifice a lot in return.
| The reality is that fake reviews are incredibly difficult to
| solve.
| schnevets wrote:
| 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.
| jedimastert wrote:
| As always relevant xkcd
|
| https://xkcd.com/937/
| drstewart wrote:
| And then people act surprised Netflix moved to a thumbs up/down
| model for this very reason
| amelius wrote:
| Is anyone conducting research to make reviews more trustworthy?
| Hasz wrote:
| 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.
| Lerc wrote:
| 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]
| ghoward wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Yeah agreed. Do they think Google just has some checkout
| button to block bad reviews for $299.
| ghoward wrote:
| 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.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| > I wouldn't be surprised if the business had been able to pay
| money to Google to be able to check reviews
|
| There is no way to do this that I can find documentation of on
| the public internet. You'd think if it were possible, someone
| would have written a howto guide. Personally, I'm deeply
| skeptical that any such mechanism exists. The revenue it would
| generate would be negligible and the potential for reputation
| loss significant.
| dgr582systems wrote:
| I don't know how they did it, but a doctor surgery near me
| (UK) had a large number of negative reviews up for several
| years. About one week ago, I looked and they now have one
| single 5 star review. So, anecdotally, there is at least some
| way to get the reviews removed.
| tines wrote:
| > There is no way to do this that I can find documentation of
| on the public internet.
|
| And you used Google search to look for it, right? ...
|
| (Kidding.)
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Kinda like how they handle false copyright claims by not
| taking down the content, oh wait ... that seems a similar
| situation in that acting on false content takedown requests
| doesn't get them [much/any] revenue and provides a relational
| hit to users (but pleases some huge customers, no doubt).
|
| Someone has given a credible mechanism for take down, report
| it as fraudulent. I find it highly likely that if you have a
| paying B2B relationship - eg you're a high paying advertising
| client, that you'd be able to report "frauds" and get
| immediate action.
|
| But if course I've wouldn't know, and presumably Google would
| have NDAs for businesses in any special access (it would also
| be detrimental to the business to disclose it and risk losing
| the special access).
|
| All we've really got is our TrustRank RTM on our part
| experiences with Google and similar corps.
| liaukovv wrote:
| There is probably a button for business owner to complain
| about a review, for example in case of competitor bombing?
| Since nothing on google can be appealed this button is as
| good as removal of reviews at will
|
| And if your affiliation to this business is based on ad spend
| then well...
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Again, I can't find even a hint of how to do this on the
| internet. If there is a way, you'd expect it to be
| documented given what surely must be widespread interest in
| the subject. Basically what we have here is an entirely
| unsubstantiated and unlikely accusation. (Unlikely because
| the incentives simply are not aligned.)
| ghoward wrote:
| Saying "I wouldn't be surprised if..." is not an
| accusation, unless you count the implied "I don't trust
| Google" as an accusation.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| If you said of someone, "I wouldn't be surprised if they
| were a thief," that would rightly be viewed as a pseudo-
| accusation of thievery or other dishonesty. It doesn't
| literally mean the same thing as "he is a thief," but
| saying you believe someone has a decent chance of being a
| thief is still a type of accusation -- one of dishonesty
| and distrust. If the belief is unjustified, then I think
| it's fair to call it an unsubstantiated accusation.
|
| But if that doesn't work for you, pretend I called it an
| unsubstantiated implication instead. Either way, I think
| we all understood what the OP meant, and we all
| understood what I meant in my response. So at least we
| are communicating.
| ghoward wrote:
| We are sort of communicating. I _am_ the OP. And I only
| meant it as "I don't trust Google."
|
| I'll let you decide if that implication is
| unsubstantiated or not.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| You should just say that, then. If I don't trust someone,
| that doesn't mean it's OK to go around and imply that
| they do some absurd malicious thing I have absolutely no
| evidence they actually do. It's fine not to trust them.
| Spreading unsubstantiated rumors and implications is not
| fine.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| I just wanted to mention that I adore the way you
| articulated and called out everything that was going on
| here.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| As a business owner, you only need to claim the review is
| fraudulant and that will usually get it removed.
|
| In theory a review hoster is supposed to evaluate claims and
| act on reasonable ones. In practice review hosters are
| terrified of getting sued and will take down reviews easily.
|
| I suspect most local businesses hire "reputation fixing"
| firms to actually do this dirty work for them.
| Dyac wrote:
| I helped a couple of small businesses set up maps business
| listings a few years back. One was going great for years
| then in about 3-4 days got a bunch of fraudulent bad
| reviews from a disgruntled ex exployee. We tried for months
| to remove them, every single way possible but were never
| able to. In the end we had to nuke the whole Google
| business listing, which wasn't easy either.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| You can reply though, IIRC. A good response to a negative
| review is a massive plus to me.
|
| Aside: somehow businesses get moved - even major ones
| like a local McDo got moved to the wrong location. Takes
| weeks for corrections from when I report them. I really
| can't understand that one. This too could be a killer for
| a small business, getting shifted to the wrong location.
|
| In a similar vein, I'm forever having to report our
| opening hours and things to Facebook as we don't have any
| (small craft shop, open by arrangement) and people insist
| on adding some.
|
| It's all really weirdly handled. I suppose it's the
| presence of untrustworthy parties in such disclosures
| though Google should have enough trust signals to weight
| users input.
| Const-me wrote:
| > review hosters are terrified of getting sued
|
| I wish Google would be terrified of getting sued, but we
| both know this is not gonna happen.
|
| My friend is a business owner.
|
| She received couple one-star reviews on google maps from
| customers she never had (she's a real estate developer,
| real estate is expensive, she doesn't have many customers).
|
| Wasn't able to do anything about them.
| throwaway_1301 wrote:
| Absolutely not true. Worked on this team for Google at one
| point and other than internal systems nothing can get
| reviews removed. Firms cant do anything, they are just
| swindling people out of money. Some of them will get fake
| reviews to try and drown out negative ones but its very
| short lived.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I don't know how to square this claim with the plethora of
| businesses with many negative reviews on both Google and
| Yelp. If it were this easy, you'd think everyone would be
| doing it. Probably someone would have written a blog post
| describing how to do so. I can find out how to buy gmail
| accounts on Google, but I can't find out how to remove
| business reviews. Maybe the claim is just that most small
| businesses are very honest?
|
| In any case, the scenario you're describing is decidedly
| not pay-for-play on Google's part, and thus doesn't really
| impinge on my response to OP.
| trollski wrote:
| it's like commenting on hackernews for me. which you will never
| hear about.
| dang wrote:
| It's not, because:
|
| (1) Anyone can easily see for themselves why you're banned,
| if they want to turn 'showdead' on in their profile and look
| at https://news.ycombinator.com/posts?id=trollski ;
|
| (2) Anyone can easily get an answer about why they're banned
| on HN, simply by asking us;
|
| (3) Anyone can easily get themselves unbanned on HN if they
| want to use the site in the intended spirit, which is
| described at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| ggggtez wrote:
| Here is my reading of your situation:
|
| 1) You posted a review which presumably got flagged as being
| spam/low-quality (maybe an automated system flagged it for
| having ALL CAPS or curse words, or who knows what).
|
| 2) You posted the same review on a different account, which now
| is flagged as _double spam_ because now it looks like you are
| operating a sock-puppet account.
|
| I think my version of events sounds a lot more likely than
| yours. If your thing was true, then you could sign up _right
| now_ with your own fake business and find the page where you
| can remove reviews of your own business. Since no one has shown
| this to happen, one can only assume that it doesn 't happen.
|
| I think Google/Amazon etc try to mostly remove fake reviews,
| and that probably just catches reviewers who are giving 1 star
| angry-rants as "spam".
| ghoward wrote:
| Mine probably got flagged, but not because of curse words or
| ALL CAPS because, as far as I remember, it didn't have either
| of them.
|
| Edit: I just checked, and the name of the business, which I
| quoted in my review, is ALL CAPS, so maybe that was it?
| ThorAway00 wrote:
| Throwaway for obvious reasons:
|
| While working for a big vacation rental company in Portland not
| named Airbnb, they rolled out a review update that still added
| negative reviews to the 5 star score, but hid the context.
|
| A rental may have a lowered star rating but the only story
| you'd see was praise.
|
| Business is not about logic like engineering. It's about
| growing margins, and that is entirely emotional.
| throwaway_1301 wrote:
| disclaimer: Google employee. Views my own.
|
| You can not pay to change Google reviews. Period. And the
| theories of "you dont know whats happening in all parts" is not
| true because I looked at detailed numbers myself and other than
| legal processes, everything was clearly visible.
|
| If anything Google has a clearly different org and we often
| told very highly paying customers that even if they were paying
| us hundreds of millions a year that does not change our
| policies. One of the luxuries of being Google scale I guess.
|
| Google gets a lot of (potentially justified) criticism on
| Hackernews but this conspiracy that Google lets businesses pay
| for reviews is plain stupid.
| ghoward wrote:
| Note that I didn't say Google let businesses pay for reviews;
| all I said was that "I wouldn't be surprised" if Google let
| businesses do the spam filtering and flag reviews.
|
| What I really meant is that I don't trust Google in this
| situation. That lack of trust still exists and is not a
| conspiracy.
|
| And I _would_ be surprised if Google actually did the right
| thing here.
| thehappypm wrote:
| It's highly possible that Google has some concept of freezing
| reviews while it investigates something. Maybe that business
| was caught buying reviews and so Google stopped allowing new
| ones for a while. Or it reported it was getting spammed. Or
| some other situation like that.
| ghoward wrote:
| This is a very good alternative explanation. Thank you.
| LegitShady wrote:
| >It's highly possible that Google has some concept of
| freezing reviews while it investigates something
|
| I doubt google is investigating each bad review they receive,
| though, so it happening to both accounts is odd.
| choppaface wrote:
| I've had the exact same experience. Several days later I got an
| email from Google saying the review was now live, but it's
| still not there. Other reviews that I wrote years ago are
| hidden, too.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| I stayed in a hotel in Rotterdam one time (5-6 years ago). The
| entrance had a ramp for wheelchairs/prams. A bunch of a*holes
| parked their luxury cars blocking that ramp. On the second
| morning the cars were still there I called the concierge out to
| see this. Then I took a picture of him, of the cars, and their
| plates and told him I will call the Police in 5mins (yes I am
| THAT kind of guy). In two minutes all cars were gone never to
| reappear (I stayed there 10 days). I left a 1star review to the
| hotel, under my name, with photos of the cars (not their
| plates) and a comment about blocking the ramp, hotel staff was
| informed multiple times and didn't react.
|
| I went to Rotterdam again 1 year ago. My review was still
| there. A half-baked apology was under my comment. I walked by,
| no cars were blocking the ramps. I call that a win.
| 1000mA wrote:
| I bet you love to threaten calling the police on people. PoS
| bootlicker, kill yourself.
| Laremere wrote:
| "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained
| by stupidity"
|
| Given how well known other unscrupulous review service tactics
| are (eg, yelp) I doubt this would be the case. It's hard to
| keep such practices secret when they involve attempting to
| extract money from a large number of businesses. Plus Google
| seems to be reasonably honest about labeling (even if very
| subtly) when things are sponsored ads or not.
|
| I would find it far more likely that this is simply a symptom
| of something Google is well known for doing: Content moderation
| through algorithms/ML which mostly works but still messes up a
| lot. Either the wording of the review hit some metric on its
| own, or the business already was detected as being review
| bombed and your review got caught in the cleanup crossfire.
| Posting it twice probably didn't help, as that would further
| convince an algorithm it's probably not legitimate.
| ghoward wrote:
| I agree. That's why I said "I wouldn't be surprised if..."
|
| I intentionally did not make a concrete claim.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Hmm, that's interesting. If I was writing a review moderation
| algorithm, it would leave only one copy up if there were
| multiple substantially identical reviews. Those are likely to
| be written by bots that mutate a common review and post, or
| even if some entity circulates a "review" to its crew of
| minions who write fake reviews based on that template.
|
| I'd also write it to remove reviews written by a single
| account if the reviews across diverse products are
| substantially similar.
| amelius wrote:
| How does "stupidity" explain that the poster's account showed
| the review but someone else's account didn't?
| hayst4ck wrote:
| I am no google fanboy, but I WOULD be surprised to find such a
| thing. The reason I would be surprised is history and
| alignment. Google consistently has bad/non
| existent customer service It is famously hard to talk to
| a google employee when you have a problem Google has a
| history of primarily hiring devs Google knows its bread
| and butter is legitimate results Google probably has the
| largest most experienced anti-SEO team on the earth
| Google seems to want to stay out of the press Google maps
| reviews are a very major competitive moat against other maps
| Google is supported by ads, but AFAIK does not actively seek
| customers Google does not do delivery Google's
| money maker is getting information, maps is a major input
| Maps is a secondary business able to be subsidized by search ad
| revenue
|
| On the counter side Inflated reviews/advantaged
| reviews would make ad customers happy Selling position is
| potentially extremely profitable
|
| I just don't see it. It's not googles MO. It's yelps MO. That's
| why I use google maps as my primary tool for finding whats
| good.
|
| What I wouldn't be surprised by is google systemically limiting
| negative reviews. In my experience A yelp 3.5 would be a 4 on
| google maps. A yelp 1 or 2 would be a 3 on google maps. 4 would
| be 4.5 on google maps. Google maps numbers are definitely
| inflated, but once you understand the relative scale it's just
| as good as pre-corrupt Yelp.
| ghoward wrote:
| This is a great reply to my post and answers me better than
| any of the others I have seen thus far.
| alert0 wrote:
| Any curse words or something that a system might flag?
| ghoward wrote:
| No, I actually do not swear at all.
| onion2k wrote:
| _Google knows its bread and butter is legitimate results_
|
| Google's bread and butter is controlling the stream of data
| so that people accept its results are legitimate. That's not
| _quite_ the same thing. Essentially Google does well when
| people trust Google implicitly and don 't question whether or
| not its results are actually good. For a very long time
| Google returned W3Schools as the top result for most HTML and
| CSS queries. These days MDN is top and W3Schools is second.
| W3Schools is not the second most relevant link for a search
| of a CSS property name or an HTML tag. I do wonder if they're
| second because they display a prominent Google AdSense ad at
| the top of every page.
|
| The main thing about Google Search results is that they're
| much better than their competition. That's all you can really
| say for them though. The results aren't anywhere near as good
| as they were 15 years ago, where a query genuinely returned
| the best, most relevant results. You could predict which site
| would be top for a query domain you knew well. Google are
| still dining out on that reputation but they don't _really_
| deserve it any more.
| kbenson wrote:
| I think there's an assumption here that needs to be
| addressed, and that's that Google functions as a single
| entity with consistent and coherent policies and actions
| across all its arms.
|
| Just because something is not in the best interest of Google
| overall or long term down not mean a small fiefdom is doing
| something different for their own self interest, even if only
| temporarily until it is eventually discovered and corrected.
|
| For example, almost all your statements about Google above
| are incorrect for at least one business they've been involved
| for, for at least part of the time they've been in it. Often
| it's easy for find multiple counter examples.
|
| As a whole, Google follows those statements you made, but for
| any specific business they are in I wouldn't make a blind
| wager about it.
| arkitaip wrote:
| Do you have any idea how difficult it would be for a random
| dinky business to bribe an engineer at Google? There are
| businesses that are literally making bank for Google and still
| can't get in touch with a human being at Google when their
| Google account gets locked, app gets removed from the Play
| Store, etc.
|
| What probably happened is that the business had friends and
| family members report your review which was removed by an
| automated system.
| [deleted]
| liveoneggs wrote:
| yeah but what about yext and friends getting special access
| for their clients?
| ghoward wrote:
| The reason I am hesitant to believe that is because of the
| fact that the review _never_ showed up, not even briefly.
|
| However, you could still be right.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| If the business is an Adwords customer then there is a conflict
| of interest.
| phr4ts wrote:
| The same happened to me. The negative review shows up when i'm
| signed in but it did not affect the rating (number of stars) of
| the business.
|
| Basically, it's just me and the owner of the business that sees
| the review. The negative review I gave the scammy business
| doesn't show up when I sign out.
| Daho0n wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Maybe they just dont care.
| dsnr wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I wonder if there's a way to legally forbid scummy
| companies like Trustpilot from accepting & publishing
| reviews (both good and bad) about your company.
|
| Let's say you are legit but just don't want to play this
| bullshit game at all (as otherwise you'd need to constantly
| monitor and be ready to try and take down the obviously
| fake reviews which you can prove are fake), can you do
| that?
|
| I feel like these companies, even if they didn't have
| extortionate intentions, are still creating overhead for
| businesses that haven't asked for anything.
| thepete2 wrote:
| I'm not even sure what non-distorted ratings are supposed to
| be. What you mention obviously makes them more inaccurate,
| but they aren't accurate to begin with. Ratings are a messy
| human affair, I don't know why we bother quantifying it...
| jboog wrote:
| Yeah reviews are a shitshow almost no matter what.
|
| It's human nature to be predisposed to leave reviews when
| you have a bad experience.
|
| Then you have those f'ing weirdos who leave reviews like
| "Burger was really good and all but the food I had at the
| French Laundry was way better! 2/5 stars!" at a local pub
| or something.
|
| And then if the owner gets caught up in some shit that hits
| the news the reviews get brigaded by trolls who don't even
| live in a 500 mile radius or have any intention of ever
| going.
| jboog wrote:
| Yeah reviews are a shitshow almost no matter what.
|
| It's human nature to be predisposed to leave reviews when
| you have a bad experience.
|
| Then you have those f'ing weirdos who leave reviews like
| "Burger was really good and all but the food I had at the
| French Laundry was way better! 2/5 stars!" at a local pub
| or something.
|
| And then if the owner gets caught up in some shit that hits
| the news the reviews get brigaded by trolls who don't even
| live in a 500 mile radius or have any intention of ever
| going.
|
| If you're truly interested in finding a good place to eat
| or get your oil changed or whatever there are far better
| methods than Yelp or google reviews.
| boyesm wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| That probably depends on how this nonpartisan reviewer was
| selected. Are they paid? By whom? By what standard are they
| considered authoritative?
| boyesm wrote:
| I think there are many measures that would need to be
| implemented in order to have everything be completely
| nonpartisan and have consistent standards that represent
| consumer preferences.
|
| But imagine reviews were non-biased and reviews accurately
| represented users needs and wants, as a thought experiment.
|
| Would this be a compelling enough proposition for you to
| install a browser extension (provided it wasn't doing
| anything nefarious)?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| 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?
| jjulius wrote:
| 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.
| toss1 wrote:
| 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.
| fny wrote:
| This is so pervasive, and so easy to access its hardly news:
| https://www.facebook.com/search/groups/?q=google%20review%20...
| zwass wrote:
| 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/re...
| https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/109949503069363340417/re...
| z0r wrote:
| 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.
| snapetom wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| milin wrote:
| Thats why Tripadvisor reviews are most trustable. reason? It's
| not google.
| stormqloud wrote:
| I've had people leave 1 star reviews, then call up and demand
| payment to change the rating.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Most places that's actually a crime (extortion).
|
| Now if the police will investigate it is another matter.
| thepete2 wrote:
| That's a good one. Reviews are so abused by now, it's almost
| comical.
| rococode wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| don't think FCC will prosecute bodyshops in India and
| Phillippines
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| That's exactly what services like luminati.io (holavpn)
| are used for. While accounts can be purchased, they then
| need to remain tied to a US IP address to avoid being
| restricted.
|
| There are some legitimate uses to proxy through
| residential IPs, but I wonder what percentage of traffic
| through luminati is legitimate. Wouldn't be surprised if
| it's a single digit percentage.
| sneak wrote:
| > _Just charge the fake reviewers and fake review companies
| with FCC violations, and remove their reviews._
|
| Then, as a sibling comment pointed out, you just pay to get
| obviously fake mass positive reviews for a competitor, and
| suddenly they have a null rating because the market has
| removed all the reviews.
| beckingz wrote:
| This happened on Amazon.
|
| Outcompeted by another product listing? Buy obviously fake
| amazon reviews and they would get suspended by Amazon for
| purchasing fake reviews.
|
| I've heard that Amazon is now more nuanced in how they handle
| suspensions, but it's a mess.
| zionic wrote:
| We got an alert from Amazon that if we didn't stop faking
| reviews we would be terminated. Given that we have never done
| so, it was quite a shock to us. I wonder which competitor of
| ours feels threatened.
| foolmeonce wrote:
| This happened with normal search, Google punished companies for
| spam links to their websites which caused sites to pay for bad
| links to their competition to raise their relative ranking..
| It's now necessary for everyone to review links to their site
| and disown them.
| odnes wrote:
| I'm convinced that something similar is happening to Boris
| Johnson's tweets at the moment. Every time he posts, many of
| the top responses are exact copies of each other saying
| something like "the country is behind you, my prime minister
| <3". It's clear to anyone that these are 'fake', and I'd
| imagine it has the effect of making people thing that the
| conservatives are trying to artificially bolster his
| reputation.
| tpmx wrote:
| 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.
| thih9 wrote:
| 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).
| macspoofing wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| abstractbarista wrote:
| "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/
| ...)
| tpmx wrote:
| This a well-known issue with british libel law. The UK
| needs to reform to stay relevant.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The BBC are reporting on the actions of the _Which?_ consumer
| group. I got the impression _Which?_ have not released that
| information.
| hikerclimber wrote:
| google deletes reviews so there is nothing new in this.
| https://www.slashgear.com/why-google-deleted-100k-reviews-of...
| mkl95 wrote:
| 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.
| Symbiote wrote:
| The original article from Which? Magazine is here:
| 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.)
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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]
| toss1 wrote:
| 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.
| cmckn wrote:
| 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.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| 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.
| joshstrange wrote:
| 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.
| glaucon wrote:
| Online reviews; chocolate tea pots. Each about as useful as the
| other.
| abraxas wrote:
| 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.
| bikamonki wrote:
| There is a global ethics pandemic. No?
| tasssko wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| JetAlone wrote:
| Absolutely. Reviews have been gamed for a long time.
| jhatemyjob wrote:
| how is this news?
| jackson1442 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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__ wrote:
| 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.
| luigeus wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Today business is all about reviews. You have to manipulate the
| reviews this or that way and have a budget for this. As a
| customer - just don't take reviews too serious.
| Traster wrote:
| 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.
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