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You're a business owner, and you're wondering how other businesses get so
many reviews. How did Uchi get 527 reviews with an average of 4.5 stars on
Yelp (as of 1/1/11)? How did Sugar Mama's get 314 reviews with an average
of 4.5 stars on Yelp (as of 1/1/11)? How come no one is talking about
your business? *I know that Uchi and Sugar Mama's do NOT engage in the
behavior described below. Thusly, I feel comfortable using their data.
The temptation sets in. You want more people to know about you.
You think no one will find out. You're antsy for people to click on your
website link. You make a fake account on Yelp. You
give yourself five stars. You wait a few minutes. That wasn't too
bad. So you make another fake account. You
give yourself another five stars. That was easy. On the Internet, no
one knows you're a dog right? So you do it again. And again. And again.
Now you have seven positive reviews. Job well done! You ask your
employees to log onto Yelp and to write reviews. You ask all your friends,
suppliers, regulars, and family members to do it. It isn't technically
wrong, if you don't get caught. What an easy way to increase your ratings
and pump up those reviews.
WRONG. It isn't long before you get sniffed out. You're slammed on the
Master Debater's Threads, and Google Alerts show that you have been caught
red-handed.
Moral of the story. Don't write fake reviews. Social media and crowd
sourced content sites already spark controversy and debate. Throw
in examples of fake reviews written by business owners or their rivals, and
everyone goes bananas. Transparency in social media has been the norm with
demand for honesty ever growing. Users want to be able to put a face with a social
media voice, and rest assured that conflicts of interests are revealed. No
one wants to be tricked.
As a consumer, you do want to know which reviews are honest. Here's
some quick tips on sniffing them out.
- Photo and name (Lack of online presence). No photos and
fake names are often hallmarks (though not always) of fake reviews.
Some fake reviewers have become savvy and will use a stock photo on the
profile, and a generic screen name. Stock photos (often flowers,
trees, or puppies) are pretty easy to spot. Names are more difficult to
gauge, but there are several ways to investigate. You can Google the screen
name along with the city (example: Jennie C. Austin or MisoHungry Austin).
If nothing turns up, then it can get suspicious.
- On occasion, the business owners and employees will use their real
names and photos when reviewing their own businesses. That's a
dead give away as it is easy to check websites for business owner names
or to find via Linkedin.com. Sometimes, they will also write the
review in first person. "I worked really hard to open this
restaurant" doesn't seem unbiased to me.
- Location listed on the profile. If the location listed is
not in same town that the businesses, look for other reviews in the same
town. Frequently, travelers review more than one business when
visiting other cities. If a person from Montana reviews just a single
business in Austin, that would raise eyebrows. It is unlikely (but not
impossible) that an out-of-towner would review a business that isn't already
well-known.
- Depth and breadth of reviews. The number of reviews, types
of businesses reviewed, and the details of the reviews are also very
telling. Lack of depth and breadth generally means that the person
doesn't invest much time in the reviews or only selects particular
businesses to review for whatever reason. Those types of reviews are
typically vague, lack descriptions, and are generic. Here's
some examples of vague reviews (names removed):
- ********* has small plates packed with big flavor. Perfect place to meet
for a drink and gently roll into dinner. Appreciated the guidance of the staff
with perfect pairings of both beer and wine for our dishes. We ended up ordering
the entire menu and nothing disappointed! Welcome to the neighborhood,*******!
- Wow, the ****** are amazing!!!!!
- I love all the*********, my favorite was
the *******. I also had the ******* which was
pure, literally....and wonderful on the recent cloudy cool days. On a
warmer day, the ****** is heaven on earth! What a novelty, can't believe
I've never seen ******* anywhere else.
- This place is off the hizzy. HmmmMmmm I know what good is and this
place is good, ya hear?
- Other contributions and timing of reviews. If the reviews
for the business were written before the business opened, you better believe
that raises the red flag. Also, contributing photos of "behind the
scenes" or construction shots of a business is an indicator of conflict of
interest with the business. If you see the same shots uploaded to a
review site that are on a photographer's portfolio, that is a dead give
away. *Anyone that has a relationship with the business or conflict of
interest should either disclose it in a review or not review at all.
- Narrow range of businesses reviewed and aspects revealed.
This is a completely hypothetical example, though it has happened before
with other suppliers. A supplier naturally wants their customers to
flourish, so they might be tempted to write reviews for their customers.
You might find a Yelp user that reviews only sushi restaurants, and the
reviews praises only the freshness of the fish, how it is handled, and how
it is prepared. The reviewer's profile might say something about fish
or link to a fish wholesaler website. It is highly likely that the
profile might belong to the restaurants' fish supplier. That should be
disclosed OR reviews of the restaurants in question should be avoided.
- I can understand that a supplier really wants to let everyone know
about their great ingredients and food, but the behavior should still be
avoided. There are other ways to let people know about the ingredients.
- Sometimes reviewers will outright say that they "are employees, and
that's why they know the quality of the food is so great." Oops.
- Sometimes the only other reviews are for other businesses in the
same family (same owners). Positive reviews of every single store
in a chain is a little less than subtle.
- The same review (or clusters of reviews) appear on multiple websites,
sometimes posted within minutes of each other. That's waving the
giant red flag of "someone on our marketing team was given the task of
copying and pasting fake reviews to different websites this morning."
- A cluster of positive reviews pop up right after a single negative
review. Sometimes businesses have fake profiles in waiting.
If they receive a negative review, they immediately unleash several positive
reviews. It is pretty obvious when they are lined up chronologically.
Those are just some ways that fake reviewers are sniffed out. The best
defense against them is the time it takes to create believable fake
profiles/online presence.
*I've been going back and forth on whether or not I should write this.
I thought that in writing this, shady businesses owners might find tricks to
appear less fake. Honestly though, to create an online presence to does
not escape the vigilant detection of savvy internet users and the likes of the
Google machine would take hours upon hours. I would guess that it would
take no less than 50-100 hours per fraudulent online presence. The
likelihood of a business investing that many hours into a single fake review is
extremely low. Those types of businesses wouldn't even invest the time in
reading this post. I don't think this blog post will affect these behaviors at
all.
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Roman Reign