Good morning Marketer, how much of a problem are fake reviews?
Whether you’re on the sell or buy-side, fake reviews are, well, the worst. They’re a growing problem for consumers and the local product-search sites they rely on to make purchase decisions. We know from multiple studies that roughly 90% of internet users consult online reviews before buying.
According to Curtis Boyd, whose company Objection.co helps businesses identify and remove fraudulent online reviews, the scale of the fake reviews problem isn’t precisely documented, but it’s “in the millions” across sites. The company uses a range of AI and machine-learning techniques to identify fake reviews while also buying fake review content and profiles en masse from vendors who willingly sell out their content and writers.
Boyd has been able to buy 280,000 fraudulent profiles and millions of fake reviews and compared them with real ones to train his systems on patterns and data relationships.
Consumers are becoming aware of the fake reviews problem, but not its full extent. It’s clear they’re unhappy about potentially being deceived by fake reviews and are looking to publishers to institute tougher standards and penalties against review fraud.
It’s possible that if Google, Amazon and other sites don’t more vigorously and regularly crack down on review fraud, consumers could return to more traditional methods of finding business and product recommendations: word of mouth and expert reviews.
There’s more below, including an update on the social space and our curated reading list to start off your week.
Taylor Peterson,
Deputy Editor
