How To Spot Fake Reviews As A Business Owner
Reviews sway buyer sentiment. Research suggests that 92% of customers read online reviews before making a purchase decision. Think about the last time you bought something. Whether it’s a big purchase like a car or a medium purchase like a television or a relatively small purchase like a pair of sneakers, chances are that you looked at a few reviews before you made your decision. Similarly, every customer calling your business or walking through your door mostly likely looked up your business information online and read all your customer reviews.
What is a fake review?
With time, fake reviews became sophisticated as well. What do you think of when you hear the term ‘fake reviews’? Do you think of a business owner manually typing out a harsh review to lure some customers away from their competitors? A few years back this might have worked to lessen the credibility of a competitor. While this continues to be true sometimes, fake reviews are now an industry (especially online, for example on Amazon). They are not always just vicious either. With reviews planned to out-rave a product, fake reviews are more often than not overwhelmingly positive.
How to spot a fake review
Unless you are running a tight establishment and know all the customers who walk in the door personally, figuring out a fake review requires some detective work. A lot can be found after a little bit of snooping, thanks to search engines and social media. While this isn’t 100% effective and is more likely an estimate, it gets you some relief.
Check the dates. If a bunch of reviews cropped up on the product or service’s page on the same day or around the same time, you are probably looking at a deluge of fake reviews. Organically acquired reviews occur over a period of time and are likely going to have the timestamps to prove this.
Check the reviewer’s profile. Fake profiles are frequently shallow. They either have a stock image or no image at all. They have vague sounding names. When you click on the reviewer’s profile, you will have access to the reviewer’s previous writing history. Red flags include a high volume of only positive or only negative reviews or a sudden surge in the number of reviews.
Check language choices. Very few products are uniformly terrible that there is no redeeming quality about them or are so perfect that there is nothing wrong with them at all. Think of how you would describe your favorite pair of jeans. As much as you love the item and would recommend it to others, it’s hard to imagine 4-5 paragraphs of purple prose on them. Red flags here include vague, universal terms and incorrect use of words. Some research has shown that language patterns can also help in differentiating between fake and real reviews. This research claims that fake reviewers are frequently non-native English speakers.
Check out our full blog post on dealing with fake reviews as a business owner.
