Why Online Reviews are Getting Ridiculously Out of Hand
What can you trust anymore? Better yet, who can you trust?
With the verdict about a thing placed into the hands of any willing participant, it’s no wonder there’s mass confusion about what to really believe.
The power of the customer has risen dramatically in recent years — largely due to social media tools that make it easy and (sometimes) fun to share experiences and influence others.
But is this influence getting out of hand? Has it already?
Guilty As Charged
I must say that I’m a part of this vicious cycle as the first place I check whenever I am curious about a place is online. My thought process is something along the lines of:
- what’s the star rating?
- what are the people saying about it?
- what’s recommended that I experience there?
As I search through reams of expressive text my ultimate goal is to find a hidden treasure that would change my life forever.
Well...not forever, that’s a bit dramatic, but I at least hope for it to send me to a place of atmospheric euphoria for t-minus 15 minutes.
Wait A Sec…
But where’s the risk in the search process if we’re constantly spending hours online searching for someone else to tell us how great something is?
I mean what happened to the olden days when you simply went out on a limb, drove around and tried a new place without having a backlog of specific instructions on how to enjoy it?
Where’s the spontaneity?
I know. It’s gone.
Gone are the days where we venture out and try something new that hasn’t been thoroughly vetted. Because how dare we waste our time and money on something new when we could have had something better if we just took the time to read the reviews — right?
Well...not quite.
All Reviews Are Not Created Equal
You see what I’ve found, more often than naught, is that these online reviews contain a plethora of misgiving data. While there are droves of helpful tips and tricks on how to navigate certain arenas, oftentimes I find that I have to take the grain of salt approach whenever I’m reading reviews in certain other spheres.
Take food for example.
We all know food reviews are highly subjective. In fact, I’d argue it’s the most volatile of them all. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been let down by a food review.
I’ve lost count.
When searching endlessly for a new place to eat, I still find myself checking Google maps or Google search for the star rating and comments. Only to find myself incredibly befuddled by the end results of said search.
After I indulge just keep thinking to myself:
What do people see in this place??? Are you kidding me?
Then I find myself shaking it off in hopes of striking gold for the next go-round.
The Fact of the Matter is…
Yelp, TripAdvisor, Google, and Amazon reviews are all like that latest Tinder hottie match —it looks promising and exciting until you actually experience it.
As we all know, just as online reputation can make or break a person so too can it determine the longevity of a business? Businesses know this and have placed enormous efforts to curtail those negative reviews that deter new patrons.
Efforts that often have the origins of chicanery.
You’re welcome. You just learned a new word today.
You see, when businesses see that those ratings and reviews are getting devilishly out of hand they fight back with paid reviewers. Reviewers give amazingly positive written feedback that gives its readers the reassurance they’re looking for.
Because when was the last time you purchased an item without reading a review?
But There’s More…
In addition to the business arena having much of the review game as it’s beauty pageant judge, so too do users of today’s mainstream self-publishing content platforms.
Content creators who:
Yes, even this very own platform is subject to some form of review in order to gain any sort of significant success.
You can write an outstanding e-book but not make a dime. Your podcast show could be ground-breaking but see no advertising dollars. And yes your Medium feed could be LIT and still only make .51 cents if you don’t get loads of reviews.
No of course, in a lot of these arenas, reviews are not like publicity. Any review is not a welcomed (good) review. So striving for the pendulum to swing in the positive direction is undoubtedly what is the marker.
A marker that many are finding to be unpredictable, unequal and unattainable in many cases. Others, however, are working the system to manually adjust the swing of the pendulum in their favor by doing whatever it takes to get those reviews.
Which brings us back to where we started...what and who can you trust nowadays?
