Attracting customers to one’s business and/or product has turned into a whole new industry that’s called reputation management. Online reviews have become so important, companies have started to plant reviews and even pay strangers who have never actually been their customers to write five-star reviews. It’s now possible to sabotage one’s competitors by posting harsh, negative reviews. As a result, it’s debatable whether you can trust these ratings.
A study suggests, up to 70 per cent of the Amazon reviews are fake. A whole study was carried out by ReviewMeta to calculate a weight for reviews based on statistical modeling and a unique algorithm. It turned out that vendors recruit people to give their product good reviews in Facebook groups. Some of them even offer full refunds through PayPal for giving positive feedback.
Fake reviews tend to be longer than average, often incorporate a photo or video and, basically, they look like a brochure, according to the study. Amazon states that they’re doing their best in terms of solving this issue, but there are also other websites that might not be doing anything about that. It’s safe to say that most reviews published before 2016 on Amazon are real. The reviews published later were mostly considered suspicious by ReviewMeta.
Fakespot has gone even further and created a Chrome extension that will show you if the Amazon review is fake or not. Fakespot has analyzed thousands of product reviews, looking for reviews by people who aren’t actual customers. It examined purchasing patterns, grammar, and dates to assign each review a grade from A to F. You can see the whole list on the Fakespot website.
Another way to ensure all the reviews are genuine is using blockchain technology. The reviews made by The Joy’s customers will all be stored in the Ethereum blockchain. Content moderators will double check the information and either confirm or reject it. This will happen every time a rating is given. Thus, it will guarantee that no one will be able to delete or edit them in the future and 100 per cent of the reviews are genuine.
Read more about the platform on The Joy website: https://thejoy.io/
Participate in The Joy app beta test: https://thejoy.io/beta/
