A couple of weeks ago another story surfaced about fake reviews being written on Amazon.

Orlando Figes to pay fake Amazon review damages

You can imagine at Buzzillions that we hear concerns about fake reviews all the time.  Users are always concerned that retailers or manufacturers will try and skew things in their favor by paying people to write 5 star reviews, or unfairly bash on their competitors.  At Buzzillions we try to filter out any obviously fake reviews during the moderation process.  However, our biggest weapon against fake reviews are our users.

Reviews are big business these days.  Everyone reads reviews.  I’m a big reader of reviews myself.  I hesitate to buy a product if it doesn’t have reviews, and I read reviews before I go to the store so I can narrow down the products I want to look at.  I’ve read thousands and thousands of reviews and I can tell you that a fake review is not that difficult to spot.

I often wonder what these “fakers” think they’re trying to achieve.  Maybe they’re trying to influence the overall star rating.  However, I was on Staples the other day and saw there were over a thousand reviews on a printer paper product.  A thousand reviews!  How are fake reviews supposed to influence the star rating of that? Not only that, but most users don’t just look at the star rating.  They read reviews, and fake reviews are usually those that long on superlatives and thin on details.  You know, those reviews that say that “this product is the absolute best!” or “I’ve never had anything better!” without providing any specifics or details on their experiences.  Or those just hating on the product without saying anything at all.  If you’re like me and you see a review like that, whether written by a real person or a “faker”, you just skip right over it because it’s not helpful at all.  Do these “fakers” think they’re fooling anyone?  Because they don’t seem to be fooling any of the readers.