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I created a fake business and bought it an online reputation

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Re: I created a fake business and bought it an online reputation

#131

Post by roymurdock »

Yelp was the only company that caught us, hiding both of the reviews I bought behind their “not recommended” click wall and not counting them in F.A.K.E.’s rating. It has software that screens out suspicious reviews, not including them in a company’s star-rating. If they see too many of them, they will penalize a business’s page, putting a “consumer alert” on the profile for 90 days warning visitors that they think the business is buying fake reviews. People on Fiverr who were selling reviews would often say “No Yelp” in their descriptions, saying it was hard to make those “stick.”

This is why Yelp almost never disappoints. Kudos to the Yelp team for keeping the quality control strong and providing a great service.

Re: I created a fake business and bought it an online reputation

#132

Post by monknomo »

deathhand wrote: post #69
stingraycharles wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to add that if they would punish the businesses, this could of course be abused: if I have to pay $50 to have my competitor have serious spam issues with Facebook, possibly resulting in a penalty, that is some serious damage I could do.

This is a valid SEO tactic as well. You can have crummy back links to your competitor and google will penalize them...

valid dirtbag SEO tactic

Re: I created a fake business and bought it an online reputation

#134

Post by t2015_08_25 »

greggarious wrote: post #89
logicallee wrote: post #54

As an entrepreneur, I became so disappointed with this article about 60% of the way through, that I had to stop reading. When the author started getting phone calls on his burner phone from people wanting to hire his van, he should have manned up, stuck with this damn business, and written instead about bootstrapping. With stats like the ones he reported, he should have stuck with Freakin' Awesome Karaoke Express eve…

Out of curiosity, why do you assume the author is male?

Out of curiosity, why do you assume that because the author said 'he' that he projects that gender onto the author, as opposed to not actually knowing and choosing his own gender, as is common, or choosing a random gender, as is common?

Are you one of those people who insists that everyone say "he/she" every single time they don't know? If so, then why don't you also demand that the person say "she/he" 50% of the time? With no more than a specified number of imbalances per time interval and instance interval? And no more than a specified change in number of imbalances per same?

I only bring this up b/c you seem to grant yourself the title of auditor, so out of curiosity, I'd like to see if you can stand up to auditing yourself, or if you simply expect more out of others than you're able to give. My hypothesis is that you have no grounding or ability to generate introspective thought, just a little provocative scheme to grant yourself power opportunistically.

Re: I created a fake business and bought it an online reputation

#135

Post by ryandrake »

throwaway23545 wrote: post #64

But who, in this day and age, would trust or hire a new online business that had a page with 0-100 likes? The apparent presumption on seeing under 1k likes or under a few thousand twitter followers is the business is defective. Or forgotten, or no good. The incorrect wisdom of the crowd is that a legit business has a certain number of likes, followers etc, or it looks suspicious For a new local business who is never…

As someone who does not use Facebook or Twitter, I don't give a hoot about how many "likes" or "followers" a business has, any more than I believe in any other marketing campaign. These measurements measure nothing meaningful to me as a potential customer, as this article clearly demonstrates. I've always found it baffling that people even remotely believe online "reviews" written by strangers.

I'll turn it around: Who is stupid enough to think, "Wow, this business's carefully curated Facebook marketing page has 10,000 likes.. That must mean they are truly reputable!"

Re: I created a fake business and bought it an online reputation

#136

Post by pixl97 »

unoti wrote: post #130
wanderfowl wrote: post #70

If you're a street musician setting up to play with an open instrument case, it's pretty important to "seed the pot" by throwing a few dollars and some change into the case. Not because you make any money from your own "donation", but because it shows passers-by what the arrangement is, and adds an element of social pressure ("Somebody donated, so I should too!"). I can see this as similar. There's something pathetic…

> If you're a street musician setting up to play with an open instrument case, it's pretty important to "seed the pot" This concept is discussed at length, and backed up with scientific studies, in the excellent book Influence, by Robert Cialdini, PhD. This particular concept he calls "Social Proof", and it's one of about 8 major categories of influence that he discusses in his book. Incidentally, dropping the PhD on…

http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movemen...

"With help from some surprising footage, Derek Sivers explains how movements really get started. (Hint: it takes two.)"

Re: I created a fake business and bought it an online reputation

#137

Post by rebootthesystem »

m12k wrote: post #13

"Facebook says it uses pattern recognition to find and eliminate click farms and accounts that exist solely to like pages. Since March, says Facebook, it’s “notified 200,000 Pages that we’ve protected their accounts from fake likes.” I love the way they put this: “Protected,” as if the companies hadn’t paid for them." This may be more accurate than the author of this article believes. I've read elsewhere that precise…

Facebook is a mess and, to some extent, a huge scam. I spent tens of thousands of dollars advertising on Facebook to build-up an audience for a page for a business we were spinning up. We used very narrow criteria to guide the advertising and, over time, got tons of likes to our page.

And then it happened. FB changed the percentage of people you can reach with posts to your own page. In some cases you are lucky to get 1%. Of course, they also added the ability to reach them through advertising. Which is a travesty. I paid plenty to get them to my page in the first place and now FB wants me to pay again and again every single time I want to say something to them. Fuck them.

I know of lots of people who spent a lot more than I ever have on FB who have abandoned the platform for marketing. One guy was doing a million dollars a month with them. Gone. He brought-up exactly the same issue I describe above. So, yeah, again, fuck them. Thankfully there are other ways to reach people on the 'net.

Re: I created a fake business and bought it an online reputation

#138

Post by ryandrake »

WA wrote: post #4

That was a good write-up. Thing is, this works. Even (or especially) for startups. Only if to kickstart the hype a bit. Real followers and likes will follow, but let's be honest here: Who doesn't automatically trust a business that has 19K Twitter followers and a few good reviews out there? From the article: And these days, which is more real: a fake business with a real website or a brick and mortar business with no…

Why would I trust a company's carefully curated Facebook and Twitter marketing pages any more than I would the company's advertisements that tell me how awesome they are?

Re: I created a fake business and bought it an online reputation

#139

Post by logicallee »

t2015_08_25 wrote: post #134
greggarious wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, why do you assume the author is male?

Out of curiosity, why do you assume that because the author said 'he' that he projects that gender onto the author, as opposed to not actually knowing and choosing his own gender, as is common, or choosing a random gender, as is common? Are you one of those people who insists that everyone say "he/she" every single time they don't know? If so, then why don't you also demand that the person say "she/he" 50% of the tim…

you're coming down on my side, but I think this 3-paragraph tirade is a bit over the top... the comment you're replying to was 11 words, and also correct in that, yes, I had assumed the author was male.

Re: I created a fake business and bought it an online reputation

#140

Post by shampine »

roymurdock wrote: post #131

Yelp was the only company that caught us, hiding both of the reviews I bought behind their “not recommended” click wall and not counting them in F.A.K.E.’s rating. It has software that screens out suspicious reviews, not including them in a company’s star-rating. If they see too many of them, they will penalize a business’s page, putting a “consumer alert” on the profile for 90 days warning visitors that they think t…

> Kudos to the Yelp team for keeping the quality control strong and providing a great service.

Well that's not something you hear (read) everyday.

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