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UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

bbc.com

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Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#21

Post by tpmx »

abstractbarista wrote: post #14
macspoofing wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If many companies are doing it, and many are forced (or feel forced) to do it in order to compete, then it isn't fair to just single one or two of them for public shaming via a publicly funded broadcaster. There's also libel ... maybe the threshold of evidence is high enough to write an article about some unnamed company buying reviews, but not high enough to hold up in court.

"In American courts, the burden of proof rests with the person who brings a claim of libel. In British courts, the author or journalist has the burden of proof, and typically loses." ( https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/03/21/394273902/... )

This a well-known issue with british libel law. The UK needs to reform to stay relevant.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#22

Post by dsnr »

Daho0n wrote: post #8

At least Google didn't build their rating system specifically to blackmail businesses into paying for tools that can get negative ratings removed. Unlike Trustpilot.

> Google didn't build their rating system specifically to blackmail businesses into paying for tools that can get negative ratings removed

Quite the opposite, Google is constantly being harassed by lawyers employed by businesses with bad ratings, using legal tricks to have legitimate reviews removed. Then what‘s left is a very distorted picture of the actual consumer ratings, so the system is quite skewed in businesses favor.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#23

Post by nguyenkien »

dazc wrote: post #17
Daho0n wrote: post #8

At least Google didn't build their rating system specifically to blackmail businesses into paying for tools that can get negative ratings removed. Unlike Trustpilot.

And you can have your Trustpilot 'stars' included in your Google search result snippet, paid and organic. Maybe Google don't know about the practices of Trustpilot or maybe 'there is no evidence'?

Maybe they just dont care.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#24

Post by Daho0n »

dsnr wrote: post #22
Daho0n wrote: post #8

At least Google didn't build their rating system specifically to blackmail businesses into paying for tools that can get negative ratings removed. Unlike Trustpilot.

> Google didn't build their rating system specifically to blackmail businesses into paying for tools that can get negative ratings removed Quite the opposite, Google is constantly being harassed by lawyers employed by businesses with bad ratings, using legal tricks to have legitimate reviews removed. Then what‘s left is a very distorted picture of the actual consumer ratings, so the system is quite skewed in business…

That's not the same as Trustpilot. Their rating system is specifically built so paying businesses can remove ratings themselves while nonpaying can't . They can ask for proof of purchase and then only accept those that have both proof and a good rating. That's what most do.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#25

Post by ghoward »

I once wrote a negative review of a business on Google, and it went up, but when I went to look at the business's reviews under my wife's Google account, it was not there. I waited an hour and checked. Then a couple hours and checked. Then a day. It never showed up.

I posted the review under her account and did the same checks for my account. It never showed up.

I do not know why it didn't show up, but I wouldn't be surprised if the business had been able to pay money to Google to be able to check reviews before they went live and mark them as spam.

Edit: Because some commenters did not seem to get the implied message, what I am actually implying is that in this context, or any context, I don't trust Google. I have no evidence of what commenters said I have claimed. (I have not claimed anything; I just said I wouldn't be surprised.)

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#26

Post by thepete2 »

dsnr wrote: post #22
Daho0n wrote: post #8

At least Google didn't build their rating system specifically to blackmail businesses into paying for tools that can get negative ratings removed. Unlike Trustpilot.

> Google didn't build their rating system specifically to blackmail businesses into paying for tools that can get negative ratings removed Quite the opposite, Google is constantly being harassed by lawyers employed by businesses with bad ratings, using legal tricks to have legitimate reviews removed. Then what‘s left is a very distorted picture of the actual consumer ratings, so the system is quite skewed in business…

I'm not even sure what non-distorted ratings are supposed to be. What you mention obviously makes them more inaccurate, but they aren't accurate to begin with. Ratings are a messy human affair, I don't know why we bother quantifying it...

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#27

Post by zwass »

I've noticed a number of fake seeming reviews on local businesses here in Vancouver, BC. The accounts seem to be leaving fake reviews across Canada. It's particularly suspicious to me given the improper grammar and almost entire lack of reference to anything specific to the business. The accounts also seem to give 100% 5 star reviews.

There's no option in Google Maps to report these users for being fraudulent.

For example: https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/104557996396454013599/re... https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/109949503069363340417/re...

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#28

Post by thepete2 »

Daho0n wrote: post #24
dsnr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google didn't build their rating system specifically to blackmail businesses into paying for tools that can get negative ratings removed Quite the opposite, Google is constantly being harassed by lawyers employed by businesses with bad ratings, using legal tricks to have legitimate reviews removed. Then what‘s left is a very distorted picture of the actual consumer ratings, so the system is quite skewed in business…

That's not the same as Trustpilot. Their rating system is specifically built so paying businesses can remove ratings themselves while nonpaying can't . They can ask for proof of purchase and then only accept those that have both proof and a good rating. That's what most do.

I've never used trustpilot, but how do they get away with it? Why are they used at all? Search rankings? But how did they get those?

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#29

Post by Nextgrid »

Daho0n wrote: post #24
dsnr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google didn't build their rating system specifically to blackmail businesses into paying for tools that can get negative ratings removed Quite the opposite, Google is constantly being harassed by lawyers employed by businesses with bad ratings, using legal tricks to have legitimate reviews removed. Then what‘s left is a very distorted picture of the actual consumer ratings, so the system is quite skewed in business…

That's not the same as Trustpilot. Their rating system is specifically built so paying businesses can remove ratings themselves while nonpaying can't . They can ask for proof of purchase and then only accept those that have both proof and a good rating. That's what most do.

I wonder if there's a way to legally forbid scummy companies like Trustpilot from accepting & publishing reviews (both good and bad) about your company.

Let's say you are legit but just don't want to play this bullshit game at all (as otherwise you'd need to constantly monitor and be ready to try and take down the obviously fake reviews which you can prove are fake), can you do that?

I feel like these companies, even if they didn't have extortionate intentions, are still creating overhead for businesses that haven't asked for anything.

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