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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

#51

Post by foolmeonce »

rococode wrote: post #32

An interesting thing about paid reviews - you can prove that the reviews are fake, but you usually can't prove that the business itself actually paid for those reviews. In a hypothetical world where companies with fake reviews are regularly discovered and lambasted in public, it's easy to imagine a sinister metagame where unscrupulous small businesses can buy bad good reviews (i.e. 5-star reviews that are obviously f…

This happened with normal search, Google punished companies for spam links to their websites which caused sites to pay for bad links to their competition to raise their relative ranking.. It's now necessary for everyone to review links to their site and disown them.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#52

Post by Laremere »

ghoward wrote: post #25

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…

"never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

Given how well known other unscrupulous review service tactics are (eg, yelp) I doubt this would be the case. It's hard to keep such practices secret when they involve attempting to extract money from a large number of businesses. Plus Google seems to be reasonably honest about labeling (even if very subtly) when things are sponsored ads or not.

I would find it far more likely that this is simply a symptom of something Google is well known for doing: Content moderation through algorithms/ML which mostly works but still messes up a lot. Either the wording of the review hit some metric on its own, or the business already was detected as being review bombed and your review got caught in the cleanup crossfire. Posting it twice probably didn't help, as that would further convince an algorithm it's probably not legitimate.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#53

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

liaukovv wrote: post #50
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't be surprised if the business had been able to pay money to Google to be able to check reviews There is no way to do this that I can find documentation of on the public internet. You'd think if it were possible, someone would have written a howto guide. Personally, I'm deeply skeptical that any such mechanism exists. The revenue it would generate would be negligible and the potential for reputation loss s…

There is probably a button for business owner to complain about a review, for example in case of competitor bombing? Since nothing on google can be appealed this button is as good as removal of reviews at will And if your affiliation to this business is based on ad spend then well...

Again, I can't find even a hint of how to do this on the internet. If there is a way, you'd expect it to be documented given what surely must be widespread interest in the subject. Basically what we have here is an entirely unsubstantiated and unlikely accusation. (Unlikely because the incentives simply are not aligned.)

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#54

Post by ghoward »

ipsum2 wrote: post #41
ghoward wrote: post #25

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…

> 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. Do you have any evidence of this claim? Have you seen businesses be able to do that? Surely, the hundreds of thousands of businesses on Google, one of them has talked about the ability to remove reviews.

Nope. No evidence.

That's why I said that "I would not be surprised if..." which doesn't make a concrete claim. To me, it means, "I don't know, but it seems plausible in my limited experience."

I am making no claim other than pure speculation, and I know it.

Edit: typo.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#56

Post by ghoward »

Laremere wrote: post #52
ghoward wrote: post #25

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…

"never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" Given how well known other unscrupulous review service tactics are (eg, yelp) I doubt this would be the case. It's hard to keep such practices secret when they involve attempting to extract money from a large number of businesses. Plus Google seems to be reasonably honest about labeling (even if very subtly) when things are sponsored ads or n…

I agree. That's why I said "I wouldn't be surprised if..."

I intentionally did not make a concrete claim.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#57

Post by ghoward »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #53
liaukovv wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is probably a button for business owner to complain about a review, for example in case of competitor bombing? Since nothing on google can be appealed this button is as good as removal of reviews at will And if your affiliation to this business is based on ad spend then well...

Again, I can't find even a hint of how to do this on the internet. If there is a way, you'd expect it to be documented given what surely must be widespread interest in the subject. Basically what we have here is an entirely unsubstantiated and unlikely accusation. (Unlikely because the incentives simply are not aligned.)

Saying "I wouldn't be surprised if..." is not an accusation, unless you count the implied "I don't trust Google" as an accusation.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#58

Post by schnevets »

I'm surprised more of these comments aren't focused on how glaringly flawed the 5-star democratic rating system has become. I felt like the rise of Uber made it abundantly clear that anything less than a 5.0 means you were not satisfied with the service and don't think the business should continue.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#59

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

kofejnik wrote: post #47
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine. Just charge the fake reviewers and fake review companies with FCC violations, and remove their reviews. Have them hand over their books for lighter penalties, then hit the companies buying fake reviews with enforcement orders as well. Of course, all this is complicated by the fact that most of these companies are probably overseas . . .

don't think FCC will prosecute bodyshops in India and Phillippines

I wonder the extent to which it's possible for such body shops to get accounts that are believed by Google to live in the U.S. (or fake-review destination country of choice). I see sites that purport to offer such accounts for 30-50 cents per account. So I guess it's not that expensive. I wonder how often these accounts get burned and how much revenue they generate with each account beforehand.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#60

Post by dgr582systems »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #42
ghoward wrote: post #25

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…

> I wouldn't be surprised if the business had been able to pay money to Google to be able to check reviews There is no way to do this that I can find documentation of on the public internet. You'd think if it were possible, someone would have written a howto guide. Personally, I'm deeply skeptical that any such mechanism exists. The revenue it would generate would be negligible and the potential for reputation loss s…

I don’t know how they did it, but a doctor surgery near me (UK) had a large number of negative reviews up for several years. About one week ago, I looked and they now have one single 5 star review. So, anecdotally, there is at least some way to get the reviews removed.
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