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UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

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Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#71

Post by phr4ts »

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…

The same happened to me. The negative review shows up when i'm signed in but it did not affect the rating (number of stars) of the business.

Basically, it's just me and the owner of the business that sees the review. The negative review I gave the scammy business doesn't show up when I sign out.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#72

Post by Hasz »

Reviews are now so gamified as to be completely worthless. Most users don't have much experience, and the experience they do have with the item might be completely out of line with how it was intended to be used or operated.

There's a great quote from Michael Crichton I will repeat here, as it's quite accurate.

  Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray [Gell-Mann]’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

  In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#73

Post by Dyac »

vorpalhex wrote: post #68
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…

As a business owner, you only need to claim the review is fraudulant and that will usually get it removed. In theory a review hoster is supposed to evaluate claims and act on reasonable ones. In practice review hosters are terrified of getting sued and will take down reviews easily. I suspect most local businesses hire "reputation fixing" firms to actually do this dirty work for them.

I helped a couple of small businesses set up maps business listings a few years back. One was going great for years then in about 3-4 days got a bunch of fraudulent bad reviews from a disgruntled ex exployee. We tried for months to remove them, every single way possible but were never able to. In the end we had to nuke the whole Google business listing, which wasn't easy either.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#74

Post by Const-me »

vorpalhex wrote: post #68
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…

As a business owner, you only need to claim the review is fraudulant and that will usually get it removed. In theory a review hoster is supposed to evaluate claims and act on reasonable ones. In practice review hosters are terrified of getting sued and will take down reviews easily. I suspect most local businesses hire "reputation fixing" firms to actually do this dirty work for them.

> review hosters are terrified of getting sued

I wish Google would be terrified of getting sued, but we both know this is not gonna happen.

My friend is a business owner.

She received couple one-star reviews on google maps from customers she never had (she’s a real estate developer, real estate is expensive, she doesn’t have many customers).

Wasn’t able to do anything about them.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#76

Post by tenebrisalietum »

jedberg wrote: post #39

If feels like this could be solved if Google/Yelp/Etc wanted to solve it, but it would cut into their profits. Give the business an app to generate unique QR codes for each customer, and then have that customer use the code to make the review. Now everyone knows that the review comes from a person who actually bought the product, the reviewer is more likely to be honest because their identity is known to the seller,…

How do I know the QR codes really came from a customer and weren't simply created and submitted by the business owner?

Also how do I know the seller didn't bribe the buyer with a discount or something to create a positive review?

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#77

Post by arkitaip »

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…

Do you have any idea how difficult it would be for a random dinky business to bribe an engineer at Google? There are businesses that are literally making bank for Google and still can't get in touch with a human being at Google when their Google account gets locked, app gets removed from the Play Store, etc.

What probably happened is that the business had friends and family members report your review which was removed by an automated system.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#78

Post by abraxas »

glaucon wrote: post #75

Online reviews; chocolate tea pots. Each about as useful as the other.

Yes, the inflation of ratings has been ridiculous. It's meaningless even in supposedly heavily guarded services like Audible. Just about every audio book is 4.3 stars out of 5 or higher. I just use what's behind the fractional number as a rough guide (since everything will be 4.something) and go with that. Except even then it appears that many titles are inflated via click farms.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#79

Post by WalterBright »

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…

Hmm, that's interesting. If I was writing a review moderation algorithm, it would leave only one copy up if there were multiple substantially identical reviews. Those are likely to be written by bots that mutate a common review and post, or even if some entity circulates a "review" to its crew of minions who write fake reviews based on that template.

I'd also write it to remove reviews written by a single account if the reviews across diverse products are substantially similar.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#80

Post by [deleted] »

arkitaip wrote: post #77
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…

Do you have any idea how difficult it would be for a random dinky business to bribe an engineer at Google? There are businesses that are literally making bank for Google and still can't get in touch with a human being at Google when their Google account gets locked, app gets removed from the Play Store, etc. What probably happened is that the business had friends and family members report your review which was remove…

[deleted]
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