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UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews
141–150 of 232 posts
Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews
#142I have a friend that's working as a sales agent for a company that is putting pressure on the sales agents to make the customers at any cost leave a good review on multiple platforms, some of them became really crafty and did anything necessary in order to make the customers leave a 5 star review.
In the past I've bought multiple products from them and there is 50% chance to get a really bad product but their Terms and Conditions + Lawyers and their activity make the return impossible for the customers and any complaints are attacked. From latest news they are still going strong with millions and billions in investments.
Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are sort of communicating. I _am_ the OP. And I only meant it as "I don't trust Google." I'll let you decide if that implication is unsubstantiated or not.
You should just say that, then. If I don't trust someone, that doesn't mean it's OK to go around and imply that they do some absurd malicious thing I have absolutely no evidence they actually do. It's fine not to trust them. Spreading unsubstantiated rumors and implications is not fine.
You go out each day and pigeons have shat (pooped) on your car.
Today you go out and there's a pigeon sitting on the branch over your car, you scare it away.
Your friend is like "what did you do that for, you have no evidence this pigeon poops on cars!".
Your [asdfasgasdgasdg] position is "this pigeon might be fine" the OP's position appears to be [or at least, mine is] "pigeons are probably going to poop on my car". You're saying his position is insubstantiated ...
It's the difference between treating Google as unique, and treating them as a member of a class of businesses. It's not insubstantiated, it's just a different form of substantiation. If all advertising businesses the OP has dealt with before were underhanded then your position looks to them like "today is unique, maybe the sun won't rise".
tl;dr you can substantiate a position based on general behaviours of items in a class, it's not necessarily wrong, and can be just a different model.
Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews
#144An 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…
Another factor that reinforces your conclusion (you can't prove who did or didn't buy them) is that a smart botmaster would have their fake reviewers also review random businesses that did not pay them.
It makes it harder to detect that they're fake. For the same reason bots will try to friend random people on Facebook, follow random accounts on Instagram, etc...
Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am no google fanboy, but I WOULD be surprised to find such a thing. The reason I would be surprised is history and alignment. Google consistently has bad/non existent customer service It is famously hard to talk to a google employee when you have a problem Google has a history of primarily hiring devs Google knows its bread and butter is legitimate results Google probably has the largest most experienced anti-SEO t…
Google Business (business.google.com) which is used for managing a business on Google/Google Maps has surprisingly pretty good customer support (for Google :) ). There is an option to request help and when you decline all the automated answers it's possible to send a text to a real person. Up to now all requests to remove reviews, photos, or previous/old business listings have been resolved in 2-3 business days. In o…
Interesting! Definitely not something I've read about often.
Yes. This is an understanding I buy:
Algorithmic/Systemic upward review pressure: easily removed/prevented reviews.
Alignment problem: money comes from business, not user.
Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
On Amazon, they could just make the refund/returns rate for a product public. That would probably be a pretty good quality indicator for physical goods.
They'd just start buying their own product (which then goes right back into the supply chain) to skew the numbers. However, I do agree this is a good next step as it ups the costs significantly (the transaction fees as well as logistics of having to move your product in a loop) compared to buying fake reviews.
They probably do it already. I know for a fact this is an existing practice on Allegro - Polish eBay equivalent. What happens is a boss gets their employees to order their products with on-site pickup, or post + payment on delivery, wait few days, and upload a five-star review. Rinse, repeat. The product is, of course, never sent. The company loses on platform fees, but it's profitable if used to fabricate social proof for new listings, or to compensate for the few negative reviews weren't able to bribe away, that drag down your total rating too close to the point the platform may cancel your privileges or ban your account.
Being a witness to all of this, I no longer trust any particular review. At this point, I strongly prefer to spend a little bit more money, and buy a product straight from a recognizable and reputable brand name.
Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews
#147Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
For at least the last couple of years I ignore them entirely. I just have zero faith in any of them anymore. The problem some ten-ish years ago were bogus computer-generated reviews. But now the bogus reviews are written by humans and are smart enough to sound balanced. I don't know what to do. But for now, I subscribe to Consumer Reports and use price as a proxy for quality.
On Amazon, they could just make the refund/returns rate for a product public. That would probably be a pretty good quality indicator for physical goods.
And allow reviews only from customers who have actually bought the product - they do it to some extent today, with "verified purchase" label, but it would be nice to not even let customers review products that they haven't bought
Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews
#149I 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 see your Hanlon's Razor, and I raise you Hanlon's Handgun of mine:
"Never attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by systemic incentives promoting malice."
I'm not sure what makes Google so different that it should be exempt from general trends around reviews. Businesses have their interest aligned here: removing negative reviews and faking positive reviews are beneficial to each individually, and can't be directly weaponized against competition. Google has no strong incentive to keep reviews honest; regular users will not replace Google Maps with OSM over a review issue, while a business might want to stop paying Google if they get bad experience on the marketing front.
Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should just say that, then. If I don't trust someone, that doesn't mean it's OK to go around and imply that they do some absurd malicious thing I have absolutely no evidence they actually do. It's fine not to trust them. Spreading unsubstantiated rumors and implications is not fine.
You go out each day and pigeons have shat (pooped) on your car. Today you go out and there's a pigeon sitting on the branch over your car, you scare it away. Your friend is like "what did you do that for, you have no evidence this pigeon poops on cars!". Your [asdfasgasdgasdg] position is "this pigeon might be fine" the OP's position appears to be [or at least, mine is] "pigeons are probably going to poop on my car".…
But there are no popular review websites that allow business owners to pay to remove negative reviews. So the inductive approach you advocate favors my position.