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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

#171

Post by wyqydsyq »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #149
Laremere wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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,…

> Google has no strong incentive to keep reviews honest

Have you actually thought about this at all? Why on earth would ANYONE bother reading reviews that they know to be categorically fraudulent? Without keeping the reviews honest, at least to a degree that the general public considers them honest and legitimate, Google Maps Reviews becomes worthless and a dead product. Fake reviews are a very real threat to their product's value and Google arguably has very good strong incentives to keep reviews honest so people keep using them.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#172

Post by hayst4ck »

alisonkisk wrote: post #160
hayst4ck wrote: post #86

Earlier 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…

Indenting your text formats it as code, making it unteadable.

Sorry about that. I don't think hacker news allows you to format lists, but I wanted a list. It increases the readability on desktop, but destroys it on mobile.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#173

Post by wyqydsyq »

Rule35 wrote: post #155
nitrogen wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banning

Right, but you don't accidentally shadow-ban someone, you first have to create the whole system to do so... So they weren't 'stupid'. It obviously was intentional to lie to the user. We're just discussing the line at which intentional lies for selfish reasons can be called malicious.

> but you don't accidentally shadow-ban someone

Have you considered when the shadow-ban is triggered by an automated moderation system based on heuristics or ML which Google is known to use prolifically across their product range?

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#174

Post by bscphil »

wyqydsyq wrote: post #170
hayst4ck wrote: post #86

Earlier 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…

Yeah I just don't see this being a thing either. If Google allowed businesses to pay to moderate (i.e. censor) their own reviews at their own will then that destroys any legitimacy in the reviews of a business, eliminating any value of Google Maps reviews to the end-customer and killing the product.

I understand this works in theory, but people still use Yelp, right?

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#175

Post by bscphil »

SilverRed wrote: post #168
amelius wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does "stupidity" explain that the poster's account showed the review but someone else's account didn't?

Its almost certainly an anti spam system. The system marked the review as spam, for whatever reason. And it doesn't publish the results. The system doesn't tell you this because otherwise the first thing you will do is keep trying again in different ways until it doesn't tell you it was marked as spam. Google drops reviews for a few known reasons. When a location gets negative coverage in the news, thousands of negat…

Yes, in fact, if there's some delay in processing reviews through the anti-spam system, the OP might have triggered the failure themselves by then posting the exact same review under another (their wife's) account. If I'm writing an anti-spam system, duplicate reviews from different accounts are like the most obvious heuristic imaginable.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#176

Post by wyqydsyq »

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 before they went live and mark them as spam.

I would be really surprised, as such a scheme existing without being exposed by now seems highly unlikely, and it would completely undermine the value of Google Maps reviews once everyone knows businesses can freely curate their reviews. Why would you bother looking up reviews for a business if you already knew any legitimate negative ones would be censored out? You wouldn't. Nobody would. Reviews on Google Maps would be discontinued by now if it were ever the case.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#177

Post by wyqydsyq »

bscphil wrote: post #174
wyqydsyq wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I just don't see this being a thing either. If Google allowed businesses to pay to moderate (i.e. censor) their own reviews at their own will then that destroys any legitimacy in the reviews of a business, eliminating any value of Google Maps reviews to the end-customer and killing the product.

I understand this works in theory, but people still use Yelp, right?

Do they? I've never even heard it mentioned before other than in reference to controversies around them being dodgy. Maybe it's just not popular in my locale, but I've never heard of anyone using it or recommending it. By contrast I've used Google Maps reviews, and know of other people using it a lot

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#178

Post by Rule35 »

wyqydsyq wrote: post #173
Rule35 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but you don't accidentally shadow-ban someone, you first have to create the whole system to do so... So they weren't 'stupid'. It obviously was intentional to lie to the user. We're just discussing the line at which intentional lies for selfish reasons can be called malicious.

> but you don't accidentally shadow-ban someone Have you considered when the shadow-ban is triggered by an automated moderation system based on heuristics or ML which Google is known to use prolifically across their product range?

But not "accidental" because they had to create and maintain it. Stupid would be them intending but failing to make post visible.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#179

Post by rfrey »

throwaway_1301 wrote: post #122
vorpalhex wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Absolutely not true. Worked on this team for Google at one point and other than internal systems nothing can get reviews removed. Firms cant do anything, they are just swindling people out of money. Some of them will get fake reviews to try and drown out negative ones but its very short lived.

Seems to me that if reputation firms are buying reviews and their effect is "short lived"... then those reviews are getting removed.

Re: UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

#180

Post by genericposter18 »

mkl95 wrote: post #100

I have caught several businesses doing the same thing in my country. The difference is that they don't buy them, they have their own employees write them. This results in patterns that make it obvious they were written by the same person. Google couldn't care less.

Noticed similar. Had a pretty acrimonious hire experience with a large Thrifty Car rental franchise based out in suburban Melbourne (Australia) regarding admin fees for damage/repair not being disclosed in the written legal documentation. Conversation ultimately ended with "Thanks for your feedback on disclosure"

Upon coming to place a review, recognised several names (in relation to above) of known staff including the franchise manager against numerous 5 star reviews. Mentioning the acronyms ACCC and CAV (Consumer Affairs Victoria) saw multiple false reviews removed in haste. Needless to say, a comment was included to that effect in my own review (with screen shots linking the offending reviews to staff)

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