20% of Yelp reviews are fake
marketwatch.com
20% of Yelp reviews are fake
1–10 of 110 posts
Re: 20% of Yelp reviews are fake
#2Actually, that's far far smaller than I expected. That means that 80% are legit?
Re: 20% of Yelp reviews are fake
#3Another problem I've seen with Yelp is reviews that aren't actually for the intended place. My father-in-law owns a few restaurants. One of them has >300 reviews (solid 4 stars), but shares part of its' name with another restaurant with >1500 reviews (3.5 stars, with a heavy downward trend).
Most reviews posted for his restaurant are either 4 or 5 stars, with the majority of lower reviews referencing the other restaurant either by name, menu items, or decor. I'm not sure if the issue is one of UI design, mobile app, or poor search handling - although I heavily suspect search is the culprit.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way to address these mis-posted reviews, that I've seen. I would love to hear any suggestions that would help though.
Re: 20% of Yelp reviews are fake
#4Actually, that's far far smaller than I expected. That means that 80% are legit?
That depends on what they consider "fake". It looks like "Operation Clean Turf" only considered reputation management companies.
Re: 20% of Yelp reviews are fake
#5I predict that more than 20% of these comments will think more than 20% of reviews are fake.
Re: 20% of Yelp reviews are fake
#620% LOL! If only it were that low. I used to be a reputation management company, at one time we were responsible for 10% of the reviews in Silicon Valley. There were metro's where we were about 80% of the reviews.
When you think that the majority of companies have less than 10 reviews, and most owners can't resist doing a review, and having a friend do a review you are at 20% really fast.
When you combine that with organizations like Blackwaterops.com (my old company) that used to do 1000s of reviews a day. 20% is really low, and wrong.
Re: 20% of Yelp reviews are fake
#7[deleted]
Re: 20% of Yelp reviews are fake
#8I'm sure there will be a lot of discussion here about the accuracy of the 20% figure, but that actually doesn't seem as important as the other findings from the research this article cites ("Fake It Till You Make It:
Reputation, Competition, and Yelp Review Fraud", http://people.hbs.edu/mluca/FakeItTillYouMakeIt.pdf).
The interesting points from the research include:
1) Low ratings increase incentives for positive review fraud, and high ratings decrease them.
2) Having more reviews reduces incentives for positive review fraud.
3) Chain restaurants leave fewer positive fake reviews.
4) Businesses who have "claimed" their Yelp page have more interest in Yelp and therefore are suspected as being more likely to commit review fraud.
5) Negative fake reviews are likely posted by competitors, and show little correlation to changes in average ratings over time.
6) An increase in competition encourages negative review fraud.
Re: 20% of Yelp reviews are fake
#9Another problem I've seen with Yelp is reviews that aren't actually for the intended place. My father-in-law owns a few restaurants. One of them has >300 reviews (solid 4 stars), but shares part of its' name with another restaurant with >1500 reviews (3.5 stars, with a heavy downward trend). Most reviews posted for his restaurant are either 4 or 5 stars, with the majority of lower reviews referencing the other restau…
Change your name. Seriously. Even without Yelp, you don't want potential customers hearing via word of mouth about how bad your restaurant was when it really was the one down the street.
Names are relatively cheap to change and if you select a name that is related (like say, shortening it or incorporating part of the old name in the new one) and communicate what is going on with regulars, you'll limit any short-term decline in business.
Re: 20% of Yelp reviews are fake
#10Yelp itself asks business's for $$ to lower/hide the bad reviews. It's not a fair place to see honest reviews anymore folks.