Earlier quoted context omitted.
The real news is that NY state is prosecuting fake paid reviews as fraud, the WSJ is reporting on it, and that HBS released a study with quantification of it. Also, this is another sign that the "Wild West" days of the Internet have ended.
"20% of Yelp reviews are fake" is what is being presented by the author as 'real news'. If he wanted to go your way as the 'real news' he would have headlined it sometime like: "NY state starts prosecuting fake Yelp reviews" or something along those lines.
20% of Yelp reviews are fake
41–50 of 110 posts
Re: 20% of Yelp reviews are fake
#42Hi everyone, co-author of the paper here. I wanted to clarify the 20% figure. We actually have no way of telling how many, or which reviews are fake. We do not directly observe review fraud, and we clearly spell this out in the paper. The 20% figure represents the percentage of filtered reviews on Yelp. These are reviews that Yelp finds suspicious enough to not publish. Some filtered reviews may be fake, and some mig…
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Re: 20% of Yelp reviews are fake
#4320% 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 o…
Just out of curiosity, do those "reputation management" companies realize that in serving their clients by making fake reviews, they help destroy end-consumer trust? In many ways, it's the old SEO argument all over again - gaming a system to increase ratings eventually erodes trust in that system, making those increased ratings less valuable. At the same time, refusing to game the system means your business loses pot…
Classic prisoners' dilemma.
Re: 20% of Yelp reviews are fake
#44Whenever my dad and I are looking for a place to eat I pull up Yelp. He grumbles about the possibility of fake reviews, but I tell him that as long as you look at the sample size (n=25 or more is usually safe) then you shouldn't have a problem. I've found amazing restaurants (and many other services) through Yelp that I wouldn't have found otherwise. Sure, there have been times where I've eaten at a highly-rated rest…
Here we go, a good example of an astroturfing comment about Yelp on HN.
Dunno about that, but it would certainly be part of the 20% of filtered reviews if it was a review on Yelp.
Re: 20% of Yelp reviews are fake
#45Hi everyone, co-author of the paper here. I wanted to clarify the 20% figure. We actually have no way of telling how many, or which reviews are fake. We do not directly observe review fraud, and we clearly spell this out in the paper. The 20% figure represents the percentage of filtered reviews on Yelp. These are reviews that Yelp finds suspicious enough to not publish. Some filtered reviews may be fake, and some mig…
You might want to rethink that then; I found one of my reviews filtered once, I have also been a "Yelp Elite" member so I am really unclear what criteria they use for the filtering. I also found some clearly fake reviews for the same place where my review was filtered. It was weird that they filtered my review as well because (I think) it was fairly balanced and mostly positive...
I don't know what goes into Yelp's filter either. I also agree that it can make mistakes. At the same time, I do think that the filter is more likely to catch a fake review than it is to catch a real review. This is the assumption our analysis relies on. (Not sure what I should be rethinking...)
Re: 20% of Yelp reviews are fake
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just out of curiosity, do those "reputation management" companies realize that in serving their clients by making fake reviews, they help destroy end-consumer trust? In many ways, it's the old SEO argument all over again - gaming a system to increase ratings eventually erodes trust in that system, making those increased ratings less valuable. At the same time, refusing to game the system means your business loses pot…
Classic prisoners' dilemma.
I think its more of a case of the tragedy of the commons.
Re: 20% of Yelp reviews are fake
#47I recently posted 2 reviews on Yelp (I'm not very active on it; this was probably my 2nd and 3rd ever). I gave rave reviews for both. One is filtered, one is not. I see a 50% failure rate in filtering, from my extremely small sample size. Oh, and one of them was in NYC (the non-filtered one). The filtered one, well the chef knows who I am, since I said the same thing to him at dinner that I posted in the review.
Re: 20% of Yelp reviews are fake
#4820% 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 o…
I wouldn't consider the owner's friend's review to be "fake." As for the owner him/herself, that might feel a bit unethical, but I still wouldn't call it "fake."
Re: 20% of Yelp reviews are fake
#49Flagged - The headline is VERY misleading. Read the comments from the co-author. 20% of reviews are voluntarily filtered by Yelp. Though the issue is certainly real.