Spotting Fake Reviews
One of the best sections of some sites like Amazon, Yelp and some other is the Review Section. These reviews will help you avoid getting scammed. For instance, if there is any problem with any product, the reviews about that product will let you know the defect in it. But now it has become that even some of the reviews are fake. Some companies are known to hire reviewers for posting fake reviews to praise their products. As a result of which their sales will boost.
Are you now confused about the fake reviews and the real ones? Also confused about which product to be trusted? Don’t worry! There are some tools to examine reviews if they are true or fake. You can learn to recognize fake reviews from these.
While browsing a site such as Amazon, if you suspect reviews to be fake, you can quickly clear off your suspicion. Go To FakeSpot.com to know the fake review. This site will scan the suspected review and give you an adjusted rating. After scanning the reviews, fake reviews are removed. Even the likely fake are also removed.
Firstly, FakeSpot scans the language used in every review. It also checks the profile of every reviewer, then uses a number of factors to decide whether a given review is likely to be fake or not.
For example, excessively positive language is considered a red flag. While many people are willing to compliment a good product in a review, they rarely pile on positive adjectives. They pile them in the way the fake reviewers will do. Similarly, if reviewers seem to only post positive reviews, and to post reviews of the same company’s products, there’s a huge chance for the reviews to be fake. It’s also considered suspicious for a bunch of positive reviews to show up on the same day.
None of these rules are hard and fast. Sometimes real people will do these things, and sometimes fake reviewers won’t. But FakeSpot’s statistical analysis tries to spot trends. It gives you an idea of how likely the reviews for a given product are fake. If this site does suspect nothing is wrong with the reviews, then there’s nothing to worry about.
What if you’re seeing fake reviews, or comments, on sites other than Amazon or Yelp? Or just don’t want to depend on a website? Then you need to develop an internal BS detector.
The initial things that FakeSpot takes into account are positive language and multiple reviews published on the same day. Then you need to consider a few more things.
- Check the dates on the reviews : Did a bunch of positive reviews flood the product at once? If so, you’re probably looking at fake comments.
- Consider the language choices : Fake reviewers frequently aren’t native English speakers. For this reason, you might notice some weird language choices in fake reviews. For example, a supposedly US-based reviewer might refer to something as costing “1300 USD.” But an actual American would never specify “USD” while writing a review.
- Click the reviewer’s profile : You can typically do this by clicking the user’s name. Does a given review seem to only ever leave positive reviews, with glowing language? Do they tend to focus on products from little-known companies? That’s very suspicious, and might be a sign that you’re looking at a fake reviewer.
- Do some Googling : If the site you’re looking at provides a first and last name for a reviewer, go ahead and look at the person. Do the results match with an actual human person, with a Facebook or Twitter account? If so, do they talk to other humans, or just kinda exist?
- Check the avatar : Many fake reviewers pull photos from blogs or other people’s social media profiles to appear like an actual person. Run a reverse image search to find the original source of the image. Frequently you’ll find out you’re looking at a stock photo, a photo grabbed from someone else’s blog or even a clip from a movie.
These aren’t the only ways to spot fake reviews, of course, and fake reviewers are going to become more sophisticated over time.
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