Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Urbanspoon are online review websites that people resort to when seeking a third opinion. However, to what extent can we trust these reviews, which are posted by complete strangers? Someone once told me they thought 15% of Yelp reviews were fake, which seems ridiculous already.
Companies make money based on the consumers’ perception of the brand. Perception also includes how consumers expect their product or service to be of a particular quality. So it is shocking, but surely not surprising, that some companies have secretly paid for positive reviews, and even negative reviews for competitors. Companies providing false reviews have become more sophisticated and many false reviews now slip through algorithms designed to weed them out. There’s even a term for this practice: astroturfing.
Just this week, 19 businesses were discovered to have provided false reviews in an operation run by the New York Attorney General. The consequences were steep: $350,000+ in penalties for violating false advertising laws. The repercussions dig deeper than just monetary penalties, however. If the practice of false advertising continues to be prevalent on the Internet, consumers will be less likely to trust businesses to deliver what they claim, ruining any good reputation that existed before. Skepticism doesn’t sell.
A consequence worse than losing consumer trust, however, is that false advertising sets up a destructive business environment. It becomes less about innovating and creating a better product or service for consumers, and more about shouting and claiming to be the best in the world. This kind of business environment isn’t healthy for the economy and doesn’t provide anything for society other than more noise to sift through. Marketing is all about adding value, and false advertising through fake online reviews only takes away value.
Your topic is very interesting as it can relate to many individuals. A lot of us like to browse websites like Yelp in order to get a second or third opinion about a restaurant or place we want to go to. However, after reading your blog and finding out that businesses actually BUY positive and negative reviews from third parties, I find it a bit discouraging to go on sites like Yelp to receive a second opinion as it is less reliable. I am glad that the companies who are doing this are receiving punishment. But is it too little of a punishment? Not only were they “violating false advertising laws”, but they took advantage of people who were reading the reviews. This made them believe something that is not true, thus, leading them to incorrect conclusions about the company they were researching about..This is something that should have been considered apart from the law violations.