What are they?
Fictitious reviews are reviews submitted by a company or a person hired to write positive reviews online about a company, product, or service. The hired and paid fictitious review writer more than likely never used the product, company or service. They will, however, be more than happy to write and submit 5 star reviews boasting how great the product, company or service is. It does not matter if they product, company or service is terrible, poor, great or amazing.
Why do they do this?
Because people pay them to. Who pays them? Businesses with bad or no online reputations. This BS industry has been created because of the vast increase, popularity and purchase decision making factor of online reviews. Never before has a potential buyer had such a quick and easy ability to learn about a company, product or service form those with actual experiences. Not only does the honest online review system help buyers make good decisions, it also rewards businesses who provide good products or services. The bad products and services are being called out and identified to the masses with honest opinions and detailed experience. That is awesome and powerful. Bad companies are no longer able to able to get away with the corner cutting and penny saving service ducks they did before. Products and services are truly being held accountable more than ever. Attention businesses…If your service is poor, and your products are sub par, you will receive negative reviews and see a top line drop. If you provide good service and a solid product, you will receive positive reviews and a top line sales jump. So good for you because you deserve it!
It was a perfect system, until the “bad companies found a way to ruin it.
They discovered or built companies and paid them to write positive reviews. (Is that out of the PR or Marketing budget? Just wondering) Why are they doing this? Because honest consumers wrote honest reviews about their experience or the product they bought from this company and this company did not like it! These reviews cannot be easily removed from the web so they had to use another solution. Rather than apologizing, offering a refund, or even taking it as good advice and working to improve…they fought back by scamming the system and paying for fictitious positive reviews. Good for you marketing department!
How to identify fictitious reviews?
It is actually very simple. First of all, keep in mind that any company using fictitious reviews is obviously not a company you would want to use. If a company provides honest and solid products or services it should be very easy for them to get actual positive reviews from real customers. If they choose to pay for positive reviews then I suggest taking that as a big indicator of the type of business you will deal with.
Back to my point…Fictitious reviews are easy to identify…they are always 5/4 stars, depending on the review platform max, the review is short, but not too short, simple, and well written. The fictitious writer will use an unidentifiable name or nickname and probably does not have a complete portfolio with a photo or any other basic information about them. Once you click through you will see that they have written several reviews about other companies around the country. If you have some free time it’s fun to try and figure out their buying patterns. Oh yea, and the actual reviews are all 100% positive. Also, notice that the business that paid for the reviews usually has 5 star reviews across the board, sometimes all submitted within days of each other. (Must have been a great week!). Also notice that the reviews are very general and do not get into specifics…its almost as if they never used the service..oooohhh!!
How does this effect the amazing web we love?
Simple, again, they are destroying an amazing, helpful, and popular feature of the internet. How can anyone trust a review anymore? Why would a business work to improve their goods and services if all the need to do is buy positive reviews? How can a good business reap rewards it deserves for providing solid products and services? What will happen to review companies!?
How to stop them…It can be done!
1 – Understand how to identify fictitious reviews.
2 – Consider any company using fictitious reviews to be poor service and poor product.
3 – Write a beware review about that company that states you suspect fictitious reviews. This way, anyone reading the reviews will also see your review.
4 – Share this article and spread the word. This can be stopped but everyone has to know about it. Use the web to protect the web.
5 – Do not buy from anyone using fictitious reviews. Soon they will not have the budget to pay for the reviews and the review writing companies will close up shop.
Rick Mariano
Digital Optimization Manger, Hearst Media
President – Ivend Marketing, Internet Marketing Consultants and Web Solutions.
