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SALT LAKE CITY — Online shoppers put a lot of faith in the independent customer reviews they read, but can they really trust those reviews?
As much as 30 percent of the reviews posted by customers online are fakes, according to estimates by a University of Illinois at Chicago professor and customer review researcher Bing Liu.
Whether they were written by someone who didn't actually use the product or if they were written by a biased reviewer, just under a third of those online product reviews can't be trusted.
However, by the nature of the practice, fake reviews aren't easy to tell from real reviews. Many fake reviewers are methodic and well-practiced.
"What you're trying to do is to be indistinguishable from a real review," said Dina Mayzlin, a marketing professor at the University of Southern California, in an interview with NPR. "So it'll be, by definition, very hard to tell the good fakes (apart) from the real reviews."
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Cornell University did a survey of 166 Amazon top 1,000 reviewers, and 85 percent had received free products from either publishers or manufactures. Of that reviewer pool, 78 percent said they often posted a review of products under similar circumstances.
The study was about 90 percent effective. And while the discrepancies can be tricky, there are some things to look out for. For example, some reviewers have been paid to write something up about a business without ever stepping foot inside.
"You'll see listings from people (where) as little as 50 cents can buy someone a 50 word review of a product or service," said Kelli Grant, MarketWatch senior consumer reporter.
In these cases, consumers need to look out for very short reviews that don't provide any real details. It's also important to research the reviewer and look at other things they've posted. While most comments tend to skew positive, there are some people that tend to give a bad review about just about anything.
"You can take it with a grain of salt that maybe this (product) is not as awful as they say," Grant said.
They boost, or they try to boost the business' reputation with a positive review or they'll go after the competitors and say, 'This is the worst place to go.'
–Kelli Grant, MarketWatch senior consumer reporter
If a review is chock-full of marketing buzzwords, that's another sign that it might not be the real deal. Someone invested in the company could be behind the comments.
"They boost, or they try to boost the business' reputation with a positive review, or they'll go after the competitors and say, 'This is the worst place to go,' " Grant said.
That's not to say people should be doubtful of every online product review they read. Many sites take great care to make sure their reviews can be trusted. Angie's List touts a subscription-based structure so they can look into the backgrounds of the people posting comments. Also, Expedia has restrictions on who can leave a review.
"The only people who can leave reviews there are people who Expedia knows have booked a trip through that site," Grant said. "They can then go on and review the hotel that they stayed at and paid for. So, they know you're not Joe Schmoe who has never been to that hotel."
Some reviewers can be trusted more than others, especially in the context of a tier-structured review process. Grant said elite reviewers on Yelp and top reviewers on Amazon tend to be more accurate than other people leaving their comments.
