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Reducing Bogus And Malicious Web-based Customer Reviews

Before the evolution of the web, a friend’s recommendation was a reliable and trustworthy way to find out who to call for a particular product or service. Nowadays, many people use the wide range of review tools available online (mostly through search engines such as Google), for example company websites and review forums, to help them decide where to go for a particular product or service. However, unfortunately, there has been recent reports about spam reviews and bogus reviewers who attempt to steal customers from- or damage their rival’s reputation. Those who engage in such damaging practices do so on the basis that customers would be turned off buying a product from their rival should they come across a bad review.

Tracing Malicious Reviews

Due to the nature of the Internet, it is often difficult to ascertain the source of harmful reviews and a constant battle to filter them from the Web. According to Google, it uses special software programs to automatically detect spam reviews although only so much can be done by these programs at any given time as proven by the ever increasing menace of spam reviews. However, Google has maintained that it is working to improve the system whilst also trying to balance identifying spam without removing genuine comments/reviews.

5 Ways To Reduce Bogus Spam Reviews

Whilst it might be impossible to totally remove all bogus and malicious spam reviews from the Internet, some of the following are suggested ways of tackling the problem:

  • Use a flagging system on your site or on a suspected spam review/comment to raise alarm and bring it to the attention of the site owner.
  • Manually identify and request e.g. via email, that suspected spam reviews are removed.
  • Employ private companies such as Kwikchex, to help you do the job.
  • Make a complaint to Google about persistent offenders.
  • Use a pattern checker that looks at the computer address the review was written from to automatically pick up suspicious reviews.

Talking Point

Have you ever been a victim of fake and/or bogus Web reviews? What more can be done to reduce this problem?

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16 Comments

16 Comments

  1. Emanuel Grimlie

    November 27, 2011 at 4:47 am

    I really appreciate this post. I’ve been looking everywhere for this! Thank goodness I found it on Bing. You’ve made my day! Thank you again

  2. Nikki

    November 27, 2011 at 4:12 pm

    Bogus customer reviews can really be annoying. We cannot really avoid them but at least we can lessen their numbers. Great tips! 🙂

  3. Danny

    November 27, 2011 at 5:22 pm

    Luckily I’ve never been a victim of this. I hope this is not becoming normal. Because as long as the reviews/comments are not automated there is not much Google can do. And even if Google can recognize it. If it is placed on a legitamite review site, then Google can’t really touch it anyway.
    Emanuel’s post is definitely spam btw.

    • Admin

      November 28, 2011 at 12:33 am

      Thanks for bringing the spam comment to my attention. It sure has a generic feeling about it lol. Btw..all associated links have been removed.

  4. Nishadha

    November 28, 2011 at 5:02 am

    Yes, they are very annoying but there isn’t much you can do about them. We monitor all our clients mentions through Google alerts and try to counter them as much as we can. Also you need to make sure that if someone looks for a review of your products the best ones rank first.

  5. TracyAnn0312

    November 28, 2011 at 10:36 am

    How effective does the pattern checker? There are different tools spammers used so that they can not be detected by the administrator!

  6. Anita

    November 28, 2011 at 3:30 pm

    But how do you differentiate between a so called “spam” review – and simply, a malicious one?
    In my experience, I actually find a bad review sometimes more useful than a glorifying one!

  7. Pam

    November 28, 2011 at 11:00 pm

    I heard that that some hotels and resorts in TripAdvisor “employ” bogus reviewers to say something good about their establishment. I’m not sure if TripAdvisor has managed this well…

  8. Addy Miller

    November 29, 2011 at 10:03 am

    This is true, I mean I am tired with all these fake reviews which run into a well written pages. To counter all these you require techniques as mentioned above and Excellent online reputation management to keep a hawk eye.

  9. Angel Collins

    December 1, 2011 at 5:47 am

    I totally agree with this post! Or you can filter those comments that are sent by the viewers by manually approving or reading it one by one. Thanks for sharing! 🙂

  10. Christina

    December 4, 2011 at 3:12 am

    Some people are hiring individuals who can provide them positive reviews for their products or services. Unfortunate to those who don’t really know how online activities work, they find it difficult to distinguish whether they are reading reliable reviews or totally paid reviews. As for my experience, I always consider the number of reviews and other site references to make sure that I’m getting the right information I need before buying something online or whatsoever. So far, so good!

  11. anne

    December 4, 2011 at 3:00 pm

    Some website are now asking for reference such as customer numbers to validate reviews. Having a facebook fanpage is also a bad idea for online business, since it is prone to receive a bad review.

  12. Chrissy

    February 4, 2012 at 12:29 pm

    Businesses don’t like customer complaints, but that doesn’t mean they should ignore them. Complaints won’t go away, that’s why customer service has to get better and they need to start caring about you, me, and everybody else on the web! Hello it’s 2012 not 1990 🙂

  13. Earl Dickerson

    February 13, 2012 at 3:19 am

    This is great article on successful business. Business especially small one takes patience and old fashioned hard work to become successful.

  14. Celia

    April 17, 2012 at 1:48 am

    I love to use this software. I always have problem how can I minimize spammers in my websites and email add always. Thanks for giving this product review I can now prevent bugos and spammers online.

  15. Amanda

    April 21, 2012 at 10:55 am

    I think I should try using this software to stay away from bogus and malicious reviews. Thanks for sharing this idea…

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