Online reviews: Spot a fake before you spend

Trying to decide whether to buy that latest gadget, a new book release or even a vacation package this holiday season? Chances are you’ll check online reviews first. But should you believe them?

Researcher Bing Liu of the University of Illinois at Chicago is among Internet experts warning consumers about the dark side of online reviews: many are written by people who have never tried the product or service, or who purposely make them positive or negative.

In a phone interview, Liu estimates about 30 per cent of online reviews are fake, something he refers to as “opinion spamming.”

“Many companies ask people to write positively about them and trash competitors,” says the computer science professor, who has been studying online reviews since 2006.

As well, he says, there are people who make a living out of offering their review-writing services, including through Craigslist ads. Liu tells me some people ask for as little as $5 for each phoney review – but that can add up if dozens are written in one day.

A study out of Harvard and Boston University estimated about a fifth of reviews on Yelp.com are fake. In the area of online restaurant reviews, the tech research company Gartner estimates in a study that by 2014, 10 to 15 per cent of social media reviews will be fake.

In Canada, a recent example of questionable reviewing involved the beleaguered Waterloo, Ont.-based tech company BlackBerry. In October, there were accusations that many of the glowing Google play store reviews of its BBM messaging app appeared to be fake, although BlackBerry has denied any involvement. One clue of possible fakery was that five of the top eight reviews were identical, saying, "Thank you so much BlackBerry team. I was waiting for this app. It's really great user friendly and smooth."

For the everyday consumer, “it’s pretty hard” to spot a fake review, Liu says, especially since writers are getting more experienced at evading detection.

However, Liu and other experts say there’s good reason to believe a review is “fishy” if:

• It reads and sounds like an ad, seems too formal, or the person writing it seems to know too much about a product or service.

• The same person is writing numerous reviews on different sites. Check that person’s reviews and see if there is some sort of pattern, Liu suggests. Also, check the reviewer’s name – if it’s meaningless or weird-sounding, there’s reason to be suspicious.

• A product is not selling well but has a lot of positive reviews.

• A review is overly glowing, and has a lot of emotion to it, making it sound as if the product or service is the best thing going.

• Certain words crop up. For instance, researchers at Cornell University said in a 2011 study that fake reviewers tend to focus on who they were with while staying at a hotel being assessed (such as “My husband and I”), repeat the name of the hotel and city, and use a lot of exclamation marks. Liu says for restaurants, words such as “feel, nice, deal and amount” were commonly used in fake write-ups.