One in Three TripAdviser Reviews are Fake

AlphaAtlas

AlphaAtlas

[H]ard|Gawd
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An investigation found that about one third of all reviews posted on TripAdvisor are fake reviews bought by hotels and restaurants. The Times reports that third party sites offer positive reviews for as little as $50 each, with even lower rates for reviews purchased in bulk. The analysis was done by Fakespot.com, which uses an algorithm to flag suspicious reviews. The report also says that there are a "large number" of accounts created by people within hotels or restaurants, with only one or two posted reviews.

The site has flatly denied the allegations saying: "We totally reject the inaccurate and misleading findings presented by The Times. Their claims about fake reviews on TripAdvisor are astonishingly bad 'click bait' journalism. The usefulness and accuracy of the content on TripAdvisor is what has made our site popular to hundreds of millions of consumers. We’ve never lost sight of that and it’s why we fight fraud so aggressively. The Times investigation is based on entirely flawed techniques. The methods used by Fakespot are completely unreliable for one simple reason: they have no access to the technical data you would need to determine whether or not a review is fake."
 
And other news Ticketmaster was accused of hiring scalpers to make multiple accounts to buy up large swaths of tickets for popular events, to which Ticketmaster denies 100%... even though an undercover news guy has video footage of an employee for Ticketmaster saying they do this going so far as bragging.


But serious 50 bucks for a review? I feel like a chump for giving reviews for free now, hell I will take 20 for a review
 
Only 1 in 3? That seems low to me. I don't know about Trip Adviser specifically since I've never used that site, but I've seen some shopping/review sites that to my eye look like at least 50% fake.
 
I worked at a hotel for 3 years. It is very easy for a GM to call and request a particularly bad review be delisted.
 
i use trip advisor to find prices and places.
i do NOT use trip advisor to review places and ever since caught on that they would have a bunch of 5 star reviews with no pictures and similar words followed by a couple just horrific rooms with bugs, mold, dirty conditions, followed by more similar 5 star reviews with no images....

well... clearly we didnt really need to use fakespot to spot those sorts of bogus reviews right?
 
fakespot is awesome for reviewing amazon reviews fyi. try it out.

often when helping local businesses who are upset that their competitors are 5 stars... go and look at those reviews. it is ironic when 10 people all stayed at the same obscure hotel in Canada, went to the same dentist in Milwaukee and the same vet clinic down the road. I rarely have had luck having google give a F either since they make more money $$ since often the competitors are also on google adwords.
 
Wow! At this rate of sham-info we might conclude that anything on the internet is not to be trusted. [H] isn't on the internet yet, is it?
 
please give example of hotel plz....otherwise it is just an extremely vague piece of regurgitating general knowledge
 
It is pretty much the same anywhere with customer reviews, Amazon - Ebay whatever just done trust or even bother with reading customer reviews.
 
I generally believe that real people don't take much time to write positive reviews. So the real reviews are more likely to be the bad reviews. How often have you gone home from a good restaurant and wrote a positive review? But if you have a terrible experience, it is far more likely you'll write about it.
 
I have written some yelp reviews but never a TripAdvisor review.. not surprised.
 
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