News
Reporting on fraud, review manipulation, misleading information and the work of protecting consumers and honest businesses.
109 articles tagged reviews
Credits: Ad Age By: Michael Learmonth ‘Online reviews can make or break a local business, which is why the incentive to cheat with paid-for, malicious or fraudulent reviews is so great. Weeding out fraud is an inexact science; sites such as TripAdvisor, Google+ Local and Yelp use a mix of algorithms and human mod
Credits: Business Insider By: Max Nisen ‘When you search for a product or service online, one of the first things you’ll come across are ratings and reviews. The more impressive a company’s rating, the higher it’ll appear on a Google search. And the competition in this space is fierce — which is why there’s been
Credits: Technology Spectator By: David Glance ‘LANCASHIRE businesses are losing out on new sales due to fake or unjust reviews, according to a top marketing consultant. Internet review experts Got Juice say the problem affecting Lancashire could be tackled if reviews were required to be authenticated.’ Above exc
Credits: Technology Spectator By: David Glance ‘The American social scientist Donald Campbell observed that as soon as you try to apply and use indicators for social decision-making, the pressure to corrupt the measure increases and it then distorts the process it is measuring. The measure eventually becomes mean
The rise in the influence the internet has on consumers has seen one particular element rise exponentially – the online review. Previous surveys have demonstrated how online reviews affect buying behaviour and even share prices. Now research carried out by KwikChex, the leading reputation management and quality a
Airline rating site Skytrax is under investigation by the Advertising Standards Authority over the authenticity of some of its reviews. Credits: TTG Digital "The ASA has launched a formal investigation which will ask Skytrax to prove that some of its reviews, from which it gives airlines a star rating, are genuine. The
The proposed changes to UK defamation laws that were included in the Queen's Speech last week would have a profound effect on online reviews. The government has made clear its intentions to support free speech, while also enabling claimants to protect their reputation by securing removal of defamatory material without
Credits: Yahoo Philippines "Travel review sites have come to exert phenomenal authority over where we stay and where we eat, with the likes of TripAdvisor and Booking.com now holding millions of reviews from travelers. Those reviews, of course, are only useful as long as they can be trusted, and in recent years it’s be
Credits: USA Today By: Laura Bly In the latest round of an ongoing debate over the reliability of hotel reviews on TripAdvisor and other travel review sites, U.K.-based reputation management company KwikChex is launching a ratings system that ranks the sites on sliding scale. According to Tnooz.com, KwikChex will award
If ever a single case epitomised the problems for TripAdvisor, it has to be Buccament Bay, St Vincent. On 7th March, a reviewer claimed that a previous 5 star, glowing review she had written last year was bogus. She stated that it was one of many fake reviews posted by investors in the property and even [...]
Credits: Manchester Evening News By: Sarah Dunn ‘Griffiths posted a stream of up to 30 detrimental online reviews on tripadvisor and other sites about The Good Life – owned by the ex partner of her husband, Adrian.’ ‘She slated the vegetarian restaurant, claiming staff were ‘cold and unattentive’, ‘the vega
Credits: The Telegraph Travel By: Charles Starmer-Smith ‘Following the Advertising Standards Authority’s ruling that TripAdvisor can longer claim all its reviews are by "real travellers", Charles Starmer-Smith calls for the website to re-think the way its reports are checked. There are hoteliers queuing up to wel
