Best Way to check if an Online Review is Legit

Best Way to check if an Online Review is Legit: Last year, Amazon went on a rampage against fake reviews and deleted tens of thousands of product comments from its websites. The giant online retailer then went after employees it believed had been helping sellers rank higher on its searches. 

Amazon isn’t the only company battling fake reviews. Nearly every review website and forum is affected by people who post insincere comments. But in this reviews-driven world, you’re probably not surprised by the fake people out there.

Best Way to check if an Online Review is Legit

What you may, however, want to do is to learn how to spot false reviews and stay steer clear of them. Reviews are good anyway; they help us make better buying decisions.

Generic Name and No Photo Profile

People paid to write exaggerated products reviews almost never use their real names. They think of generic names and create profiles quickly. In most cases, they don’t care to add a photo avatar to their profiles.

Names like Jane Smith or John Taylor with no profiles behind them are good signs of paid accounts. If the profile is also new, probably a few minutes before the review was posted, it’s an illegitimate comment.

Honest reviews come from regular online shoppers. They have realistic names with profiles. Their profiles may also reveal more details about the shopper. If you shop on a site located in an English-speaking country, check for grammar errors. Dishonest reviews are hastily published, often by foreigners who can’t write in English properly.

General Praise and not Specifics

Comments like “good hotel” and “very cheap” are mostly written by people who’ve never purchased the services they’re talking about. Alternatively, they could be comments from people who didn’t want to leave the reviews but were pressured to give such comments.

When looking for honest reviews, go after slightly lengthy comment in which the writer provides clear details. When looking for reviews of new casinos, you want to find reviews that talk about the games offered, bonus sizes and quality of customer support. 

Sometimes the reviewer may go into length about which games they loved and which ones you should avoid. By comparison, fake reviewers mostly don’t have a clue of the things they review. They can’t tell you how a company’s support team is like because they never interacted with them.

Me, Myself and I

When most people write comments to describe their experiences using a product, they base their comments on how the product worked. This is not the case for fake reviewers who try too hard to impress. Instead of describing how the product performed, they find ways to talk about themselves or their partners.

Of course, there are legitimate reviewers that use first-person pronouns to better describe. But according to a study by Cornell University, an overwhelming number of fake reviews include first-person nouns.

So, how, do you identify a fake review using first pronouns from a genuine one? Use other checkpoints. An exaggerated comment from a person with no profile picture and generic name is a sign of a fake review. If the grammar is also bad and the comment doesn’t sound genuine to you, don’t use it to base your judgment of a product.

New Company, Overzealous Reviews

It’s not unusual for new companies to buy paid comments. Impressionable reviews translate to good services; at least that’s what many people believe. And good services equal better sales for the company. 

When reading reviews about new products and companies, pay close attention to the tones used by reviewers. Most people tend to overhype new services, especially if the new services appear to be good. Find reviews that lean toward neutrality, providing both the benefits and drawbacks of services offered.

In fact, average reviews provide the best analysis of a product or service in many cases. Even where products and companies are new, prefer average reviews to one-sided comments. They are almost always written by legitimate buyers.

Still on overhyped comments, find out if there are multiple exaggerated comments posted at the same time. Most purchased reviews are published at the same time. When you find a slew of overly positive reviews from people with vague profiles, they’re probably insincere.

Repeated Phrases

Paid reviewers are often instructed on what exactly to post. Maybe a weight-loss product company wants to emphasize that their products help people lose 10 pounds per month. Most purchased reviews will emphasize that claim, often without caring to explain anything else about the regimen. 

If you find similar phrases about the same product on different review platforms, that’s a product you should avoid. When legitimate product users write reviews, they explain all major aspects of a product. Even when two people share the same experience using a product, there will be differences. 

Look for comments that depict services and features that are hard to falsify. Comments about hotel bathrooms, the tiles inside and shower quality are often legitimate. Fake reviewers can’t go into details of services offered because they’ve certainly never used it.

Verified Purchaser

These days, online sites are adding verification budges to many of their top customers. You can find out if a reviewer is verified or not by simply clicking through their profiles. On Amazon and certain forums, you can view all reviews posted by the same person. You also see the label “verified” underneath their profile.

In nearly all cases, people who post false comments are not verified purchases. If they’re verified customers, all their 5-star reviews relate to products from the same company. Verified purchases are also reachable. If you send them a comment, they will mostly reply. This can’t be said about fake customers.

To Conclude

False reviews are a big problem online. In a world where we depend on other people’s experiences to judge products and services, fake reviews make it hard to trust reviews in general. The good thing, it’s easy to sort out falsified reviews from genuine comments.

Poorly written comments from accounts with no pictures or names should be avoided. If the comments are also one-sided reviews from unverified purchases, doubt them. Find reviews from verified buyers. Look for reviews that show both the positive and negative of a product. They are almost always genuine comments.

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