Fake review detector

As online retailers increasingly depend on reviews as a sales tool, an industry of fibbers and promoters has sprung up to buy and sell raves for a pittance. ..

The boundless demand for positive reviews has made the review system an arms race of sorts. As more five-star reviews are handed out, even more five-star reviews are needed. Few want to risk being left behind. . .

Determining the number of fake reviews on the Web is difficult. But it is enough of a problem to attract a team of Cornell researchers, who recently published a paper about creating a computer algorithm for detecting fake reviewers. They were instantly approached by a dozen companies, including Amazon, Hilton, TripAdvisor and several specialist travel sites, all of which have a strong interest in limiting the spread of bogus reviews.

The situation is even worse when the reviewing takes place within a group small enough to be strongly interconnected. I noted some time ago that within my own area of dealing and collecting, any hint of criticism was very poorly received. Excepting only the most extreme cases of dishonesty, it was (and remains) very much a case of shooting the messenger. Much different than face-to-face interactions among the same group, where one can safely share critical opinions in private.

This isn't an option, of course, with the usual hotel or restaurant review sites. As a rule, it pays to focus more on the negative reviews, rather than worry about the overall number of stars or points awarded. With restaurants, in particular, it seems there are a lot of easily-pleased diners out there. For some reason it goes the other way around with most tech reviews, however, where it's the dissatisfied customers who vent via negative reviews while those who have no problems remain silent. It's worth paying attention if the complaints are about specific issues of design and performance, but often it's a matter of "this hard drive failed and it's junk" or "this accessory didn't work with my gizmo and I had to return it".

Posted by David on August 20, 2011 8:49 AM