Phony Trip Advisor reviews

[wh]

FIVE STAR 'FAKERY' 'One in three TripAdvisor reviews are FAKE' with hotels and restaurants buying glowing reviews for £7, investigation finds
An investigation has found that a large number of reviews on the site seem to have been uploaded by websites which offer glowing praise for a fee

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7321574/tripadvisor-reviews-fake-hotel-restaurant-ratings/

I thought there may be other posters who, like me, use TripAdvisor reviews to help make vacation planning decisions. This is pretty disappointing.

[wh]

Well, I tried. Back to politics...

[crusader05]

I've definitely heard about this It's pretty common anytime there's some sort of aggregation site.  No matter what the algorithm is there will be ways to get around it and people willing to pay the money to do so. It's the same with buying twitter followers, how you can get on the top of people's news feed on facebook, and how youtube's function somehow always leads you to videos from dudes whining and talking positively about nazis. Someone whose money relies on people hearing their voice, or going to their site, will find a way to game the system. I've also heard that bigger chains have used their money to get places like this to change what they value so taht hotels like Hilton or Marriott are always going to be the top part of the search

For what it's worth, my rule of thumb for those is to go a couple pages deep, ignore the positive and look to see if there is consistency in the negative reviews. If a bunch of people keep saying, like the food is always cold and gross, that will make me worry more cause 1. that's easily fixable yet it hasn't been and 2. it doesn't sound like some of those reviews that are like someone over blowing a normal situation or having weird expectations for their stay

[FieldGoodie05]

I've definitely heard about this It's pretty common anytime there's some sort of aggregation site.  No matter what the algorithm is there will be ways to get around it and people willing to pay the money to do so. It's the same with buying twitter followers, how you can get on the top of people's news feed on facebook, and how youtube's function somehow always leads you to videos from dudes whining and talking positively about nazis. Someone whose money relies on people hearing their voice, or going to their site, will find a way to game the system. I've also heard that bigger chains have used their money to get places like this to change what they value so taht hotels like Hilton or Marriott are always going to be the top part of the search

For what it's worth, my rule of thumb for those is to go a couple pages deep, ignore the positive and look to see if there is consistency in the negative reviews. If a bunch of people keep saying, like the food is always cold and gross, that will make me worry more cause 1. that's easily fixable yet it hasn't been and 2. it doesn't sound like some of those reviews that are like someone over blowing a normal situation or having weird expectations for their stay

If a mainstream web sight with reviewing capabilities has not been hacked by such companies it will be.  It's up to us as consumers to decipher between bot or planted posts and do as mentioned above.  This is no different than BBB which almost exclusively lists the negative and not the overwhelming positive experiences so the frame of reference is jaded.  There is simply no fool proof way that remains fool proof long enough because popularity draws those that would financially benefit from cheating the system.  (and the anarchy types that look to undermine from within)

[FWalum]

As someone who is involved in a local Fort Wayne restaurant, I can tell you that while a corporate entity may have the resources to "buy" reviews, a small business can be greatly impacted by targeted attacks started by disgruntled employees or even "customers" who come into restaurants and pressure managers into giving them free food "or else". It is very hard to disprove a negative or "false" review (as we are being reminded every day recently) that is posted on the myriad of sites that offer the chance for "patrons" to voice their opinions. Many of these sites have inaccurate information about the businesses and when asked how this information was vetted they state that it was gotten from other (also incorrect sites) or our customers....

An interesting anecdote about how arrogant these "information" companies can be. Recently I looked at the above mentioned business's Google page, because of some strange phone calls from customers, and found that we supposedly used a delivery service called Doordash to deliver food.  We have no such association with this company yet there it was on our Google page.  I edited the page to remove Doordash and was told that my edit would be reviewed and changed soon.  Two days later I went back to the page only to find that Doordash had been reinstated as our delivery option on the page.  I called Google and was told that they reviewed my requested edit and found that there was evidence that we did use Doordash so they did not except my edit.  I told them, and they confirmed, that I was the owner of the page and that my edits did not need a review by some Google person or algorithm and that the change needed to be made because it was confusing to our customers, I was told that this is not the way things work and that all edits are reviewed. Needless to say that I gave them an ear full.  The issue is still not resolved.

[agibson]

It is very hard to disprove a negative or "false" review (as we are being reminded every day recently) that is posted on the myriad of sites that offer the chance for "patrons" to voice their opinions.

One customers (not your customer, wrong market) perspective. On Yelp, I do take it into account (and mostly appreciate) when the owner replies to comments. You don't want to come across as overly defensive. But, if it's an owner who apologizes for bad experiences, or appreciates compliments, etc. and then occasionally comments on a negative review "This is hogwash... this person tried to blackmail us." I'd be inclined to ignore that negative review. Not that it helps your numerical average, necessarily. And, who knows, maybe this would just pick an internet battle with the blackmailer.

*shrug* Not an easy business!

[vu84v2]

I also use TripAdvisor quite a bit, use hotels.com quite a bit, and use Google Reviews a little. Like a few of the other previous posters, I also look deeper into the comments of recent posters and positively weigh responses from the owners (something, at least from my experience, is more common on TripAdvisor). For more importance choices (larger groups for dinner, hotels) I almost always look at multiple sources to find consistency. I find the reviews more useful on hotels than on restaurants, but in either case I have seldom found major differences between ratings and reviews and the actual experience. Excellent might only be very good, very good might end up being excellent - but I can only think of one or two experiences where very good was fair or worse.

There is a fair amount of 'game playing' with these review systems. Beyond the apparent services referenced in the first post on this thread, it is also common to see tourist activities (and, to some extent, restaurants) encourage customers who seem happy to post of TripAdvisor. I even saw one place (a rafting company) that had a kiosk in their facility for this purpose. Bottom like: you need to be discerning about information when making decisions.

The really bizarre rating site, by the way, is RateMyProfessor. You will hear people talk of a professor and hear an argument of "Professor XXX is good / bad because their rating in RateMyProfessor" is YY". I have even seen this in the media. Yet the sample is something like 9 ratings over 10 years, when the professor had hundreds or thousands of students. Furthermore, there is no filter to qualify a valid rater. But, I have also seen students make decisions based on this information.