Fake Reviews

After putting up with fake negative reviews and defamatory remarks from other forums I was pleased to find the UK government has been doing something about it.

The report published on 19th June last year (2015) can be read at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/436238/Online_reviews_and_endorsements.pdf

It also applies to fake positive online reviews.

The very fact that the government has spent resources to investigate demonstrates that such underhand things are happening.

As well as my suspicions, I know from correspondence received that at least two fake reviews have taken place. I received an email from a reviewer who was reviewing a product of mine, saying a competing product sounded terrible and that the reviewer was going to publish the fact. I eventually saw the finished review which gave the product glowing praise and a product award. That therefore constituted a fake positive review in my opinion.

I think magazines should also come under the same scrutiny. There is one magazine which operates under conditions I find hard to stomach. For a certain fee you can buy a review and for twice that fee you can influence the outcome. I suppose if challenged it would be my word against theirs so I will not mention them here.

It also talks about fake blog reviews which I am pleased to see. A few years ago I ran some search software on my own site to discover how many inbound links I had and from where.

Inbound links are used by the biggest search engine in the world: Google, to determine a sites popularity and rank them accordingly, but Google never bother to verify how these links are obtained. To Google these inbound links look kosher, and they don't break any of their rules. They gave a site a higher page rank which means their results go higher than competing sites. An unfair advantage if cheated.

The software told me about two of my competitors when I ran the same scan on their websites. One was as clean as me, but the other had over 2000 inbound blog links. Obviously I didn't have the time to check them all, but all the ones I checked were highly postive reviews of this particular product. I wondered how such a relatively small outfit could afford to send so many items out at once. These things say they're hand built and I know how long things take to make, and we're talking about half a years production at a guess. Was this a case of paying bloggers a few dollars to write fake reviews. Unfortunately I will never know.

I also know I've been fake negative reviewed on at least two ocsasions: one amateur reviewer actually admitted he'd never heard my product, but that was too late - the damage had been done on one of the biggest audio forums in the world.

In another review, as is customary with some, I was sent the text of the finished review asking me to check details such as spec and pricing just prior to publication. I was over the moon with happiness that the product was being given such a good review. I then felt grossly angry when I read the published review which slated my product in every way possible. The original reviewers text had been rejected, and the editor of the magazine had written his own version never having had listened to the product in question! The review was a fake negative review toward me, and a very postive review toward a competitor, to my cost!

Many of you read that magazine. It is the one who approached me with the offer of paid reviews.

If anybody from the UK government would like to contact me regarding what I have written above I will be more than willing to help them with their enquiries.

Interesting, sad but not surprising and will see whether the investigation is more than warm words.

Always take Individual reviews (magazine, on line or newspaper) with a pinch of salt. Whilst not a user of facebook or any other similar social media I imagine it a piece of cake to spout all sorts of ill informed garbage 'pub talk' which then gets passed as fact.

The actions from the mags you describe does appear to
Stack up with rubbish written and not just hifi.

It would be nice to see this cleaned up.

morris_minor wrote: Politicians here and in the States (and no doubt elsewhere) have proved that if you say something for long enough, with enough conviction, you get believed - whether it's the truth or not.  The sad fact is we live in a "post-truth" world these days, and lying to get your own ends is virtually the norm in so many areas of life.

Agree 100%.

I wonder if buying adverts in some magazines helps to buy praise like buying a large round of drinks in a pub! I'd still like to believe the stars are sound ratings not for adverts bought.