Spotting Fake Reviews in Online Shopping

Speaker 1 0:34

Would you say that shopping is in your DNA ?

Speaker 2 0:36

That's a yes , if you're listening , that means yes , yeah , I think it's in my ADHD DNA .

Speaker 1 0:47

I think it's in your DNA . I think it's in all of our DNA . Yeah , I think what shopping is , or what it represents , is in our DNA .

Speaker 2 0:54

As Americans .

Speaker 1 0:56

As people . It's like a human hunting and gathering type of thing .

Speaker 2 0:59

Oh , for sure , for sure , yes .

Speaker 1 1:01

So we have a problem to talk about today . How do you , when you need something I'm not talking about like luxury buys like when you need a dress and you know the designer you want and you know what you want , then you know what you want . Yeah , but how do you choose what you want if you don't know the exact item ? For example , let's say you need swim goggles , so you've been picking up swimming recently . Yes , and you need some goggles . How do you choose which ?

Speaker 2 1:28

goggles , to buy Best swimming goggles and I try and look for what I would think would be the least influenced . If it's swimminggogglescom , we have the best swimming goggles . I try and look at some consumer reports or reviews you look at .

Speaker 1 1:56

Consumer reports is basically reviews . Right , it's from consumers and it's also the company itself consumer reports . They do reviews of products . Yes , that's my point yes you look at reviews . This article came across my desk or it didn't come .

Speaker 2 2:11

I found a blog article okay , I was going to say , like , were you , did it , did it did it , did it say , like were you this just came across my desk .

Speaker 1 2:18

Tick , tick , tick , tick , yeah Newsflash .

Speaker 2 2:21

Exactly Muppet Newsflash .

Speaker 1 2:28

Let's say it popped up on my radar . It was a blog article on White Spark . It was about reviews and it was about fake AI reviews . Ai generated reviews .

Speaker 2 2:33

And if somebody is just listening for the first time right now , what's White Spark ?

Speaker 1 2:38

White Spark offers SEO services for local businesses . Okay , I will actually talk about them a little bit later . Oh , and that's why it came across my desk , that's why it popped up on my radar and I saw it that it has to do with SEO , specifically with reviews about Google , but I think this can be extrapolated to all reviews , anywhere there are reviews . I think what we're going to talk about would be , in effect , let's say , Okay .

Speaker 1 3:04

Okay , so this article was summarizing a study done by a company having to do with reviews , having tried to identify fake reviews and estimate how many of them are out there and how do you spot them , and blah blah blah .

Speaker 2 3:18

Couldn't you just say chat , gpt ? Write a good review based on my website .

Speaker 1 3:23

Sure , it gets to be more complex than that . I mean , there are traditionally , I think , a lot of us kind of know when we might be reading a fake review and traditionally those reviews are just written . That sort of work is outsourced overseas , so a lot of times they're non-native English speakers and that's why you can kind of be like this review seems funny . They have big companies overseas where it's just a factory to create fake reviews . Really , they create fake Google profiles , fake Google reviews , fake Facebook likes , instagram likes . That's where all that stuff is created .

Speaker 2 4:01

Do we know where it is ?

Speaker 1 4:03

Somewhere overseas where labor is cheap .

Speaker 2 4:04

Yeah , okay .

Speaker 1 4:06

So this article summarized some of the findings from this study . I'm going to cover some of them . I think some of them are really interesting . Some of them are kind of like yeah , no duh . Interesting . Some of them are kind of like yeah , no duh . And then a few tips for us as consumers how to spot fake AI reviews moving forward , because it's going to get trickier , it's going to get more difficult to spot them .

Speaker 2 4:26

Do you think AI is going to learn how to look dumb Right ? They're going to put ifs and they're going to misspeak .

Speaker 1 4:32

They're going to have grammar mistakes , right , because that's one way to spot them . It's like a perfectly written review . Okay , so I'm going to kind of also summarize those findings here . Okay , so I'm going to kind of also summarize those findings here . Okay , give you a couple tips , like I said , tips for us as consumers and a tip for you as a local business owner . So first , this study reviewed 73 million reviews and it reviewed reviews of , specifically , google business profiles , so it didn't look at reviews like on , say , amazon .

Speaker 1 5:20

Or Yelp , or Yelp . Okay , and it looked at three different industries health industry , legal industry and home service industry .

Speaker 2 5:27

Okay , so home service like plumbing .

Speaker 1 5:29

Yes , plumbers , we need a plumber , electrician , a contractor , whatever .

Speaker 2 5:33

Okay .

Speaker 1 5:34

Okay , so one of the biggest findings was that reviews are the single most influential factor on purchasing decisions . Not a big surprise , right ? Right , 98% of people respond that they rely on reviews before making a buying decision . Again , not that surprising . I've even seen this 98% figure before .

Speaker 2 5:56

Yeah , I don't doubt it , Because we trust other people .

Speaker 1 5:59

Yeah .

Speaker 2 5:59

I don't doubt it , because we trust other people and we , we , we just trust other people .

Speaker 1 6:03

It's the closest thing to word of mouth marketing , like if you were , if you were to ask your best friend , uh , hey , have you ever tried X , y , z ? And they said , oh , I like this one , you would go get that one . Like it's , it's the closest thing to that that you that can be replicated online .

Speaker 2 6:20

Okay online . I used to be the person who people would often come to for those questions around the neighborhood , et cetera .

Speaker 1 6:26

I do not doubt it . So this article estimated that because of review fraud meaning fake good reviews it estimated $300 billion in annual consumer harm , so people buying stuff based on reviews because those reviews are good and those reviews were fake .

Speaker 2 6:46

I don't know how it came up with that figure , but Well , do you remember when I bought that mouth guard cleaner off of .

Speaker 1 6:53

Amazon . Yes , yes .

Speaker 2 6:54

And then they sent me a form saying if I gave them a five star review and sent them a photo of proof , they'd give me money and technically that wasn't a fake review .

Speaker 1 7:05

I've had that too , by the way . I had that with .

Speaker 2 7:07

Isn't that technically a fake review ?

Speaker 1 7:09

That's not a fake review . We're talking about AI-generated reviews here , so that's not a fake review , but it shows how important those reviews are .

Speaker 2 7:16

Yeah , yeah , the product that .

Speaker 1 7:17

I bought based on the good reviews . The product was awful , yeah , and I got the same thing . Hey , leave us a review and you get a free one . I was like , okay , good idea , Okay . So $300 billion in annual consumer harm that averages out to almost $2,400 per household , what so ? It's significant , right ? It's significant , right . So , of all those 73 million reviews that were analyzed , 14% of them were categorized as extremely suspicious , ie , likely , false , likely , fake . So there were different categories . Some reviews appear fine , some are a little suspicious , some are like , obviously , well , that's really suspicious . 14% were in that category . It's like they're obvious .

Speaker 2 8:02

Yeah , okay , right , written by cats , ai cats , uh-oh .

Speaker 1 8:08

And I thought this perhaps was the most interesting and most alarming AI-generated reviews . Beginning in June 2023 to whenever this report ended , sometime in 2024 , those AI-generated reviews grew at 80% , month over month . What ? Every month , they grew 80% , 80 , 8-0. , 8-0 . So they're almost doubling every month . So this is going to be a big problem . It's going to be an issue . I mean , we just won't be able to trust reviews as much . Unfortunately , in this article there were some things that you can look for , some things that were common among those fake , highly suspicious reviews , things that you and I can look for when we're buying stuff .

Speaker 2 8:51

And just to clarify , this is different from sponsored reviews that , for example , on YouTube . They have to state we were Correct .

Speaker 1 9:01

This is not like an influencer .

Speaker 2 9:03

Right .

Speaker 1 9:04

Although , to be honest , I think at some point you're watching influencers . The influencer is going to be fake .

Speaker 2 9:08

Yeah , they're going to have videos .

Speaker 1 9:10

Yeah , you don't need an actual person to sit there and talk to the camera . Anyway , I digress . Like we said , I think a lot of us kind of feel we can spot the fake reviews . We've had years of practice .

Speaker 2 9:22

Yeah , Like , for example , I just believe everything I read , though that's my problem .

Speaker 1 9:26

Yeah , I mean , for example , if a review has poor grammar , like we were saying , it's probably real . If a review is perfectly written , it could be a little suspicious . If a review has , like , professionally taken photos , I always thought those were just placed there by the actual company , it could be could be fake reviews . Okay , how do we're going to talk about ? How do you spot fake reviews ? Okay , so they probably ran this information through AI to analyze it . Some very specific things to look for . If you see the phrase I recently had the pleasure of working with , that evidently is a telltale sign of an AI generated review . So you read a review for , say , an attorney let's say you need an attorney for some reason and the and the review starts out . I recently had the pleasure of working with blah , blah , blah and blah blah . That phrase is trending in fake , fake reviews . So it's very common across the fake reviews Okay , Reviews that refer to the other reviews . So you've seen reviews that say I don't know what these other two-star reviews are talking about . Always , yeah , Okay , that's also . I'm not saying that can't be in a real review , it can be , but it's very common among what they thought were fake reviews .

Speaker 1 10:44

Review length was a signal . Longer reviews tend to be fake , and this I would say you have to use your judgment here . I mean , sometimes reviews are long and they're very helpful . Sometimes they're long and maybe they don't need to be . Reviews with cliches in them , so kind of generic sayings like the first thing that struck me . These are examples from the article . Quote the first thing that struck me . The phrase game changer my favorite delivers on its promise . The phrase delivers on its promise , Wow . Quote without the fuss , so kind of generic .

Speaker 2 11:22

Yeah Well , you know , when I have tried to use AI to help write certain things , I always so generic . It's really just cliche .

Speaker 1 11:34

That is an issue with the prompt . The more specific you can be with a prompt , the more you can get around that , but I agree with a relatively simple prompt . Yeah , the response is going to be generic , sounding like that Okay , we're on number six now . The review repeats the prompt , and so in this case that would be the full product name or the full name of the business . So , for example , again , let's say you were looking at hiring an attorney , if you had actually gone out and worked with an attorney and you were going to write a review , right , and let's say your attorney's name was James Clearwater , Jane Clearwater .

Speaker 1 12:11

Jane Clearwater . Uh-huh , so let's say yeah , so the name of her business might be Jane Clearwater .

Speaker 2 12:17

Law .

Speaker 1 12:18

Law exactly . Okay , if you were to leave a review for Jane Clearwater , you would probably refer to her as Jane , you and I . We would say working with Jane was great , right . An AI bot would say probably something like Jane Clearwater Law was great to work with . I enjoyed working with Jane Clearwater Law , right , that would be a giveaway .

Speaker 2 12:39

Yeah .

Speaker 1 12:40

Also highly structured writing . So something that includes like an introduction , maybe bullet points , includes a summary . That's also a red flag . So those are some things to look for as a consumer , as a business owner . What does this mean ? So we've talked about the importance yeah , we've talked about the importance of like your Google business profile .

Speaker 1 13:02

Yes , in 2023 , I think it was Google said they had blocked or removed over 170 million policy-violating reviews . So not necessarily fake , but fake definitely fits into that category . So they also are making a pretty concerted effort to get rid of it . They know this is a problem . In the time span of I think it was one year they got rid of 170 million reviews . I will link to that quote . I also linked to this article . But what is specifically a problem for you and I as local business owners , we're not going out and we're not buying AI reviews , right , but something that is happening is there's something called review hijacking . Review hijacking and what this is is someone somehow takes over your Google business profile and they change , say , the phone number and the website address because you already have good reviews and they want to just use your reviews because reviews are so important , right , pirates ? Yes , now , I actually had this happen to a client .

Speaker 2 14:08

And .

Speaker 1 14:09

I didn't realize this is what it was . But yeah , I had a client pretty successful business , pretty well-known , lots and lots of Google , like hundreds of Google reviews . Someone came to them selling some sort of service I don't know what it was , I wasn't involved and for that service they said oh well , we need access , we need to your Google business profile . Okay , that's sort of normal . Next thing we know we don't have access to the Google business profile anymore and we didn't catch this for months .

Speaker 2 14:35

Oh right , why would you ?

Speaker 1 14:36

Why would you ? Yeah , there's , there's , there's . No , it was only after the client said , hey , we've hardly been getting any calls , or calls are way down , and and we went out and we looked at Google and we did a search for their company name and then we said , oh shit , your phone number is wrong . So , and then it took months . It took months to get it , to get that profile back . Now we got it back , but it was a significant amount of time that we lost and he lost a significant amount of business Of course .

Speaker 2 15:03

And then ? But how then would the like , don't the consumers realize that it's a different name than what they were looking for ?

Speaker 1 15:10

Don't the consumers realize that it's a different name than what they were looking for . I don't think it might occur to them . But at that point , why would you suspect this Like this would never occur to me to be like wait a minute , did you guys steal this business profile ? And you're not the company I intended to contact ? Like it would , it , just wouldn't . You would overlook that . Yes , it would be . It should be a red flag , but it would it just wouldn't .

Speaker 2 15:33

You would overlook that . Yes , it would be . It should be a red flag , but you would overlook it . Of course You'd be like , oh , I thought that was

Importance of Google Business Reviews

Speaker 2 15:37

an okay anyways .

Speaker 1 15:38

So one of my points is that your reviews , especially your reviews on your Google business profile , are so important they're important for all the things that we just talked about like 98% , so imagine 98% of your clients looked at your reviews . Okay , ding ding , that's important right there , the review hijacking Ding ding . That's also something to be aware of . Monitor your Google reviews and we've talked about this in another episode a service that White Spark offers .

Speaker 2 16:08

Aha , now bringing it home .

Speaker 1 16:10

And it's a dollar a month . Like I , highly recommend it . I will link to that too . I'll link to that episode .

Speaker 2 16:16

For sure .

Speaker 1 16:16

And that's why I found this article on WhiteSpark , by the way , of course . But your reviews are also important for SEO . Right , like , when is the last time you did a search for something and those top few results pop up in the maps section , the local ? When's the last time , like one of those had a two-star average review ? Like it's happened , but it's been years . So those reviews are good for SEO too . Google is not going to recommend a company with poor reviews to their users . They're just not going to . So also try to slowly build up your reviews . Put that into your workflow . You don't need to build a ton overnight , and you shouldn't , because that is a red flag to Google that they are fake .

Speaker 1 17:00

But put it into your workflow . What I do is after someone . If I'm working with a client , at some point they are really happy about something . That's when I ask oh hey , can you leave a review ? In my experience , that's the best time to ask , and on that note , if this podcast episode was helpful to you , why don't you go leave me a review on Google ? I will link to that also . That would be awesome , lovely , as long as it's not AI . Yeah , don't have AI , do it for you .

Speaker 2 17:30

I will link to that also . That would be awesome , as long as it's not AI .

Speaker 1 17:32

Yeah , don't have AI do it for you .

Speaker 2 17:35

I recently .

Speaker 1 17:36

Yes , I recently had the pleasure of working with .

Speaker 2 17:40

Meredith's husband I recently had the pleasure of . It was a game changer .

Speaker 1 17:43

Jane Clearworth , jane Clearworth , jane Clearworth .