What are the best ways to spot fake Amazon reviews? Our guide outlines how fake reviews appear and what to watch out for.
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Five stars on Amazon – that means the product is extremely good. Or maybe it just means that the seller or manufacturer has bought a lot of positive reviews. But how does it actually happen that fake reviews on Amazon are published — and how can you recognize fake Amazon reviews?
How do fake reviews appear on Amazon?
Free products for five stars
Order the desired item from Amazon, rate it positively and the purchase price is returned. Facebook groups like “Amazon Reviewer” are offering this deal. It’s that easy to get hold of products and money. Provided that you don’t shy away from praising a bad product or in some cases even a counterfeit product.
Fake reviews for money
In this way and similar offers, millions of false top ratings make it onto the website of the online shopping giant. Often users who were allowed to test a product free of charge rate it better.
How to spot fake Amazon reviews
So it has become more difficult as a customer not to get the wrong reviews. But there are anomalies that the fakes can reveal. They apply to all online shops. In addition to consumer portals and technology magazines, the federal government has also issued such information. We have summarized the most important tips.
1. Ratings and reviews are published all at once
The top ratings all occur within a short span of time. So it stands to reason that they were commissioned.
2. Hardly sold, already valued
If a product gets tons of reviews on launch day, that’s suspicious. Pushing sales through false reviews is common, unfortunately, and this is one of clues to spot fake Amazon reviews.
3. Advertising instead of test report
Customers usually do not use empty phrases from advertising in their reviews. Long product names are also rarely given in full. If either of these aspects are in evidence, they are a way to spot fake Amazon reviews.
If, however, the tag “Verified Purchase” is next to the rating, you as a customer can be relatively certain that the rating is real and that the evaluator actually bought the product. This is a good indication of the authenticity of the assessment, especially with expensive items.
Noticeably long comments with terms from advertising, but also exaggerated positive formulations, can be fake reviews. Especially when reference is made to use by family and friends as well as other products from the manufacturer. Very few buyers have the time or inclination to spend a long time writing reviews.
4. Long hymn of praise
Particularly long texts usually come from customers who are annoyed about the product and therefore leave it out. When customers are satisfied, they are usually short. If a customer raves about a product and how it works, it is often a fake rating.
5. Copy and paste
Clicking on the reviewer’s profile shows what else he has rated and how. If the formulations are repeated in the case of several product reviews and they are still close together, skepticism is also appropriate. It is often possible to find out from the evaluator’s profile how many evaluations he has already given. If the person in question gave ratings for several televisions and microwaves, for example, this indicates a fake.
If he has rated ten Bluetooth boxes at the same time, it is just as suspicious as writing the same text over and over or consistently giving five stars in every review he writes. If you see any of these clues, the reviewer should be ignored as being a fake Amazon reviewer.
6. Reviewer identity
Fake reviews are often created by users who do not give their real name, but rather a constructed-sounding false identity.
App exposes fakes
There is a little helper for Amazon: ReviewMeta. The app examines Amazon users for their trustworthiness and checks the number, regularity and average rating of the reviews submitted.
If a rating based on these criteria is likely to be a fake, ReviewMeta will remove it and correct the given average rating. A product can quickly drop from five stars to three.
