This article with the title ”How to Detect Real or fake reviews on Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart Online Stores” would help you spot the following: How can we detect fake reviews? How do I remove fake reviews on Amazon? Are verified reviews on Amazon real? What percent of Amazon reviews are fake? etc.
So today I’ll be teaching you how to spot real reviews or fake reviews on Amazon, the Best Buy, Walmart and other sites using two best handy tools. At the end of this tutorial, you will be able to determine all those fake reviews and that of the Real Deals. Read on to get the best out of this tutorial guide.
In today’s internet marketing via online stores, for example, Amazon, Walmart, jumia, konga etc. so many things are happening behind the scene, some tend to do fake things in order to deceive customers in buying their products which isn’t a good practice at all. This tutorial is meant to guide you the customer or the buyer on how to spot fake reviews and real deals. At least, this will go a long way in helping you get the best of products you are searching for in the stores.
It all happened when a friend of mine bought a solar system and that of a GPS locator for their son. And when it was shipped to them they tried utilising the GPS locator but unfortunately, it wasn’t working. Now the problem becomes; what is making the GPS locator not to work?
Now, them knowing me to be a techie inclined Guy, the brought the GPS locator for me to check it out and know what is wrong with it. But it was unfortunate too that I tried all I could but couldn’t detect or locate the problem of the GPS, so everything becomes so weird.
Now when I began to question them based on how they got the GPS locator. The first thing they had to say was that, “the GPS locator had a five star rating on Amazon and that was why I went for it”.
On getting to hear that I had to log on to Amazon and frankly speaking, the product had about 38 five-star reviews. Now I began to trace and check up some certain things stipulated for the products and guess what? I found out that the reviews were all fake, what a problem that requires solution.
On getting to find out the main problem I was really perplexed. What the heck?
Fake reviews coupled with fake news was all I saw.
What is a fake review?
Fake reviews usually occurs when a company or an individual who owns the products, encourages their employee or paid individual, as well as anyone else to write a review, even without buying the goods. And this was purported to rank higher than opponent selling same product and for the sole aim of selling their products very fast.
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Now you can see that this is a very serious issue which is being carried out by foreign companies and mostly individuals that deal on one product or the other.
This is a serious issue, and in my capacity as The Cheapskate, I see it all the time — mostly with products sold by small or foreign companies.
Below is what fakespot had to say regarding to this. Detecting fake products is not a big deal anymore, even though they have lot of them out there. Now if you’ve got an artificial inflated product rating, it is not a big deal to detect the red flag.
You might have come across some accessories listed on Amazon list from different companies, may be sold for $50 and $40 respectively. Some sales with so much reviews while others already got huge sales on their products. Surprisingly, most of the reviews happens to be fake.
You might be asking if Amazon is not doing anything about this, but years ago Amazon actually promised to start cracking down some incentivized reviews. That is posted exchange for free and that of discounted products. However, I no longer see Amazon reviews with right Disclaimer talking about that. Before, it was embedded along with reviews, even though they have taken measures to stop such acts years ago, still it hasn’t been able to decrease lots of illegitimate reviews.
Haven read upto this extent, enough of much talks regarding to fake reviews, let’s dive into the solution, the tools needed to uncover such inappropriate act.
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How to spot fake reviews with Fakespot Analyzer
Fakespot is actually a free site that helps users to analyse product reviews, thereby separating real reviews from fake ones. All you need to do is just to copy the link of the product and then head to fakespot website, paste the link and click on analyze.
It is simpler to use this fakespot tool via browser extension on Chrome, Firefox and as well as Safari. Installing this extension for your browser will facilitate easy detection of fake reviews on all these online stores. all you need do is to click on the fakespot icon located on your toolbar, and then get an instant analysing of such product you are checking. The good news is that this fakespot is also available for iOS, iPhone and Android users.
This fake reviews detection tool Focuses on algorithms based on Amazon alone but the later added TripAdvisor and Yelp support. Recently, the company had to go further in introducing search engines for Best Buy, Sephora, steam and as well as Walmart online store.
During the addition of these extra services, Fakespot detected over 50% of Walmart reviews to be unauthentic, fake and unreliable. While Best Buy was spotted 5% malicious reviews.
This system actually analyses both reviews and reviewers, searching for questionable spellings and as well as grammar, the total number of reviews, mismatched dates, purchasing patterns and so forth and so on. To denote signs of suspicious review activities, for example: A reviewer who is new to Amazon system may have posted only one review and he or she made use of lots of words like “wonderful”, “great”, “amazing”. It is depicted that such reviews would be marked as spam and unreliable.
When fakespot must have finished analysing, it provides grade regarding to the total number of reviews and those that were found to be unreliable. Hey, this could be where things might get a little bit confusing for you. But here is what to do; incase you stumbled upon a headphone which you might like to buy, but then you get it analysed, and found out that it got an “F” grade. Say that 57 per cent of the reviews were spotted unreliable, then I guess you might be a lot less inclined to purchase that headphone.
But does that really determine that the product itself is a bad one? find out below.
How to check fake reviews with ReviewMeta Tool
In contribution, there is ReviewMeta, the Amazon-only analyzer, this particular tool takes a different approach according to the developer Tommy Noonan.
Even though the functionality is similar with that of fakespot; as all you need do is to take an Amazon link or use one of its browser extensions called ReviewMeta to carry out the analysing. This tool actually reduces the weight of product reviews, then present you with an adjusted rating.
However, instead of presenting you with letter grade which can be misleading at times, ReviewMeta shows you exactly what Amazon average rating would be like if the questionable reviews didn’t exist.
Surprisingly, fakespot and ReviewMeta might reach a different conclusion based on a particular product review. Where the first tool will tell you that the reviews has a passed mark and the other tool will show a fake mark.
How grading the graders can be a solution to this?
From above, we have seen how different tools can present different grade for a particular products or item. So if we can’t always place trust on the reviews shared or posted by Amazon customers, can we really place trust on the reviews of those reviewers?
This is where another challenge comes up again, just as stipulated by Noonan, “it is impossible to correctly disclose if a review is fake or original. Humans can’t do it, so it’s vital to know that it is impossible to really find out how accurate Fakespot and ReviewMeta is.”
Tommy Noonan disclosed that he designed ReviewMeta having that in mind, and that was the reason why he shares more details as possible via report of any review check. He said “the tool is not really intended to give you a 100 per cent white and black answer”, but to possibly present you with reports having major details that can aid you in making or taking right decision.
Basically, I think that is the major or important takeaway from him. So be alert and aware that any item’s rating could be artificially inflated, so be guided to utilize tools like ReviewMeta and Fakespot if you aren’t getting satisfiable picture or result.
Also, you should be aware that this analysis might not present the real accuracy, they might be having accuracy issues that don’t necessarily reflect the quality of the product being sold. So as you are using this tools ReviewMeta and Fakespot website, you as a human should contribute to the detecting of fake products.
Based on what we have deliberated so far, you could believe with me that if a product should have five star rates or highest reviews that doesn’t really mean that the product is a good one, and in other way round, it could also determine that the product is a standard and better one. So you should actually detect fake products from original Products and know the one to buy.
So I encourage you all to use common sense in detecting or differentiating original Products from fake products. Yes! that will go a long way to enable you get the best of products in any internet online stores like Amazon, Walmart Best Buy etc.
Now that you’ve learnt how to detect fake reviews, you can now go ahead and check out some products like headphones, earbuds, TV sets, echo speakers, mobile phones, phone charger, ebooks like recipe etc and every other item or accessories you might want to buy.
The article was revealing and educating right? Now share it to friends using the social media buttons below. Also, do well to tell us via the comments if you have spotted out fake reviews or if you have encountered such in any online store.
