E commerce platforms like Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart and Alibaba have definitely made shopping simple and easy. But keeping in flow with the review trend can be harmful someday because Fakespot’s study revealed that Fake reviews in top online websites are substantially increasing with time and emerging of new products.

According to Fakespot

  • Almost 52 percent of reviews posted on Walmart are unreliable and fake.
  • The study also figured, that more than 30 percent of reviews posted on Amazon are fake and unauthentic.
  • There are other online platforms like Steam (Gaming Community) or Netflix where fake reviews are found recently.

Fake or dishonest reviews could impact the image of retailers struggling and threaten them. 

Standing in 2019 manufacturers and grand e-commerce website and even small online enterprises are looking for a thousand ways to reach more customers and satisfy them with their service. Their main focus is to achieve a 4 or 5-star review so that they could draw more customers and pull their products on top of search results and generate more revenue.

Big companies often offer a gift to their existing customers to make a 5-star review that gets published. Other moderate organizations hire professional review associates to post attractive reviews. This method sometimes works out and sometimes doesn’t.

This fake and dumb review can change your shopping experience with the eCommerce platforms and even degrade the quality of your shopping.

To solve this we have researched and found out a few methods and tools that you could use to understand whether a review is fake or real.

Spot Fake Review on Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy

There are many who make biased reviews. When you are reviewing a product, it should be skeptical and honest. No one knows if a company has set up a team of people whose job is to write fake reviews on a competitor website.

Top ways to spot fake reviews on Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy

Fake reviews can both be helpful and harmful for a company. So, let’s talk on how to avoid and mark fake or unauthentic reviews on e Comm platforms.

# Start with Fakespot   

Fakespot is a free site that helps in examining product reviews to help you to view what is real and what is fake. Just go to Fakespot, copy the Url and paste it on the product page and then click on the analyze icon.

Another simple process is to integrate Fakespot into the extension’s browser for Chrome, Firefox or Safari. Just reach the Fakespot icon and click to analyze right away. Android and iOS both support Fakespot, so you can also use it for your mobile device.

Fakespot was committed to Amazon, but later on, the company has introduced search engines for Best Buy, Wallmart and Steam. Later on, after going through an analysis Fakspot found out that Wallmart is flooded with 50 percent unreliable and deceptive review. And the same thing goes with Best Buy only there are 5 percent fewer reviews compared to Amazon.

It will also rate companies based on the number of high-quality reviews it has earned. But this rating will apply only on the reviews and not the products.

Let’s roll on to another advanced tool to get rid of false reviews

# ReviewMeta

It is a great tool that works almost the same as Fakespot and it separates the real and fake reviews and gives you a good view. They don’t come up with “Fake or Unauthentic” words instead, they use the term “Unnatural”.

It comes free and is easy to integrate into Google Chrome and Firefox browser’s extension.

The method of ReviewMeta differs from Fakespot but is very reliable and provides useful information. It runs 12 distinct tests that anticipate suspicious traits and modify the rating on a retailer’s site and further mark it as Pass, Warns or Fail grade.

According to ReviewMeta you can g for a full and detailed report, you just have to wait for a while for it to process and break down the site’s conclusion in a more refined and stylish way.

But the drawback for ReviewMeta is, it is only working with Amazon and no other companies.

# Legal Action Could be a choice 

Walmart said in an interview that Reviews are an important part of Wallmart shopping experience. They also said if they spot a fake review or if a review is not coming from real customers, they would instantly remove it from the site.

Well, Amazon on the other side says that it takes a lot of significant resources to maintain and control the quality of it’s review.

“Even one inauthentic review is one too many”, they said in a statement recorded by CBS.

Amazon also told that to eliminate inauthentic reviews, it uses investigators aligned with automation and assumes that more than 90 percent of the total inauthentic reviews are generated by a computer. 

They are using Machine Learning technology to evaluate all incoming and existing reviews and it is a 24*7 process. The fake or dubious reviews are then instantly removed.

# How to manually detect fake review

According to our observation, fake reviews have started propagating several years ago but this sickness hasn’t stopped yet. Millions of consumers rely on reviews for purchasing suggestions.

Reviews can totally mislead a consumer because Fakespot said, that around 84 % of consumers believe in online reviews just like personal recommendations just because they don’t know the sad truth.

Consumers can check the reviews by themselves and understand if there is a red flag

If a review looks infomercial or is given a dramatic look.it could turn out to be fake.

Check for unnatural languages or writing methods. There are few SEO associates who act as a reviewer but is actually trying to promote a company by highlighting words in the capital.

You can easily understand a poorly written review or the ones which come with half or manipulated information.

A good reviewer stays skeptical while writing and writes both the good and bad points about a product. So if someone is mentioning “Best product ever” more than 1 time, it can turn out to be fake or promotion.

Conclusion

A good review can help you take the right buying decisions and avoid a product which is really bad. So, if you find any of the above-mentioned tricks in the reviews try to avoid or report those.

For better judgment read individual user reviews on different sites, the pattern of writing in different sites will tell you whether it’s genuine or fake.