UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

Re:UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews by asdfasgasdgasdg on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @04:30PM (#26404549)

I don't know how to square this claim with the plethora of businesses with many negative reviews on both Google and Yelp. If it were this easy, you'd think everyone would be doing it. Probably someone would have written a blog post describing how to do so. I can find out how to buy gmail accounts on Google, but I can't find out how to remove business reviews. Maybe the claim is just that most small businesses are very honest?

In any case, the scenario you're describing is decidedly not pay-for-play on Google's part, and thus doesn't really impinge on my response to OP.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews by pbhjpbhj on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @06:04PM (#26405667)

I think almost all SME owners would assume they'd have to pay (Yelp model), rather than just be able to lie and say it's fraud. Also who is going to advertise after the fact that they falsely had reviews removed - risking getting dumped by Google?

I'll assume Google's reviews are at least somewhat likely to be biased (either way!) until reason to believe otherwise. The "you don't know the review wasn't posted by a dog" position.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews by asdfasgasdgasdg on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @07:40PM (#26406410)

I don't really care if you assume the reviews are biased. I assume that all review websites have some number of fake reviews, and it's unlikely that exactly half of the fake reviews are negative and the other half positive. Therefore all review websites would have some bias vs the ground truth sentiment. My only objection is to baseless accusations of malfeasance.

[ Parent | on HN ]