"My gadget just arrived today and I haven't even used it yet but it looks well-made and I'm sure it will last forever. Five stars!"
All reviewers are not created equal.
In the early days before mass-SEO, you at least got the benefit of most reviewers being authentic, even if inept.
Now, we have the worst of all possible words: mass fake reviews + a public trained to expect only amateur-level reviews.
For better or for worse, my reviews about banks and their products have now been replaced by 10 links in a row to different sub-pages of the bank’s domain.
At least it used to make sure a blog article and a forum would appear on most search term’s top10.
I get it for my “XYZ Bank’s Phone Number - talk to a human now” pages. They probably shouldn’t have out-ranked the bank’s own official site, but the bank’s own website was much less user friendly than my own despite the abuse potential.
For similar reasons I've used things like Yelp less and less and tried to use professionally editorialized reviews (Eater, The Infatuation, Bon Appetit, etc) for food, well-known travel sites/bloggers for hotels, etc. There's still some paid incentives there too obviously but I can at least calibrate it to how much I align with the publication.