Spot Fake Product Reviews

The ability to leave product reviews is a great part of our online shopping experience.  Even if you plan to purchase a product in a store, you can still check the reviews as you decide whether or not to buy.  However, many product reviews are fake.  Companies pay marketing experts to add positive reviews for a product, and some companies will even leave negative reviews on their competitor's products.  The key is to filter out the fake reviews and find the ones you can actually trust.

Here are a few tips to find the legitimate product reviews:

1) 2-4 Stars - Fake positive reviews will almost always have five stars, and fake negative reviews will almost always have one star.  Reviews that fall in the middle are much more likely to be legitimate reviews, and they are also more likely to have a balanced look at the pros and cons.  This is not to say that all one and five star reviews should not be trusted, but you should be much more careful trusting these reviews

2) Facts and Opinion - Many fake reviews will consist of opinions that lack facts to back it up.  "Amazing!  Purchasing this product was the best decision I ever made!" doesn't give you any information about the product itself.  However, fake reviews can also go in the opposite direction:  instead of sharing "opinions", they simply summarize the product information without describing what does or does not work well.  The best reviews will have a balance of both facts and opinion.

3) Good and Bad - If you are being paid to make a company's product look good, you're not going to say anything bad about it.  And if you are being paid to make another company's product look bad, you're not going to say anything good about it.  Just like real reviews are more likely to contain a balance of facts and opinion, real reviews are also much more likely to contain a balance of the good and bad sides of a product.

4) The Same Thing - If you check multiple sites for reviews on a product and you see the same review posted on multiple sites, that is a sign that it has been placed there by a marketing company, especially if it meets other criteria above.

5) Don't Trust Just One - Never base your decision to purchase a product on one review, or even on the star rating.  Read through as many reviews as you can to get a feel for the areas where this product excels and the areas where the product needs some work.  Then, make your decision based on what you see mentioned often.