Google Reviews have become useless

[Dean2]

I used to use Google reviews as a good indication of how good a restaurant or company was. In the last couple of years Google has completely dropped the ball on policing bogus reviews, mostly fake positive 5 star ratings.

One recent example; a small Chinese restaurant in the Manning strip mall that I actually really like. It went from having a handful of reviews to over 170 in the last three months. This beggars belief but Google says there isn't enough evidence to do anything about the rash of 5 star ratings.

If they can't deal with something this blatant when it is specifically pointed out then I have zero confidence in the Google rating system. Seems like the internet is rapidly moving from being a very useful tool to a place so filled with scams and fake news that it is becoming a dangerous place to get information from and may even become totally useless. It is starting to resemble the old tabloid newspapers like the Enquirer, that were sold in the grocery stores.

Unless the large companies like Facebook, Google and the like find an effective way to police the mountain of fake information the future of the net is in jeopardy. I no longer own any of the Fang stocks because I can't tell how long the implosion will take but without strong action goverment regulation it is going to happen and that will play hob with the share values.

[Trochu]

I look at the Google reviews of some of our competition from time to time, and have also noticed that the one star reviews seem to disappear whereas the five stars do not.

[AndrewM]

I hardly ever review a place that treats me well (maybe I should). I have reviewed the odd place that has not. Similar to items I purchase on amazon. Wonder if most people are like that?

[Sooner]

And on the other side of the coin. A friend of mine owns a business. During the last AB election, he supported the UCP and within minutes of a news piece, the Lefty trolls started in with bad google reviews for his company. The blatant lies were crazy. I think this gives anyone with an axe to grind a venue to spew crap and untruths. And of course, the bad reviews stopped on election day. I have no faith in google reviews.

[AndrewM]

It is like anything, take it with a grain of salt. Lots of armchair experts all over the web and tons of terrible advice!

[Smoky buck]

Knowing the amount of places that get friends to right good reviews for them it’s all BS.

[stuckincity]

Originally Posted by Smoky buck

Knowing the amount of places that get friends to right good reviews for them it’s all BS.

I don't bother much with online "reviews". I go by experience in a bar or restaurant.
If I'm treated well like at Sammy's Chop House or Big Al's Bar and Grill here in Calgary, I'll go back. If I'm not, I won't.
I Know f.....uh..... "darn" well that some owners will get their friends and other shills to give 'good' reviews; and some will get other friends and shills to give 'bad' reviews about "the competition".

BS is right!

I can't do anything about cr@ppy attitudes in businesses; nor can I make good attitudes even better. I don't have that 'power'.

I just 'review' or 'vote' with my money.


EDIT: No financial interest in either of the places I mentioned, and the owners aren't friends of mine.
Just wanted to clear that up in case anyone thinks I'm "advertising" for them.

[barbless]

Originally Posted by stuckincity

I don't bother much with online "reviews". I go by experience in a bar or restaurant.
If I'm treated well like at Sammy's Chop House or Big Al's Bar and Grill here in Calgary, I'll go back. If I'm not, I won't.
I Know f.....uh..... "darn" well that some owners will get their friends and other shills to give 'good' reviews; and some will get other friends and shills to give 'bad' reviews about "the competition".

BS is right!

I can't do anything about cr@ppy attitudes in businesses; nor can I make good attitudes even better. I don't have that 'power'.

I just 'review' or 'vote' with my money.

Zackly my thought. And Google tried to spell "cheque" that and this check

[Etownpaul]

Originally Posted by Sooner

And on the other side of the coin. A friend of mine owns a business. During the last AB election, he supported the UCP and within minutes of a news piece, the Lefty trolls started in with bad google reviews for his company. The blatant lies were crazy. I think this gives anyone with an axe to grind a venue to spew crap and untruths. And of course, the bad reviews stopped on election day. I have no faith in google reviews.

My buddy owns a small one man plumbing company and also likes to BBQ. he got a booth at a BBQ competition and threw up a few company banners, sponsored himself essentially. Well the vegans came wandering through the bbq competition and a few took pictures of his banners, which he thought nothing of, thought they might be potential customers. They teamed up on a vegan message board bombarded his business with 1 star google reviews. Google would only take down a few reviews, not all of them. So obviously all his friends and family left glowing 5 star reviews to offset the vegan scum and their fake reviews.

But those are just fake 5 star reviews, not actual 5 star reviews from customers who are happy with his work. So you've got a couple legit reviews ( 4-5 stars) and a bunch of offsetting bogus reviews. What a mess. I quit using online reviews after that fiasco.

[Buckhead]

The internet has always been 90% garbage.
I guess some folks are just figuring that out.

[Dean2]

Originally Posted by Buckhead

The internet has always been 90% garbage.
I guess some folks are just figuring that out.

You are completely wrong about that. In it's original form it was a system for sharing research, scholarly papers and scientific information. For many years as it grew it was a great source of high quality information. Social media and internet marketing along with cyber crime is what has screwed up what was a very valuable resource.

[Weebo]

With more companies going to online shopping the reviews were a must for me before I bought anything, now after reading this it makes kinda green around the gills, don't think I'll be buying a s much stuff online

[Buckhead]

Originally Posted by Dean2

You are completely wrong about that. In it's original form it was a system for sharing research, scholarly papers and scientific information. For many years as it grew it was a great source of high quality information. Social media and internet marketing along with cyber crime is what has screwed up what was a very valuable resource.

That is one opinion. Fortunately not the only one.

[Dean2]

Duplicare

[Dean2]

Originally Posted by Buckhead

That is one opinion. Fortunately not the only one.

There is a big difference between documented historical fact and opinion. If you never experienced the original net, that in its infancy was only actually accessible through universities you won't understand what I am saying. I fully agree that today's internet is full of problems but that does not change the fact that what we have now is a gross perversion of what was once a valuable resource.

[Savage Bacon]

I know the owner of a company that gets bad reviews all the time. Mostly because they do very poor work. They just contact Google and have the reviews removed. So just remove anything below 4 stars and you've got a great company again. Total bs.

Here's another good one. At the dentist office where I got my daughter's braces, if you leave a good review on Google, you're then entered into a monthly contest. There's big signs posted all over the wall advertising this. So leave a bs good review and win a prize!!

Again total bs.

[RandyBoBandy]

For foody reviews I use OPEN TABLE and TRIP ADVISOR to seek out a different eating establishments and I post reviews. As for anything else using GOOGLE reviews, I take that with a grain of salt.
I've never bothered to apply for an AMA certified shop due to some of these "certified" shops are out right scammers

[ssyd]

Amazon is even worse. You can't trust anything that is "recommended" or has 4-5 star reviews. They do next to nothing to counter fake reviews.

Amazon started doing recommendations to help Alexa work better when people ask their smart speakers about shopping. Now everything they "recommend" is cheap Chinese crap that's been fluffed up with fake reviews instead of genuinely good products.

[pikergolf]

Originally Posted by Dean2

There is a big difference between documented historical fact and opinion. If you never experienced the original net, that in its infancy was only actually accessible through universities you won't understand what I am saying. I fully agree that today's internet is full of problems but that does not change the fact that what we have now is a gross perversion of what was once a valuable resource.

It is still a valuable resource, one just has to know how to pick the meat off of the bones. Sadly.

[Dean2]

Originally Posted by pikergolf

It is still a valuable resource, one just has to know how to pick the meat off of the bones. Sadly.

True. There is still a tremendous amount of valuable info available and you are completely right that one needs to sift carefully. Still a great place to find out how to fix most anything.

[ssyd]

Originally Posted by pikergolf

It is still a valuable resource, one just has to know how to pick the meat off of the bones. Sadly.

The important thing is to read the actual reviews and not rely on the star rating. Most of the written reviews are negative because nobody bothers to post about their great experience unless asked or paid to. You just kinda gotta decide what's bad enough to deter you from those written ones.

"The waitress was impatient and short with us."
They got the wrong waitress that day.

"The food tasted like a salt lick and my girlfriend got sick out both ends."
Unless I'm going solo with my iron stomach, probably avoid.

[does it ALL outdoors]

Fake reviews are nothing new, and online reviews are not to be taken too seriously.


https://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/episo...iews-faking-it

https://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/blog/...-fakes-reviews

[bossmansteve]

I always start with the 1 star reviews and work my way up. Ignore all bad reviews that were written by people who sound like idiots or they didn't know how to use the product. The remaining ones are red flags. Take all positive reviews with a grain of salt as they could be fake.

Online reviews are still better than relying on word-of-mouth reviews from talking to people, as most people are full of ****.

[Dean2]

Originally Posted by bossmansteve

Online reviews are still better than relying on word-of-mouth reviews from talking to people, as most people are full of ****.

So the people you see face to face are full of it but those that write online reviews are smarter and more believable? Just kidding, I know what you are getting at.

I do find that reviews from people on specialized websites are a lot more useful than most. AO is great for advice on guns, hunting gear etc and we have some pretty knowledgeable people on tires, plumbing and a number of other things. That and you develop a level of trust if not relationship with a number of people on a good forum. Specialised auto forums like Dodge Talk, Lexus Owner Club and the like are a great source of info on specific vehicles.

To be fair to the internet, none of this information would be available if the internet wasn't here. As a couple of others have said, a guy just has to be real selective about what you take as good information. Still very disappointed that a Big player like Google has so little interest in getting it right though.

[bossmansteve]

Originally Posted by Dean2

So the people you see face to face are full of it but those that write online reviews are smarter and more believable? Just kidding, I know what you are getting at.

I do find that reviews from people on specialized websites are a lot more useful than most. AO is great for advice on guns, hunting gear etc and we have some pretty knowledgeable people on tires, plumbing and a number of other things. That and you develop a level of trust if not relationship with a number of people on a good forum. Specialised auto forums like Dodge Talk, Lexus Owner Club and the like are a great source of info on specific vehicles.

To be fair to the internet, none of this information would be available if the internet wasn't here. As a couple of others have said, a guy just has to be real selective about what you take as good information. Still very disappointed that a Big player like Google has so little interest in getting it right though.

I guess it depends who you know. Most everyone I know in real life, I love many of them but they are all full of **** and not levelheaded enough to trust for product feedback.

Definitely if you can get reviews from forums, blogs, etc they can be a lot higher quality.

Twice I have had Amazon sellers refund me the cost of the product in exchange for deleting my negative review or changing it to a positive one. Not many people (including me) are going to turn that down.

[KegRiver]

Something I've encountered a lot lately, that hasn't been mentioned is fake review sites.

Companies have learned to place fake review sites of their own to counter any real review, or lack thereof.
They are actually pretty obvious once you know what to look for.
Namely, no posted reviews.

I agree there is a lot of valuable information on the web, but reviews are not one of those.
I would go so far as to say that 99.9 percent of online reviews from anything other then very well established well known sites like Amazon or C-net are useless. Even on the good sites one has to be careful about what reviews to trust.

Most are either fake, or written by idiots who couldn't figure out how to boil water or people with an ax to grind.

On the other hand I find a lot of user and repair manuals online that I could not find anywhere else I know of.
And that's just one example of useful information found online.

[tirebob]

Contrary to popular belief, bad reviews cannot simply be removed by request or any other means. It would have to be proven to be blatantly false and the hoops you have to jump through would make it to painful to pursue. That is why it is so stupid that there is almost zero oversight. Competition, ignorant people, unrealistic clients etc can all just go and mess with your business totally anonymously and you have very little recourse. The other end of the scale are businesses that create tons of false positive reviews to promote themselves.

I have found the best way to deal with a negative is to reply to it with facts and honesty. Most people can read through what is a BS negative review but the double edge sword is many will believe that too many positives must also have been manipulated. Really kind of sad.

I personally never solicit reviews for my business. If someone writes a review I need to feel it was because they felt I deserved it and not because I marketed it. I also will only write a review about another company if I received outstanding service rather than only bad service. People dont realize how much bad reviews hurt a business and more often than not it was an individual that created a less than stellar experience and not the business as a whole and in those instances I will talk to the higher ups and see how it is handled before ever going public hurting many over the actions of one or two.

[AndrewM]

Originally Posted by KegRiver

Something I've encountered a lot lately, that hasn't been mentioned is fake review sites.

Companies have learned to place fake review sites of their own to counter any real review, or lack thereof.
They are actually pretty obvious once you know what to look for.
Namely, no posted reviews.

I agree there is a lot of valuable information on the web, but reviews are not one of those.
I would go so far as to say that 99.9 percent of online reviews from anything other then very well established well known sites like Amazon or C-net are useless. Even on the good sites one has to be careful about what reviews to trust.

Most are either fake, or written by idiots who couldn't figure out how to boil water or people with an ax to grind.

On the other hand I find a lot of user and repair manuals online that I could not find anywhere else I know of.
And that's just one example of useful information found online.

Just a heads up on Amazon. There are entire Facebook groups created to give away free items (99.9% Chinese) in exchange for a 5 star review. Then you see the exact same products on sale a few weeks later and you buy because you think you are getting a 5 star item! Read the 4 and under reviews if you want a bit of accurate reviews.

[liar]

Originally Posted by Buckhead

The internet has always been 90% garbage.
I guess some folks are just figuring that out.