What connects social media? The idea of
sharing. We share our reviews about our favorite restaurants on YELP. Also, we
rely on other people's sharing on YELP to decide the place for a drink on
weekends. It seems to be a habit for us. But have you ever doubt the honesty of
YELP reviews? Are they really shared sincerely by customers? Are their reviews
really dependable?
A few years ago, some YELP users expressed
their doubts if businesses paid YELP to hide negative reviews. On the website
of YELP, you can see the reviews by filters, which includes YELP sort, newest
first, oldest first, etc. But on the mobile app, you cannot choose but only see
the reviews in order which YELP offered. Another suspicious point is, you can
see some people are selling 5-star YELP reviews on eBay.
However, YELP solved this crisis
positively. YELP claimed that “You Cannot Pay Us to Remove or Reorder YourReviews.” They also asserted this slogan in some online question-and-answer
sites like Quora and stated their positions seriously. Moreover, YELP made some
changes to its website, they changed “filtered reviews” to “other reviews that
are not currently recommended". For customers, this would be seen as a
sign for respecting their opinions.
In fact, dealing with fake reviews is a
common problem on social media, especially on these customer reviews based
websites. In China, the most popular online shopping website, Taobao, is also
facing the same obstacle. Some sellers will hire professional reviewers to
leave good words of their products. They even offer photos which were taken at
different times and under various circumstances, just make the reviews looks
more convincible. It has become a common phenomenon that customers need to pay
much attention to distinguish reviews.
No doubt that these customers reviews based
websites are successful at first. We can call these websites a word of mouth
and the most influencing factors are, as groundswell mentioned, believable,
self-reinforcing and self-spreading. Whereas, this online review system is
losing its advantage now. Because what customers want is cutting down the time
for searching and avoiding making wrong decisions based on other's experiences.
These expectations will not achieve when online reviews are no longer trustful.
Likewise, these businesses have already lost their reputation.
