The New York Times Addresses Bogus Reviews on User-Generated Recommendation Websites
This weekend, The New York Times devoted extensive coverage to the argument that TripAdvisor and Yelp, along with many non-travel related sites such as Amazon.com, are being massively manipulated by companies backing the products they purport to rate. You'll have to forgive me for feeling a certain sense of vindication: For years in this blog, I've argued that the very logic of user-generated content must ultimately lead to its exposure as being less than reliable.
When a hotel or restaurant becomes dependent for its success on receiving a large number of rave reviews, it stands to reason that such hotel will itself generate favorable reviews, that it will arrange for friends, associates, and even blatant tricksters to compose such reviews -- and direct them towards the nearest review site.
The New York Times put the matter in a more colorful manner. It actually found a number of websites that are currently paying $5 for each fake review (which it then posts on the user-generated website). In fact, in one such site, a fellow named nat1257 writes: "I will do 3 reviews for $5."
So people are making a living of sorts out of submitting fake reviews to TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Amazon. Thus, according to the Times, when you read in Amazon that a particular novel is "better than Tolstoy," that review was likely written by someone who was either compensated in some manner or has never read the book in question (or both).
I based my initial doubts about the usefulness of user-generated rviews on my own experience. In the early years of writing and publishing Europe on $5 a Day, I printed verbatim excerpts from the letters I had received from readers, in which they recommended particular budget hotels or restaurants. I placed those colorful excerpts into a section called "Readers' Selections" in each chapter. And I was proud to be the source of such helpful information.
It only slowly dawned on me, over a course of years, that many of these letters that purported to be from readers, had actually been generated by hotels and restaurants wanting to be in the book. And some of them were of unworthy establishments. Eventually, I had to drop "Readers' Selections" from the $5-a-day books. Readers, for better or for worse, had to rely on my judgments rather than on unsolicited letters.
The widespread practice of generating recommendations to TripAdvisor in particular, has become so prevalent that it is hardly any longer concealed. Public relations agencies boast that they will generate campaigns of fake recommendations. When my daughter recently spoke to the management of a tropical hotel, which had been named the best value on its particular island, she asked how they could have achieved that status, given that a much better and yet cheaper hotel was just a short walk away. She was told that the hotel itself had generated a letter-writing campaign to one of the recommendation services.
And when I pointed out, in a blog post of a few weeks ago, that a certain Caribbean hotel had received several hundred wildly enthusiastic ratings and several hundred angry disparaging ratings in a particular website, I wrote that this outpouring of comment had to reflect an organized campaign either to recommend the hotel or to disparage it (letters generated by competitors). And I went on to say that it had become utterly impossible to determine whether the hotel was to be used, in the face of such obvious manipulation.
So you'll have to forgive me if I repeat my own preference for the recommendations of travel professionals. The wildly contrasting comments appearing in most user-generated reviews are so very suspicious, so impossible to appraise, so obviously packed with reviews that were originated either by the establishment itself or by its competitors, that they have eliminated the usefulness of these services. In the face of a hundred statements that a particular hotel is the best on the island, and a hundred statements that the same hotel is the worst on the island, how do you choose?
When a hotel or restaurant becomes dependent for its success on receiving a large number of rave reviews, it stands to reason that such hotel will itself generate favorable reviews, that it will arrange for friends, associates, and even blatant tricksters to compose such reviews -- and direct them towards the nearest review site.
The New York Times put the matter in a more colorful manner. It actually found a number of websites that are currently paying $5 for each fake review (which it then posts on the user-generated website). In fact, in one such site, a fellow named nat1257 writes: "I will do 3 reviews for $5."
So people are making a living of sorts out of submitting fake reviews to TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Amazon. Thus, according to the Times, when you read in Amazon that a particular novel is "better than Tolstoy," that review was likely written by someone who was either compensated in some manner or has never read the book in question (or both).
I based my initial doubts about the usefulness of user-generated rviews on my own experience. In the early years of writing and publishing Europe on $5 a Day, I printed verbatim excerpts from the letters I had received from readers, in which they recommended particular budget hotels or restaurants. I placed those colorful excerpts into a section called "Readers' Selections" in each chapter. And I was proud to be the source of such helpful information.
It only slowly dawned on me, over a course of years, that many of these letters that purported to be from readers, had actually been generated by hotels and restaurants wanting to be in the book. And some of them were of unworthy establishments. Eventually, I had to drop "Readers' Selections" from the $5-a-day books. Readers, for better or for worse, had to rely on my judgments rather than on unsolicited letters.
The widespread practice of generating recommendations to TripAdvisor in particular, has become so prevalent that it is hardly any longer concealed. Public relations agencies boast that they will generate campaigns of fake recommendations. When my daughter recently spoke to the management of a tropical hotel, which had been named the best value on its particular island, she asked how they could have achieved that status, given that a much better and yet cheaper hotel was just a short walk away. She was told that the hotel itself had generated a letter-writing campaign to one of the recommendation services.
And when I pointed out, in a blog post of a few weeks ago, that a certain Caribbean hotel had received several hundred wildly enthusiastic ratings and several hundred angry disparaging ratings in a particular website, I wrote that this outpouring of comment had to reflect an organized campaign either to recommend the hotel or to disparage it (letters generated by competitors). And I went on to say that it had become utterly impossible to determine whether the hotel was to be used, in the face of such obvious manipulation.
So you'll have to forgive me if I repeat my own preference for the recommendations of travel professionals. The wildly contrasting comments appearing in most user-generated reviews are so very suspicious, so impossible to appraise, so obviously packed with reviews that were originated either by the establishment itself or by its competitors, that they have eliminated the usefulness of these services. In the face of a hundred statements that a particular hotel is the best on the island, and a hundred statements that the same hotel is the worst on the island, how do you choose?
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