Amazon Should Show Reviewer Statistics Next To Each Reviewer Name.
By
Staten Island, NY Posted: 5/6/2015 1:00:00 AM
I'd better not buy that Banana Slicer, BillyRayValentine1232 said it's junk!
Every day, millions of people turn to Amazon to read the reviews of product they are thinking of buying. In some cases they pull out their smartphones while standing in front of the item in a store, just because they want to read the review before they go to the register.
That's because Amazon has the world's largest database of product reviews. You can find countless reviews for just about anything, and within minutes know if it's worth buying.
The trouble is, some of the reviews are fake.
Fake reviews hurt the entire review system, because they don't reflect the actual opinions of a real consumer. In some cases, the manufacturer will post a positive review for their own product, but what's even worse, they will also post fake negative reviews for their competition.
I had a conversation with an Amazon seller who was depressed because she had just listed a new item, and the first review was definitely a fake negative review. Her competitor placed a legitimate order for the product, so it would be listed as "Verified Purchase", then posted a one star review essentially saying it was junk. She knew it was a fake review, because she looked up the tracking number and the package hadn't even arrived, so there was no chance the reviewer even had a chance to open the box.
The result is she had one review saying it was junk, making it nearly impossible for another buyer to trust them enough to place an order. Essentially, killing the chances of selling more.
I looked up the reviewer's profile and I could see that the reviewer only reviewed a few items, and none of the reviews were considered helpful. The account was clearly created specifically to post the negative review.
Because of my experience, I knew enough about these kinds of fake reviewers to click through to see the reviewers full profile and spot a fake, but most people wouldn't know it's fake.
The only way Amazon can make it easier to spot fake reviews is to put reviewer statistics next to the reviewer's name.
This is similar to what eBay's been doing to give people confidence in their sellers since day one.
There are a lot of possible statistics that can be shown, but the main objective is to make it easy to see how many reviews they posted, and how many of those were considered helpful.
So putting a statistic next to the seller such as (420/350), you would know they have posted 420 reviews, and 350 were voted by others as "helpful".
Joe Crescenzi, Founder
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