Fake Reviews...Now a Headache for Amazon
A recent Forbes' article highlights the latest headache that Amazon sellers have encountered: fake reviews that game Amazon's system by providing favorable visibility to those improperly-promoted products. The article is based on ReviewMeta 's findings, which show that the average review weight--a measure developed by the firm to calculate how trustworthy reviews are overall--has nearly halved during June, July and August of 2017, compared with those in October 2016. That month is particularly important because it was when Amazon banned the practice of incentivized reviews--people receive free products in exchange for writing reviews. Most such reviewers disclosed such "free for review" relationships in their reviews, but plenty didn't, which prompted Amazon to ultimately ban this practice. It is easy to reason that shrewd marketers now find another way to game Amazon's review system. How do they recruit reviewers? Simple, through Facebook groups.