Consumer reviews used to be one of the most reliable ways of assessing the quality of an app or a physical product. If you didn’t know any friends who’d tried it, the number of reviews and the average rating was a pretty good guide.

Sadly, however, that is no longer the case. Companies have become very adept at gaming the system, meaning that reviews are worth way less than they used to be. There are now six reasons you shouldn’t necessarily trust them, including one I only learned about today …

Review farms

The scummiest developers and e-commerce companies of course use outright fraud. Server farms are used to automatically download apps or purchase products and then submit five-star reviews.

These are sometimes easy to spot as the reviews are incredibly generic with comments like “good product” or “best app”. However, more sophisticated ones will use AI to write longer and more specific texts.

Paid reviews

Some companies pay people to post positive reviews. This is particularly common with apps that are free to download, but even with expensive hardware products, the deal can often be that a consumer is told to initially buy the product and they will then be refunded once they post a five-star review.

Other incentives

Genuine buyers may be offered incentives. Genuine buyers may be offered incentives for posting a review. These can include free subscription periods or discounts on future purchases. The very fact that consumers are getting something in return tends to skew them towards positive reviews. Additionally, discounts on future purchases are only appealing to those who are happy with the company, so filters out those who aren’t.

Diverting complaints

With some apps, the pop-up inviting you to review it will tell you that if you are in any way unhappy, you should instead click a separate link to take you to customer services. In that way, only those who are happy will post reviews, while those who are not will be dealt with in private.

Pretty much any company you can name – including both Apple and Amazon – lets companies pay to have their apps or products displayed prominently within an app category or search result.

This not only means that you see them before other and potentially better options, but this very prominence means that more people will download them and therefore they will attract more reviews. This distorts the usefulness of the number of reviews as a factor in your decision.

Review gating

I thought I knew all of the tricks companies used to game their reviews, but a TNW piece included one I didn’t know.

Some businesses send out a Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey to gauge your sentiment “How likely are you to recommend us?” If you rate them a 9 or 10 (a promoter), you’re immediately nudged to post a public review. If you give a lukewarm or low score, the feedback form quietly thanks you and never mentions writing a review at all. Only the happiest customers get the gentle push to “Share your experience!” This practice is so widespread it even has a name: “review gating.”

Consumer reviews can still be useful, but it’s worth reading them carefully and searching for professional reviews on websites you trust.

Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash