![]() Once again, I’m happy to be the guinea pig here, and have all of you (and ReviewMeta) poke and prod my reviews and check the authenticity of same, because I have 100% confidence that they are all genuine. Let’s take a look at some concrete examples. This then casts aspersions on the integrity of the authors of these books – who are self-employed people working in an industry where reputation and integrity are critically important, not huge faceless brands… if that matters. Worse still, the site has been aware of these issues for two years, and not only have they not corrected them, they reacted in a hostile way when presented with this information. But when it comes to books, it makes a number of pejorative assumptions about what is legitimate reader behavior, such as reviewing Book 2 of a series after reviewing Book 1 or mentioning the title of the book in the review, and these routine reader actions cause ReviewMeta to flag these reviews as questionable or suspicious. ![]() Perhaps it is more accurate for jellybeans or computer peripherals, I really can’t say. This transparency is hugely commendable.ĭigging into this data, though, shows the extreme limitations of the site and the way it calculates the trustworthiness of reviews – at least how it pertains to the world of books. The ReviewMeta site helpfully gives explanations for why its system made these determinations, and you can actually break down each component and get a further explanation. What was going on here? How ReviewMeta Works And many of my fellow authors too, it seems, because a large portion of the random selection of books I checked had similar issues. However, ReviewMeta seems to call into question a large number of my reviews and reviewers. As well as the author, I handle all the publishing and marketing personally, and I’m fastidious about the rules both for ethical reasons and commercial ones my name is literally my brand. Naturally, I started with my own books, as I can be pretty sure they have no fake reviews. Amazon tends to be plagued with all sorts of scams – which I have written extensively about over the last ten years – and I could instantly see the value in a tool which could identify fake reviews or suspicious products. The article’s claims are largely based on a flaky site called ReviewMeta, which seems far better at getting publicity for itself than correctly analyzing the trustworthiness of Amazon reviews, which is a pity as it would be a wonderful tool if it were in any way accurate.Īs soon as I heard about ReviewMeta, I immediately wanted to test it. I can’t speak to the world of diet supplements or fake tan or giant tubs of lube… alas. There are problems with Amazon reviews, no doubt, but this article is based on some pretty data – at least in how it pertains to the world of books, which is what I know, and what I’ll focus on here. ![]() ReviewMeta works very hard to position itself as some kind of independent arbiter of Amazon reviews, but an examination of its methods proves two things: 1) ReviewMeta is not very accurate and 2) ReviewMeta does not like being reviewed.Īn article from the Washington Post a while back claimed that Amazon is undergoing a fake review crisis.
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