Late last month, the New York Attorney General’s office announced the results of an investigation it conducted into the business of creating false online reviews for various businesses. Although it is not a widespread practice for Internet marketing companies, some companies have performed these tasks.
Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman confirmed that 19 companies signed agreements to refrain from posting fake reviews online and paid fines ranging from $2,500 to $100,000. Essentially, the purpose of the fake reviews online, primarily on Yelp, Google, and Yahoo , is to increase awareness of the company, improve its appearance and even increase revenue.
“What we have found is even worse than old-fashioned false advertising,” the New York attorney general said in a statement. “When you look at a billboard, you can tell it’s a paid ad, but on Yelp or Citysearch, you assume you’re reading genuine consumer reviews, making this practice even more deceptive. This research into large-scale intentional deception worldwide scale The Internet tells us to approach online reviews with caution.”
What the New York State investigators also found was that companies approached experienced Yelp users and attempted to reward them with gift certificates and other types of offers for posting positive reviews. Failing that, they used freelance websites like Craig’s List, oDesk.com, and Freelancer.com to find writers and paid them $1 to $10 for reviews.
Schneiderman also cited a 2011 Harvard Business School study, which examined Yelp reviews that the company labeled as fraudulent. Their top four findings were that chain restaurants were less likely to participate in the scheme, restaurants with intense competition were more likely to post fake reviews of their competitors, restaurants with poor or few reviews were more likely to participate in fake reviews and 16 percent of restaurant reviews labeled fake were more likely to leave extremely positive or extremely negative reviews than normal reviews.
The internet marketing, or search engine optimization, industry is quite competitive and companies try to innovate their products and services as much as they can to attract more customers. Essentially, it is suggested that clients looking to hire an online marketing company should do their due diligence and do a great deal of research on the company.
In the end, as any internet marketing or SEO professional would say, it takes time to appear on the first page of Google, increase PageRank, and improve domain authority. The best practice is to follow the guidelines posted by search engines, review websites, and other places on the Internet. In fact, there certainly is a difference between sending out a press release and faking reviews.
Furthermore, it appears that law enforcement is continuing its efforts to catch companies offering these services. Schneiderman confirmed that he will still try to prevent the business from lying to customers.
“This investigation into large-scale intentional deception on the Internet tells us that we must approach online reviews with caution,” the attorney general added.
All of these acts can definitely damage the credibility of the internet and websites like Yelp.