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Late last month, the New York Attorney General’s office announced the results of an investigation it conducted into the business of creating bogus online reviews for various businesses. Although it is not a general practice for Internet marketing companies, some companies did perform these tasks.
Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman confirmed that 19 companies have signed agreements to refrain from posting fake online reviews and paid fines ranging from $2,500 to $100,000. Essentially, the purpose of fake online reviews, primarily on Yelp, Google, and Yahoo , is to increase the company’s awareness, 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 say it’s a paid ad, but on Yelp or Citysearch, you assume you’re reading authentic consumer reviews, which makes this practice even more misleading. This investigation into intentional deception on a large scale 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 tried 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, paying them $1 to $10 per review.
Schneiderman also cited a 2011 Harvard Business School study that examined Yelp reviews that the company labeled as fraudulent. Its four main findings were that restaurant chains were less likely to participate in the scheme, restaurants with intense competition were more likely to post false reviews of their competitors, restaurants with poor or few reviews were more likely to participate in fake reviews and 16 percent of fake-labeled restaurant reviews were more likely to leave extremely positive or extremely negative reviews than regular 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 marketer 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 is certainly a difference between sending out a press release and faking reviews.
Furthermore, it appears that law enforcement is continuing their 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 should 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.