You can use websites that use algorithms (and humans) to spot fake reviews for you. For example, ReviewMeta analyses reviews on Amazon. Fakespot analyses Best Buy websites in the US, Canada, and Mexico, but it’s still helpful to use the filter to see genuine reviews for electronic brands and appliance brands sold here, like Toshiba, Kitchenaid, Panasonic, and Philips. FakeSpot also analyses reviews on Amazon, Sephora, Steam, Walmart, TripAdvisor, and Yelp. Again, they’re all US websites, but they still give you helpful insights.

Just copy and paste the product’s page URL into the search bar of the review scanning website. You’ll get a report on the product, with some of the suspicious reviews removed. It’s complicated, but essentially the websites check for common fake clues, such reviewers who created accounts just to review a particular product or brand.

Save money by keeping a close watch for these words:

• Bestseller. When online retailers add the word bestseller to a listing, it may not mean what you think it does. Some companies boost the number of sales by dropping the price for a period. Once it becomes a bestseller, they can sell more at a higher price.
• Featured. When you search online for a product, the default listing you see is usually the retailer’s featured option. It may be featured for a number of reasons – for example it may be from a brand that pays the website a higher percentage of the sale price. To find out if this item really is right for you, click the “sort by” menu to re-sort by price or ratings.

Click on an online reviewer’s profile – is there a photo? No photo can be a clue that the review was generated by a non-human chatbot. Be sure to also click on the reviewer’s name. Their profile page will show all their reviews for this shopping website. They may be fake if all the reviews were done on the same few days, or they’re all variations of the same “wow, so amazing” comments. 

Beware of reviews that repeat many “marketing” words like “value seekers” or “independent travellers”. No one speaks like that in real life. And beware of reviews that are supposedly by different people – yet they use many of the same phrases such as “top-notch sales service” or “100% satisfied”. A whole lot of people using the same phrase is unlikely, especially if the reviews are close in date.

Read Next

#ShoppingFromHome? These Online Stores Ship To Singapore For Free

Which Online Grocery Store In Singapore Is The Most Value-For-Money?

How Safe Is Your Credit Card Info? 10 Tips To Make You A Savvy Online Shopper

Descriptions that allow you to “see” the restaurant are more reliable. For example, what parking is like, or how many oysters are served in the dish. Since fake reviewers have never visited, they can’t share these kinds of nitty-gritty details. 

According to research into lying by Cornell University in the USA, people who are lying in reviews use “I” more often than people who are telling the truth. It’s because people who have visited a place often describe it in concrete terms – they’ll describe a room layout or the weird route to the bar. For example “The pizza oven in the corner really sends out heat – we could feel it at our table 2 meters away”. Somebody who is lying is less likely to use nouns and may fall back on “I feel” waffle. For example “I like this place because I enjoy authentic Italian food” 

Jayne Tan, Vice President of Content and Community at Burpple, shares that when it comes to fake reviews, “We hardly have this problem of fake reviews as it’s usually very obvious when some reviewers are by the owners, and so we usually write to them and say that we’ll be hiding the reviews so they’re not visible to the public.” 

Authentic feedback usually focuses on key aspects of the hotel and room – like the bed, the coffee machine in the room, or if the hotel is close to shops. Because those are the things people care about when they travel. 

Be wary if reviewers gush over amenities like “business services” or the set up of meeting and convention rooms. Unless the reviewer books conventions for a living – and says so – it’s less likely to be a real review.

Travel sites like Tripadvisor are cracking down on deceptive reviews – among other safeguards they use algorithms to track who, why, where, what and when of reviews, so they can red-flag or even lockout those companies from their platform. 

Krystal Heng, Communications Manager Asia Pacific at Tripadvisor, explained that “We fight fake reviews aggressively and have sophisticated systems and teams in place to detect fraudsters, as well as strong penalties in place to deter them. Every single review submitted to Tripadvisor must first go through our review analysis system, which maps how, what, where, and when of each review before it is posted. On top of that, any review that is flagged as suspicious, either by our review analysis system or by the travel community, will be sent to our team of content specialists to investigate. They use sophisticated fraud detection techniques adapted from the banking sector to identify suspicious review activity and conduct proactive investigations to catch would-be fraudsters as well.” 

Read Next

Covid-19 Derailed Your Family Trip? 10 Smart Ways To Use Your Travel Fund

Around The World In 180 Minutes: The Best Movies To Banish Cabin Fever

Covid-19: How To Stay Safe While Travelling, If You Absolutely Must Travel