Online Reviews: How to Separate the Wheat from the Chaff

closeup of a wheat stalk ready for harvesting

One of the conveniences of modern life is buying stuff online. Whether it’s a used car or a bottle of glue, online shopping has brought the biggest stores right to your door.

And for a while, it was easy to verify that you were making a good purchase – just check the reviews. Yet now it seems like every product has an abundance of five-star rankings. After buying several highly reviewed products that turn out to be duds, you might start to wonder where the reviews are coming from. Can you trust what you read online when you’re buying a product? Here are a few steps that can help you separate real reviews from paid-for-reviews.

Be skeptical

It’s easy just to click and purchase something. But before you do, know this: companies plant positive reviews, whether through free products for the reviewers or outright payments. Not only that, many companies also pay reviewers to buy a competitor’s product and provide a negative review. These go under verified purchasers, so you might think they are real verified purchasers (people who actually wanted the product) instead of company stooges. No matter how good a product looks, no matter what kind of deal you’ve found, don’t leave your skepticism at the door.

Look closely at the reviews

Lots of reviews in short time span. While not a consumer product, I once had my dentist ask me to review the practice. They would provide a $5 Starbuck’s gift card if I gave them a five-star review on Google. They explained that this was a big push for the next six months, yet think about what they achieved: a mountain of extremely positive reviews within a short time period. If you saw this as a consumer, it would be pretty easy to guess what was going on. And no, while I love coffee, I didn’t agree to provide a five-star review. Not that I would have given them less, but I didn’t agree with their methods.

Similar text. Ever started reading reviews and realize you’re basically reading the same thing over and over? This is a tell-tale sign that the reviews are fake. If there are a lot of reviews, skip ahead to where the sentence length is longer and the text isn’t similar.

Five-stars. No product is perfect. If you only see perfect ratings, it’s a good sign that the reviews are fake.

Five reviews. Total. If you look at a product and see that it has five reviews, it doesn’t really matter if they are positive or negative. You can’t base your decision on such a small sample size.

Pros and cons. Look for reviews that provide more than just a sentence. Some reviewers even provide a pro and con section or come back after they’ve used a product for a period of time to update their review.

So what do I do?

Visit different sites. Instead of trusting just one shopping site, visit others that sell the same product and see if the reviews mirror each other. You might find that you see the exact same review on Walmart that you saw on Amazon, meaning that someone could be stuffing the ballot box. However, if you find an overall four-star rating that matches what you saw at the first site and the reviews are worded differently, you can trust a little more that the reviews are legitimate and the product is a quality item.

Don’t just read recommended reviews. Don’t ignore recommended reviews, but make sure to list the reviews in chronological order as well. Maybe the product has changed manufacturers and the most recent reviews are either more positive or negative than the whole.

Also look at bad reviews – the one- and two-stars. Here, you might discover that the product causes the same problems for different people. Maybe the toaster settings didn’t work, maybe the cord was frayed. Here’s where you’ll get that kind of info.

Grouped reviews. Like my dental example above, if you see a lot of similar reviews when there haven’t been many before, go further back to see if the company is trying to overcome bad reviews. Or perhaps they are trying to add more reviews just to make it look like people care. Either way, watch out for bulked reviews.

What was reviewed? Make sure the review is for the product and not the delivery or customer service. Now if you need a product in a week and you’re reading reviews stating delivery takes a month even though they promise a week, take that under advisement. But if the only negative reviews are due to non-product related issues, decide if waiting that extra week is worth it to you if the product is as good as promised.

Consider third-party sites. Some companies (like Fakespot) claim that they can provide guidance on whether a review is truthful. If you can’t make up your mind on a product, consider searching for a review-rating company to see if you can get at the honest reviews.

Like so many things in the financial world, your best bet may just be your gut reaction. Does it sound too good to be true? Do the negative reviews seem more “real” than the positive ones? If you’re only spending a few dollars, buying a less than optimal product probably won’t cause you headaches. But if you’re spending thousands, take the time to ferret through the reviews to arrive at a purchase decision you will be happy with.

Photo by Michael Callaghan

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