A Guide on Amazon Review Checkers
Have you ever been searching for something specific on Amazon and noticed that there are 10 seemingly identical products? You want to make a purchase but first, you’ll need to do your due diligence and read reviews.
Some Amazon reviews are straightforward: “I like this product. It is good.”, followed by a detailed description of why. The buyer has even included photos of the product in use. How very thoughtful of them! But alas, you notice the price of the item. Maybe there’s a cheaper version with even better reviews? You keep looking and notice that yes, there is a cheaper version and it has over 10,000 five-star reviews.
Here’s where your journey starts. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to differentiate between fake customer reviews and real ones. We kid! We’ll do that for you below in our guide to Amazon review checkers.
The Compensated Review Program
When Amazon founder Jeff Bezos isn’t heading into space, he is running the company he started from his garage in 1994. Although Mr. Bezos would probably love it if there were no fake reviews on his site, he and his millions of employees can’t check every single one to verify its authenticity.
The problem is that customers are the ones getting duped by these bogus reviews which could lead to more product returns and money spent on subpar items that now sit in closets across the world unused. Besides creating waste and making a dent in your wallet, the practice of writing counterfeit reviews isn’t illegal. Yes, they violate Amazon’s terms of use but are often hard to identify, hence why there are so many.
Unfortunately, there are shady companies that use compensated review programs to entice folks to buy their products. These compensated programs give businesses a slew of positive feedback they can post on their product’s page. However, these reviews are anything but genuine.
How do compensated Amazon reviews work?
Sketchy review companies are hired by businesses to create dummy accounts to post phoney four- and five-star reviews. These dummy accounts even throw in a few bad reviews to make the products appear as if they are reviewed by real people using them. Moreover, shady companies will even write negative reviews on a competitor’s product page for a fee.
Although Amazon tries its best to crack down on fake reviewers and their dummy accounts, by the time they’re caught, consumers have already purchased the product. Plus, these fraudsters are so good at what they do, they’ll simply create more dummy accounts to keep the scam going.
Is this the same practice as Amazon’s Vine Program?
You may’ve heard of an Amazon program called Vine in which companies send products to actual users to get an honest opinion.
When it comes to tech products, it’s especially important to know if what you’ve ordered has actual earned its great review. So, how do you know which reviews are authentic and which are fabricated?
What is an Amazon Fake Review Checker?
In a survey of 1,000 of American shoppers, (reported by PCMag) only 16% of them felt they were confident in detecting a fake tech product review on Amazon. If you’re not part of that 16% – which is most of us – you may need all the help you can get. This is where Amazon fake review checkers come in.
Fake review checkers are tools that help you determine which Amazon reviews are real and which ones are suspect. These tools are easy to use and will give you peace of mind when making a purchase.
These are our top 3 amazon fake review checkers :
Fakespot
This review checker rates the reliability of product pages on Amazon through an algorithm that analyzes language, previous reviews, and purchase history. Simply paste the URL of the product page you’re looking to get the dirt on into the Fakespot Analyzer and you’ll get all the info you need to spot the fakes.
In addition to finding fakes, Fakespot will filter out the dummy account reviews to give you a truthful product rating. You can also use Fakespot for Best Buy, eBay, Sephora, and Walmart, and it is available as a Chrome extension and Android app for mobile users.
ReviewMeta
This checker removes phoney reviews to give you a product rating that reflects what the actual product is and does. Using the first 10,000 reviews of a product, ReviewMeta produces a detailed breakdown of why they’ve adjusted the rating. Copy the Amazon product’s URL into their search bar and ReviewMeta will do the rest.
What’s cool about ReviewMeta is you can tweak their algorithm to reflect criteria for a review that you find the most helpful. Available as a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, or Edge, and an Android app.
The ReviewIndex
Rounding out our list of Amazon fake review checkers is The ReviewIndex. Available on Chrome and Firefox, this online tool aggregates tech product ratings from Amazon while determining which of the ratings are genuine and which are fakes. After you paste the product page’s URL into their searchbar, this checker can detect if a product’s score has been boosted by disingenuous reviews based on certain keywords, and provides a Pass/Fail grade.
Red Flags on Amazon Reviews
Besides using an Amazon review checker, there are big flapping red flags that often appear on fraudulent reviews. Once you spot them, you’ll know if the product has been reviewed by an actual customer or someone paid to lie.
- All the five-star reviews ever. Sure, certain products are amazing but if every single reviewer has given it five stars, it’s safe to assume that there are fakes in the midst.
- The “Customers Also Bought” section features unrelated products. Looking to buy a an Android charger but notice that the products customers also bought are earrings, a bathrobe, a shelving unit, and a jar of pickles? You’re looking at a fake.
- The reviews lack descriptions and details. Any review that is one word is probably concocted by a dummy account. Look out for vague praise such as products that are “really good” with no descriptors as to what makes them really good.
- Competing products are mentioned in a bad light. Comparisons between products are important to let consumers know how they stack up. However, when a review savagely takes down a similar product seemingly out of nowhere, be wary. This is usually an indication of a paid review designed to take down a competitor.
- Similar wording on other reviews. If you notice that the products you’re looking at have all the same reviews (or at least have instances of identical wording), be cautious. These are probably written by the same dummy account. Also, look out for spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. We can’t all be Pulitzer Prize-winning authors but reviews that appear to be written by a toddler are probably fakes.
- Cons that are so over-explained that they turn into pros. This can be a bit tricky to spot so look out for reviews that say things like this, “This Bluetooth neck massager was too big for my neck and kept falling off so I only use it when I’m wearing a turtleneck which is great because I wanted to buy 10 new turtlenecks anyway.” This could also be a way for this particular dummy account to promote a specific brand of turtlenecks.
- Multiple reviews that appear at once. If you notice that a product’s review section is populated by reviews that were all posted on the same date, this is a sign of fakery. Moreover, if there are month- or year-long gaps between reviews, this is another sign of paid Amazon reviews.
You can also click on the reviewer’s name to check out their profile. Here you’ll be able to see their Impact score. This is a metric that Amazon uses based on how many people tap the “Helpful” button under each review. Additionally, you can see the other reviews they’ve written to see if they’re similarly worded, vaguely positive, and tick all othe other boxes associated with fakes.
Finally, search the brand name online. Any company that doesn’t have an official website or doesn’t sell their wares through a third-party like Amazon (or another online retailer like Facebook Marketplace and Etsy) is trouble. You can also search social media for brand reviews to tell if they’re similarly worded to the Amazon reviews.
Amazon Review Checkers for the Win
Amazon is doing what it can to crack down on fraudulent reviews. But it’s best if you do your own research and use one of the Amazon review checkers we’ve featured above, unless you want to buy turtlenecks just to use a Bluetooth neck massager.
Sources:
- https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/lets-talk-about-amazon-reviews/#vine
- https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/lets-talk-about-amazon-reviews/
- https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/spot-a-fake-review-on-amazon
- https://www.makeuseof.com/fake-reviews-amazon/
- https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-spot-fake-reviews-amazon/
- https://www.g2.com/products/appbot/reviews
You probably don’t realize it but Vine reviewers pay income taxes on the products they receive.
The program is not really free as many pay thousands a year in extra taxes. Also, Vine reviewers are not obligated to give great reviews. There’s no reason for them to lie really, because Amazon does not penalize reviewers for bad reviews.