Pixelated little stars on the World Wide Web have consumed the business universe. Many of us use them every day. There’s a galaxy of reviews to ponder when buying or dining or whatever. Yelp’s annual report says it had amassed 265 million cumulative reviews at the end of 2022.
But some say: beware.
“It’s just saturated with fakery,” said Kay Dean who runs Fake Review Watch. From her San Jose home, former federal investigator Kay Dean hosts a YouTube channel dedicated to outing fake online reviews.
She estimates there are millions of them. “Cheaters are allowed to cheat,” Dean said. Recently, she’s been seeing a rising tide of rip-off reviews.
“These fake profiles are plagiarizing content, Dean said.
Over and over, Dean showed us suspiciously similar, if not identical reviews appearing all over the web. “I see the exact same review that was posted a month earlier,” Dean noted, pointing to one review.
For example, Dean flagged a 5-star Yelp review of a North Bay data recovery company — called DriveSavers — by someone named Glory G.
NBC Bay Area Responds
Got a consumer problem? Call 1-888-996-TIPS. We respond to every call, every e-mail.
Word for word, the review is also on Google under a different name: the account belonging to Leonard Nganga. "Basically, I run a small computer business in Santa Rosa,” Nganga said. He tells us he wrote a real 5-star review. On Google, and only on Google.
So, how did his words end up on Yelp?
Get a weekly recap of the latest San Francisco Bay Area housing news. Sign up for NBC Bay Area’s Housing Deconstructed newsletter.
We asked the data recovery company because our team found other 5-star reviews of DriveSavers were carbon copied too.
“Somebody took those reviews, and we suspect paid other people to post them word for word,” said Michelle West, Senior Marketing Manager for DriveSavers.
DriveSavers insists it had nothing to do with the duplicate reviews. Its marketing manager told us she suspects a competitor posted the fakes -- to get DriveSavers in hot water with review companies.
“Perhaps they were going to identify us to Yelp or Google as having duplicate reviews,” West said.
Yelp says “...reviews that are plagiarized or swiped from other sites, users or businesses violate [its] Content Guidelines and are subject to removal by [Yelp] moderators.”
Our team found ten copycats on DriveSavers’ page and flagged Yelp. It removed all those plus 100 more.
Yelp said it had no evidence a competitor posted the duplicates. Ultimately, Yelp put a “Suspicious Review Activity Alert” on DriveSavers’ page. Yelp then removed that alert and said it lifts alerts if it finds the offending behavior has stopped after 90 days.
DriveSavers told us it’s begun verifying the authenticity of all its reviews.
Yelp says it has controls to catch copycats and fakes. It says software stops about 18% of reviews from ever going public. Kay Dean says her research is evidence phonies are still getting through.
“I liken it to the Wild West,” Dean said. “There’s no sheriff. Nobody’s policing.”
That might change. The Federal Trade Commission is currently weighing new, tougher rules — and fines — for fake reviews, which could eventually stop some shady businesses.
But for now, Dean says to use her ten-second technique to spot-check a review: highlight the review, copy the text, then paste it into Google search. See if you find a copycat.
“Who wouldn’t want to know?” Dean said.
You can try something else too. Yelp just posted a huge, new list of accounts it flagged for “suspicious activity” -- like reviews that might’ve been bought. There are more than 4,900 entries.
Bookmark the link. Then, whenever you are looking for a business with good reviews, check to see if it’s ever been on the suspicious list.
Have a consumer complaint? Let us know, so we can help.
