Fake online reviews: How easily can you buy a reputation? (CBC Marketplace)

We're in the alleys of North Toronto getting ready to take on a whole new identity. In fact, this whole story is about deception and how companies use it to get your money. Hey, how are you doing? Hey Erica, that's B, well, it looks good for starters. We need to make it look like we have a legitimate business, the kind they write about in

online

reviews

, like maybe a new hip food truck. We're calling our truck, pretending to serve grilled cheese sandwiches, our slogan, come on, get your fill clearly. We are nowhere near ready to open and to be honest, we never will be.

The strange thing is that the cheese

reviews

are already available. That's weird, just check out Yelp. Someone on that review site says this place has the best grilled cheese sandwiches. Have I ever eaten in my life, it makes you wonder when it comes to

online

reviews, how much can you really trust them? Almost everyone connects to the Internet before they go online to buy anything. We want to hear what other people say about the latest restaurant, hotel, or consumer product. On sites like Yelp, Google Plus, and Urban Spoon, do you ever read online reviews? If I'm looking for a good restaurant, I'll look at the reviews, it will affect your opinion of it, it will affect whether I decide to go or not.

Basically, do you ever check online reviews? Yes, all the time, it was nice to get feedback from someone else. Which do you trust more online reviews or traditional advertising reviews? Yeah, I think it actually gives me a better sense of confidence when someone who is a stranger tells me you know this is good, this is not good because it comes more from the public than from the people who are trying to sell the products, it's not exactly what I expected. Online review sites work hard to earn your trust, just check this out. hotels.com ads your genuine guest reviews are written by guests who have actually stayed there rather than people who lie on the internet, the better the reviews will be The more we trust a business for companies that means better results an extra star on a restaurant review and revenue can increase by up to 9% With so much money at stake, it's no wonder businesses can be tempted to change their

reputation

, but how easy is it to

fake

it?

We're using our cheese food truck to find out, just like everyone else. a new business needs a website with lots of compelling photos and that means a trip to our graphics department to get a logo and a look Hi Tom, hey Erica, this is our logo, it looks great, where is it going? go to the side of the truck and on our website, how are you going to put that on our truck? Well, let's start with the truck in the garage, yeah, there it is, let's get rid of the window and straighten it out. We took it out a little, just cleaned up the sides, oh so much better, added all our branding on social media just like that and added our logo that you saw before, oh that looks cool, add the rest of the wrap around the truck Holy cow, where are they? you're going to put our slogan come get fed up right under the window that's scary and then we're going to add the menus and some orange wheels that's a brand new truck all at the click of a button all

fake

good job getting .

More shots than we can, doctor. Am I going to come here to put up the website that we are going to build? We took our truck on a road trip to Toronto's hottest spots like the Roger Center so our graphics guy could do this, and this time at the trendy Distillery. district, we even stop at a local food truck hangout, this looks great, then our web guy Stewart uses these doctored photos, this looks really legit, yeah, to make it look like the cheese is hitting in the city, at least online, so we've Setting up the website with full Stuart creates us a pretty standard site that you can find at cheesed off.car which we'll use to delve deeper into the world of fake reviews, lots of Mata, has our menu, our history and all those images. our Twitter handle is okay, um, we've also created a Facebook page, so everything we need to make it look like we're legit, okay, let me know when you're ready, okay, I'm moving on to the next step. our creation of a fake business we make a promotional video first step put it on the griddle how to make a grilled cheese sandwich like a pro hello if you love grilled cheese sandwiches as much as we do by Believe it or not There are dozens of videos like this on YouTube and now ours is there too.

Dig deeper, it's just one more way to talk about our imaginary truck. Come and see us at our food truck on the streets of Toronto. Our ultimate goal remember is to see how easy it is. It's to get some fake reviews and fake rumors about our fake truck. We start by giving our new YouTube video a little push. Only about 40 people have bothered to look at it, mainly us, so we contacted a website called 500 views and for only 30 dollars. they arrange for our video to instantly go from 40 views to over 12,000 that simple it's enough to make us wonder about other videos we've seen on YouTube, that so many people actually watched, or that someone has been paid to inflate the view count. views to achieve it.

It seems more popular than it is not long ago YouTube cracked down on fake views and targeted major record companies like Universal and Sony. It slashed their combined view counts by more than 2 billion views in one day. The big test for us, although we received some fake reviews. on some major review sites Yelp Google Urban Spoon, but who will write our fake reviews? Hello, I'm here to offer you a review written for you, not for us. fiverr.com is the largest

marketplace

in the world. When we returned, we discovered an entire industry dedicated to helping companies scam you.

I think it's really amazing how easy it is to buy dupes now on the Internet. lie or is it legitimate. Do you trust the reviews? Tell us on Twitter we all use online reviews to see restaurants and hotels, products and businesses. but how easy is it for a company to fake a good

reputation

online that's what we're researching with cheese that's a brand new truck our own fake food truck all fake good job we want people to praise our truck on big review sites but to do that we need some fakers, our search leads us here to a website called fiverr.com fiverr.com is the world's largest

marketplace

for the professional and creative services you need to give your business a boost, all from just $ 5 Fiverr offers help.

Hire is full of people who will do almost anything for five dollars, in our case we want reviews of our food truck and there is no shortage of offers from all over the world, including Canada, like this woman they know as vegetarian jeb, Jen. I'm here. to provide you with a written review of your product, service or website, here is another Canadian known on Fiverr as sand pan. I'll make you a great promotional or testimonial review video of 30 seconds or less that you can use to advertise your business or website. she is willing to say anything we want about cheese hello my name is Marie hello I'm Suzanne my name is Jane as she has done with so many other companies we decided to hire Jen, head of vegetables at sanpan and Others, we send them a link to our fake businesses and ask everyone for a good review While we wait for the results, we hit the streets of Toronto to see how much you can trust online reviews by testing how well passersby can spot a fake one.

These are two reviews of a Chicago hotel. one of them is a real review and the other one is fake and what I want you to do is read both reviews and then tell me which one you think is the fake one so take your time and make sure all these people say to use online reviews to help them decide where to spend their money, so pick one. A or B is false, but can you tell when you are being lied to? I mean interview a is fake, it's fake, okay, that means you two say review a is fake, yes, in fact, review B is fake, yes, okay, a is fake, B is real, in fact, B is false, ah, so which one is false a to b is false, oh, for that one it was difficult to tell the difference, oh yes, big.

Of the eight people we tested, only one of them spots the fake review to find out why we're on the trail of a Canadian who has been studying the problem here at Cornell University in New York. Jeff Hancock is a communications professor who especially studies online behavior. Online Bakery How good are people at detecting online deception? Well, we're really bad at detecting deception in general, so the average is 54%, so half the time when you look at something online, you can't tell if it's true or not. and that's not just for the internet, that's all the time Jeff helped develop a computer program, he's just going to get a fake review that can help us all.

You've created something called a skeptical review, what is it about? Oh, it's a tool that our research team, uh. created to show people how the language differs when it comes to a fake review versus a genuine review. Jeff says this algorithm is 90% accurate when it comes to picking out misleading reviews. You can check it out on our website so the red words are words that the algorithm I thought this makes me think is really misleading and the blue words are words that make me think. This is associated with truthfulness. Jeff says a sure sign it's fake is when we viewers get overly excited and when the people writing go into storytelling mode.

Fake reviews tend to use the word I, me or my much more than people who actually stayed there, the reason is that they are telling a story about what they think they did, so they include themselves in the story, while the people there don't actually have to tell a story, they're just describing what their experience was. Remember all those fake reviews we bought. Now they are arriving and, sure enough, they are full of elaborate narratives. This review from Veg's boss, Jen, says: Yo. I was in Toronto for a few days and came across queso, this isn't grilled cheese either, it's grilled cheese, super delicious.

A review by Kimberly B says that when I had one of these grilled cheese sandwiches, they were the best she's ever had. than my mom's, this review by checkyself CL, the truck itself has a happy atmosphere thanks to the friendly staff who were pleasant and fun. I guess she's talking about us, but remember we never met, we ask our fake reviewers to publish their work. three review sites Yelp Google and Urban Spoon popular sites you trust and within a few days those fake reviews start appearing 10 of them all together Weeks later they are still there finally we also received news from Sand pan, remember it Hello, I just wanted to do this video Quick to tell everyone how much I love eating it without cheese.

She doesn't do written reviews, but she does send this video testimonial. I love lunch at Cheese. They are fast, friendly, and make the best grilled cheese sandwich. by now we have fake views on youtube fake reviews on yelp google urban spoon we even have sand it all makes us want to delve even deeper into the world of online fakery when we come back it seems natural yeah how widespread it is If our hidden cameras take you away Within an industry that promises to help us fake it until we make it when you say you'll handle reviews, what does that mean?

We create them ourselves or we also have writers who would do that kind of thing. things you think you can spot fake reviews test your deception detection on cbc.ca Marketplace we have discovered that the online world is full of fakes in New York Attorney General arrests 19 companies for flooding the Internet with fake reviews, in some cases it is national news They went as far as Eastern Europe and Bangladesh to hire fake reviewers, so this is a massive scam that we are determined to stop. Some of those arrested are Internet marketers, experts at attracting customers to their website, those in New York were not. following the rules, but could companies in Canada be doing the same?

We were looking for internet marketers and came across a company called mzar while browsing their website. mzar lists their different services, including Yelp reviews, and we thought real customers wrote them a little further. on the MSR page, check that out Hello, my name is Michelle and I am a real estate agent. A glowing review for mzar from one of the people who sold us a fake review. I needed to find a complete listing and that's basically why I hired mzar. The media seems like the internet marketer needed a fake review of his own and I have to tell you they did a phenomenal job.

Okay, we'll connect it tothese glasses. We think Amazar deserves a closer look. These are complicated. sometimes I worry about the wires sticking out of my head, we put hidden cameras, it seems natural, yeah, and we head to her office in north Toronto, inside, hey, we talk on the phone, we meet with an account manager, she opens our website and offers some praise, yes, this is really cool. I like the photography, it's really good, but we want to know more about how to create buzz on the Internet. We really hope to spread the word about her and that will result in people coming forward to our truck right awareness, eventually she talks about taking care of the reviews for us when you say you will take care of the reviews, what does that mean?

We create them ourselves or we also have writers who would do that kind of thing and not just do it. They write fake reviews, they know how to get them on big sites like Yelp. The thing about Yelp is that they're pretty picky about the type of reviews because they've recommended reviews and then basically if it looks like it's coming from a sketchy source, they won. Don't post it, she assures us that she can post our fake reviews without setting off an alarm. Bells, you're sorry, you would use what we would use our own accounts to do the reviews and stuff. your own company review about yourself so yeah for reviews we would use our own accounts like just personal accounts or yeah right she also knows how to get us some reviews on Google so how many reviews do you think we should have there?

It depends, you don't want to just post 10 at once because Google will spam them or we'll consider them a little sketchy like them. Don't really rely on it, so over time, maybe two or two or three, you want to spread them out so they look realistic. Days later, the company sends us a contract that establishes the deception. Three reviews a month on Google and Yelp now, some estimates say up to 15% of online reviews could be fake. MH in Ithaca, New York, people are increasingly relying on online reviews. Cornell professor Jeff Hancock says fake reviews undermine our trust in the kindness of strangers and could lead to real problems.

What happens when the stakes are high and you rely on an online review from a dentist or lawyer that turns out not to be very good? I think it will become a bigger and bigger problem as there are more and more of these high-end services lawyers dentists doctors come online with reviews and those are real, that's not just having a bad meal at a restaurant that could affect your life greatly with so much trust at stake, we want to know why MSR is offering to compensate reviews and post them on popular sites. We asked president Danny Hans several times to appear on camera, but he doesn't say hello.

I would like to see Danny Han from msar, so at first we stopped by his office and were told it would only be a minute. okay, but then we hear that he's not actually in the office, he's off site or he's here, we manage to get through to him on the phone. Han says we were wrong, the account manager we met was new, they want to get a new client. Everyone is enthusiastic, willing to do whatever the customer wants, and offering to write fake reviews is against company policy. He says they sometimes help post legitimate reviews.

Let me tell you something about reviews, most reviews are done out of revenge, like people want. to get revenge most of the reviews are negative so many customers want positive reviews to eliminate negative reviews. Okay, that's why customers ask for that. I'm not saying we do that, but after hearing our findings, Danny Han admits wrongdoing. We apologize and have taken steps to correct past errors of judgment and prevent future errors of judgment. MSR changes its website so that its services no longer mention online reviews, and speaking of which, at Yelp we are constantly working to recommend reviews that have earned that trust.

Yelp is the only review site that detects any of our fakes, two of the three posted about cheeseed off Yelp says it's thanks to the secret algorithm it uses to stop the scam. Urban Spoon doesn't catch any of the three fake reviews about cheesed off posted on their website and Google doesn't find the four fake reviews posted there, they don't want to talk about it on camera but they send a statement saying we have strict policies prohibiting business fake and inauthentic reviews and while we remove thousands of fake entries every month there is a small subset of bad apples, bad apples, we decided to post one more review, this real one on our own Google page, hey Google, this is the fake food truck the one we told you about and the fake reviews they have.

I've been on your site for weeks thinking people who trust your site will be angry, maybe now Google will do something about our fake reviews, so how do businesses react when you criticize them online? We heard it from a viewer who knows Sackville's Jeff Allad firsthand. New Brunswick, posts a negative review on Tigerdirect.ca and they change it without his permission. I wrote an online review that was posted on his website and I would like to know how I can remove it from the website. Find out why. Tiger Direct say they have the right to edit their reviews, that's next week on Market Place, meanwhile it's the end of the road for cheese, but to make sure you're not caught off guard always check more than one site reviews, read at least. a dozen reviews and if the language is overly enthusiastic, remember they might be faking it next week on Marketplace too.

Do you know how much gasoline you are really consuming? You never really get what you're told. Are you spending hundreds more than you used to? I promised him that I believe the seller. What the auto industry isn't telling you about the numbers in the window, we test how far I can go with a tank of gas dropped on my head and I go to the showroom floor looking for answers, is that, Yeah. to turn off