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"Fakespot" may help tell if Amazon reviews are genuine

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Lisa
Bibliophile
Posts: 1153
Joined: August 2012
Favourite HF book: Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman
Preferred HF: Any time period/location. Timeslip, usually prefer female POV. Also love Gothic melodrama.
Location: Northeast Scotland

"Fakespot" may help tell if Amazon reviews are genuine

Post by Lisa » Fri October 21st, 2016, 12:03 pm

So there has been talk over fake Amazon reviews recently, and I've consistently noticed suspicious looking reviews myself when browsing.

I came across this online tool earlier today, you just paste in the URL of the Amazon item you're looking at, and it analyses ratio of positive reviews, keywords, and (creepily) searches reviewers' profiles and history, to tell how legit they seem.

http://fakespot.com/

It's not going to be 100% perfect of course, but could be worth a try if you are unsure whether that totally awesome looking product really is, or not.

Although having said that, I just plugged in the URL of a self-pubbed book that I did not think was very good (just my opinion of course). The book had a fair amount of critical reviews (the most used keyword was "mistake"), but about 25% of its reviews had a 5* rating, and I do suspect some may have been 'enthusiastic' friends and family members of the author. Anyway the tool said I could trust the reviews for this product, I guess because there were a fair amount of negative reviews, and those 5* reviewers didn't have much history to go on.

So not foolproof! But still, could be handy.

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Misfit
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Joined: August 2008
Location: Seattle, WA

Re: "Fakespot" may help tell if Amazon reviews are genuine

Post by Misfit » Fri October 21st, 2016, 1:02 pm

I think I have heard chat about this site in the Amazon forums, but don't remembers the specifics. Amazon is on a major crackdown, particularly what are known as coupon club reviewers. If I have it correctly, they get a coupon from the manufacturer/seller that really ends up as a zero price and/or a few pennies and that gets them the AVP badge. They sellers encourage the reviewers to get Prime, so there's free shipping in Amazon. Then they post lots of glowing reviews and big on product photos. After a while you can recognize them and disregard them - but Amazon is zapping a lot of these reviewers. Poof, all reviews gone and no more reviewing at all.
At home with a good book and the cat...
...is the only place I want to be

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