Whether it’s buying a car, picking a hotel to stay at, or deciding on which movie to watch, we like to read reviews beforehand. Doing so prevents us from making bad choices and a negative experience.
There’s nothing like a recommendation like “you have to try this place, it’s incredible” going there and having the time of your life.
When the internet sprung up, reviews on everything and anything were available and it was wonderful. But then like everything else, they got manipulated and so now it’s really difficult to know what to trust.
This story from England about restaurants being blackmailed with bad reviews is frightening – it’s one thing to falsely promote a place as good when it’s not, but it’s truly evil to try to destroy a small business who is looking to provide for its community. And then people complain when there are no new restaurants.
These sites need to be part of the solution and not part of the problem which is why it was encouraging to see Amazon and the Better Business Bureau work together to fight fake reviews.
People who read the reviews need to have 100% faith in them that they’re accurate and up to date and this currently isn’t the case.
Sites thought it would be good to offer reviews as they’re a great source of information and thus traffic but they didn’t give that much thought to policing them. If someone posts a Google review that their steak was terrific and the service was exceptional, no one is going to confirm that this was actually the case and so, the reviews become a free for all.
The irony of all this is that because of the lack of faith in online reviews, we’re forced to go back to the future and ask our friends if they have any recommendations.