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

we're in the back alleys of North Toronto getting ready to assume a whole new identity in fact this entire story is about deception and how companies use it to get your money hey how's it going they're good that's fine yourself good it's looking good to start we need to make it seem like we have a business that's legit behind they write online reviews about life maybe a trendy new food truck we're calling our truck cheesed off pretending to serve up grilled cheese sandwiches our slogan come get fed up clearly we're nowhere near ready to open and to be honest we never will be the strange thing is the reviews for cheesed off are already in just check out Yelp someone on that review site says this place has the best grilled cheese sandwiches I've ever eaten in my life makes you wonder when it comes to online reviews how much and you really trust them just about everybody goes online before getting in line to buy anything we want to hear what other people are saying 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 look at the reviews it'll affect your opinion of it it'll affect whether or not I decide to go there basically here do you ever check out online reviews yeah all the time is good to get someone else's feedback which do you trust more online reviews or traditional advertising reviews yeah I think it actually gives me a better sense of trust when somebody who's a stranger tells me that you know this is good this is not good because it's more from the public than from the people who are trying to sell the products not exactly what I expected online review sites work hard to gain your trust just check out this hotels.com ad they're genuine guest reviews are written by guests who have genuinely stayed there instead of people who lie on the internet the better the reviews the more we trust a business for companies that means a better bottom line one extra star in a restaurant review and revenues can go up by as much as nine percent with so much money on the line no wonder companies might be tempted to fudge their reputations but how easy is it to fake it we're using our cheese dog food truck find out like every new business cheesed off needs a website with lots of convincing photos and that means a trip to our graphics department for a logo and a look hi Tom Erica is this our logo this is it Oh looks great where's it gonna go it's gonna go on the side of the truck and on our website how are you gonna get that on our truck well we're gonna start with the truck in the garage yeah there it is we're gonna get rid of the window and straighten it out a little bit it's gone clean up the sides ah so much better at all of our social media branding just like that and add our logo that you saw before that's great and add the rest of the wrap around the truck holy cow where you gonna put our slogan come get fed up right below the window that is scary and then we're gonna add the menus and some orange wheels that is a whole new truck home off the click of a button Alfie nice job to get more shots weekend doctor electornic here to put on the website we're gonna build we take our truck on a road trip to Toronto's hot spots like the Roger Center so our graphics guy can do this and this this time at the trendy distillery district we even pull up at a local food truck gathering spot this looks great then our web guy Stewart uses these tricked-out photos this looks really legit yeah to make it seem like cheesed off is taking the city by storm at least online so we've set up the website with the whole Stewart builds us a pretty standard site you can find it at cheesed off dot CA this is our public face the bait we'll use to dig deeper into the world of fake reviews lots of matzo it's got our menu our story and all those pictures what's our Twitter handle it's at cheese dog truck gram we've also set up a Facebook page as well so everything we need to make it seem like we're legit all right let me know when you're ready okay I'm rolling next step in our creation of a fake business we make up promotional video first step put it onto the griddle how to make a grilled cheese sandwich like a pro there if you love grilled cheese sandwiches as much as we do believe it or not there are dozens of videos just like it on YouTube and now ours is there to dig in it's just one more way to talk up our imaginary truck come down and see us on our food truck on the streets of Toronto cheesed off our ultimate goal remember is to see how easy it is to get some fake reviews and fake buzz for our fake truck we start by giving our new YouTube video a boost only about 40 people have bothered to look at it mostly us so we contact a website called 500 views and for just 30 bucks they arrange for our video to go instantly from 40 views more than 12,000 that's simple it's enough to make us wonder about other videos we've seen on YouTube have that many people really watched or has someone been paid to inflate the view count to make it seem more popular than it is not long ago YouTube crackdown on fake views and targeted major record companies like Universal and Sony it slashed their combined view counts by more than two billion views in one day the big test for us though get some fake reviews on some big review sites Yelp Google Urban Spoon but who's gonna write our fake reviews oh hi there I'm here to offer you a written review not us fiverr.com is the world's largest marketplace when we come back we uncover an entire industry devoted to helping businesses mislead you I think it's really amazing how easily it is to purchase deception now on why or legit do you trust reviews tell us on Twitter we all use online reviews to check out 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 investigating with cheesed off that is a whole new truck our own fake food truck all fake nice job we want people to rave about our truck on big review sites but to do that we need some fakers our search takes us here to a web site 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 starting at just $5 Fiverr offers help for hire it's filled with people who do just about anything for five bucks in our case we want reviews of our food truck and there's no shortage of offers from all over the world including Canada like this woman she's known as veg head Jen I'm here to offer you a written review for your product or your service warrior website here's another Canadian known on Fiverr as san-pan I'll make you a great 30 second or less testimonial promotional or review video that you can use to advertise your business or website she's willing to say anything we want about cheesed off hi there my name is Marie hi I'm Suzanne my name is Jane just like she has about so many other companies we decided to hire san-pan veg head Jen and others send them a link to our fake business and ask them all 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 passers-by can spot a fake one these are two reviews about a Chicago hotel one of them is an actual review and the other one is fake and what I want you to do is read both reviews and then let me know which one you think is the fake one okay so just take your time share all of these folks say they use online reviews to help them decide where to spend their money so what a or B is fake but can they tell when they're being lied to I want to send you a it is the fake one fake okay so that means both of you say review a is in fact review B is the big plane yeah okay hey is fake B is real rocked B is fake ah so which one's fake a B is fake oh it was hard to tell the difference oh yeah yeah make sense of the eight people we test only one of them spots the fake review to learn why we're on the trail of a Canadian who's been studying the problem here at Cornell University in Ithaca New York Geoff Hancock's a communications prof. who studies online behavior especially online bakery how good are people at detecting deception online well we're really bad at detecting deception in general so the average is 54% so half the time when you're looking at something online you can't tell whether it's true or fake right and that's not only just for online that's all the time Jeff's helped develop a computer program I'm gonna grab a fake review that can help us all you've created something called review skeptic what's that about it's a tool that our research team created to show people how language differs when it's a fake review versus a genuine review jeff says this algorithm is 90% accurate when it comes to picking out deceptive reviews you can check it out on our website so the red words are words that the algorithm thought and this makes me think it's really deceptive and the blue words are words that it makes it think this is associated with truthfulness jeff says a sure sign of a fake is when we're viewers are too glowing and when they go into storytelling mode people that write fake reviews tend to use the word I me or my a lot more than people that have actually stayed there the reason is they're telling a story about what they think they did so they've putting themselves in the story whereas people have actually been there they don't have to tell a story they're just describing what their experience was remember all those fake reviews we bought you're now rolling in sure enough they're filled with elaborate storytelling this review from veg had Jen says I was in Toronto for a few days and I found cheesed off this is not any grilled cheese either it's grilled cheese jacked up and super delicious a review from Kimberly B says when I had one of these grilled cheese sandwiches they were the best I ever had better than my mama's this review from check yourself claims the truck itself has an upbeat atmosphere thanks to the friendly staff who were all personable and funny I guess she's talking about us but remember we've never met we asked our fake reviewers to post their work on three review sites Yelp Google and Urban Spoon popular sites you trust and within days those phony reviews start appearing and of them altogether weeks later they're still there finally we also hear back san-pan remember her hi there I just wanted to make this quick video to tell everyone how much I love eating it cheesed off she doesn't do written reviews but sends along this video testimonial I love getting lunch at cheesed off they're fast they're friendly and they make the best grilled cheese sandwich around by now we've got fake views on YouTube fake reviews on Yelp Google Urban Spoon we've even got sampan it all makes us want to dig even deeper into the world of online fakery when we come back looks natural yeah just how widespread is it our hidden cameras take you inside an industry promising to help us fake it till we make it when you say if you'll take care of your news what does that mean treat them ourselves or we have writers as well you never do that thank you can spot fake reviews test your deception detection at cbc.ca / marketplace we've discovered the online world is filled with fakery in New York the Attorney General busts 19 companies for flooding the internet with phony reviews it makes national news some cases they went as far away as Eastern Europe and Bangladesh to hire phony reviewers so this is massive fraud that we're determined to shut down some of those busted are internet marketers experts at attracting customers to your website ones in New York weren't playing by the rules but could companies in Canada be doing the same thing we searched for internet marketers and come across a company called Emma czar as we scroll through its website Emma's our list it's different services including Yelp reviews and we thought real customers wrote those a little further down the EMAs our page look at that hi there my name is Michelle and I'm a real estate agent a glowing review for Emma's are by one of the people who sold us a fake review I needed to find listings fast and basically that's why I hired Emma's our media James the internet marketer needed a fake review of its own and I've got to tell you that they did just a phenomenal job okay we'll get you hooked up with these glasses we think Emma's are deserves a closer look these ones are tricky cuz sometimes I worry that the wires are sticking out of my head we put on hidden cameras looks natural yeah and head to their office in North Toronto inside hey we spoke on the phone we meet an Account Manager she pulls up our cheesed off website and offer some compliments yeah like this is actually great I like the photography's really good but we want to know more about creating a buzz on the Internet we're really hoping to just sort of get the word out and translate to people showing up at our truck right yes eventually she talks about taking care of reviews for us when you say it you'll take care of your views what does that mean we treat them ourselves or we have writers as well you never do that in a second not only will they write fake reviews they know how to get them on big sites like Yelp lets you out the servers a cube what kind of them cuz they have recommended reviews and um basically if it looks like it's coming from a sketchy source they will move it she assures us she can get our fake reviews posted without setting off alarm bells oh it's or you would use your what these are all accounts to do the reviews and stuff was done how do that cuz it would be like you're your own company you also have to tell them right so yeah like for the reviews we would use our own account social personal account server yeah yeah you're right she also knows how to get us some reviews on Google so how many reviews do you think we should have up there depends you don't want to just post it in Henrik wave huh man that I really don't look at it as sketchy I don't really trust it okay so would be over time yeah maybe like two or three we want to spread the looks like okay days later the company sends us a contract setting out the deception three reviews a month on Google and Yelp no wonder some estimates say as many as fifteen percent of online reviews could be faked down in Ithaca New York people are becoming more and more reliant on online reviews Cornell professor Jeff Hancock says fake reviews undermine our trust in the kindness of strangers and they could lead to some real trouble what about when the stakes are really high you trust an online review for a dentist or a lawyer that turns out to not be very good I think it's gonna become an increasingly big problem as more and more of these high-end services lawyers dentists doctors come online with reviews and those are real that's that's not just having a bad meal at a restaurant that could affect your life in a big way with so much trust at stake we want to know why EMAS our offers to makeup reviews and post them on popular sites we ask president danny hands several times to come on camera but he won't hi I'd like to see it to Hanahan remembers our so we drop by his office at first we're told just be a minute okay but then we hear actually he's not in the office is the offsider is he here we do manage to get him on the phone hand says we have it wrong the Account Manager we met with knew they want to get a new client you're all gung-ho they're willing to do whatever the client wants and that offering to write fake reviews is against company policy he says sometimes they help post legitimate reviews let me tell you something up reviews most reviews are done those revenge that people want to get revenge about most reviews are negative so a lot of clients they want positive reviews to push down the negative reviews okay that's why clients ask for that I'm not saying that we do that but after hearing about our findings Danny Han admits wrongdoing we apologize and have taken action to correct past and prevent future errors in judgment Emma's our changes its website so its services no longer mention online reviews and speaking of Yelp we're constantly working to recommend the reviews that have earned that trust Yelp is the only review site that catches any of our fakes two out of the three that are posted about cheesed off says it's thanks to the secret algorithm it uses to stop deception Urbanspoon doesn't detect any of the three phony reviews about cheesed off posted on its website and Google doesn't find the for fake cheesed off reviews posted there they don't want to talk about it on camera but send a statement saying we have strict policies prohibiting fake businesses and inauthentic reviews and while we take down thousands of false entries each month there is a small subset of bad apples out there bad apples we decide to post one more review this one real on our own cheesed off Google page K Google this is the fake food truck we told you about and the fake reviews they've been on your site for weeks now thinking the people who trust your site will be cheesed off maybe now Google will do something about our fake reviews so how do companies react when you criticize them online we hear from a viewer who knows first hand Jeff all her head of Sackville New Brunswick he posts a negative review on tigerdirect CA and they change it without his permission I wrote an online review that was posted on your website and I'd like to find out how I can have it taken off the website find out why tigerdirect says they have the right to edit your reviews that's next week on marketplace meantime it's the end of the road for cheesed off but to make sure you don't get taken for a ride always check more than one review site read at least a dozen reviews and if the language is too blowing remember they just might be faking it also next week a marketplace you know how much gas you're really gusting you never really get what they tell you are you spending hundreds more than what you were promised you know I believe the salesperson what the auto industry isn't telling you about those numbers on the window we test how far I can get on one tank of gas rain drops you fall it on the head and hit the showroom floor for answers that one yeah

Channel: CBC News

Views: 1,446,964

Rating: 4.7906566 out of 5

Keywords: Marketplace (Award-Winning Work), Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (TV Network), News (TV Genre), Review, Canada, Television (Invention), Reviews

Id: 3y0pYUdfGiw

Length: 22min 20sec (1340 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 07 2014