Receiving a review from a satisfied customer can often make you feel good about your business. However, many additional benefits stem from having your customers leave reviews — even if some reviews contain room for improvement on your part.
From building your brand reputation to providing constructive feedback that helps your business develop, authentic customer reviews are an invaluable tool. In an era wherein customers aim to maximise their value for money and ensure the products and services they receive are up to par, many may look at reviews to determine whether or not to make a purchase. Because of this, it’s in a business’s best interest to ensure that its customers leave genuine reviews.
But how can you tell a fake review from a real one, and does paying for reviews cause harm to your business? To explore these topics in more detail, Feefo has created this guide to break down the importance of genuine reviews and why you shouldn’t rush to buy reviews for your business.
What are “real reviews”?
A “real review” refers to an authentic review from a customer who has directly interacted with your business. Whether they’ve purchased an item your business sells or hired your services, the main factor is that they have first-hand experience.
In contrast, “fake reviews” are inauthentic reviews. In the most extreme examples, fake reviews are bought by businesses to appear trustworthy or are purchased by a rival brand to tarnish their competitor’s reputation and redirect traffic to their site.
What impacts do fake reviews have on businesses?
While collecting fake reviews for your business may seem tempting to boost your reputation and attract new customers, doing so can harm your trustworthiness and may drive potential customers away from your products. Some of the negative impacts of fake reviews include:
Loss of trust
When customers detect that a business is paying for reviews, this can cause suspicions that a business has something to hide and is, therefore, untrustworthy. Rather than boosting sales as hoped, this may result in fewer customers taking the risk to purchase from your business.
Harm to search engine optimisation (SEO) rankings
While positive reviews play a role in helping to increase SEO rankings, false reviews can do the opposite. Search engine algorithms can detect fake reviews, and there are often local and national penalties for those found to be using them.
No constructive feedback
Although a less-than-glowing review may seem undesirable, there are benefits to receiving reviews from customers that highlight areas for improvement. Fake reviews that only flatter the business or product leave no room for constructive feedback that allows your business to better itself.
Customer disappointment
Using fake reviews may cause genuine customers to feel dissatisfied with the product or service they receive. This may mean that any real reviews your business receives are from unhappy customers.
How to tell if a review is real
At a glance, a fake review may pass off as legitimate. However, looking at these reviews more closely, it becomes apparent that something isn’t quite right. Each fake review contains some obvious signs that it is disingenuous. Below are some ways to identify inauthentic reviews.
Check the review date
Many businesses that utilise fake reviews tend to pay for more reviews in preparation for a big product launch. Multiple reviews dated before a product release suggests these reviews are likely false. Similarly, large volumes of positive reviews with the same date are suspicious.
Inspect the reviewer’s profile
Quite often, paid fake reviews are left by bots — rather than real people. Because of this, reviewer accounts are created solely to leave one positive review. Reviewer profiles that contain just one review or leave reviews for a specific company are suspicious of being fake. Similarly, these profiles often have no profile picture, similar usernames, and little-to-no personal information.
Wording and grammar
Fake reviews typically share some patterns in their word choices. For example, they often overuse “Me” and “I”. These reviews might also use formal grammar that doesn’t match the type of person you would expect to be a customer. If numerous reviews share similar wording and sentence structure, this may suggest that they are illegitimate.
Too much scene-setting
Another pitfall that false reviews fall into is providing too much information about events or people rather than their experience with the product or service. Authentic reviews are much more likely to talk about the product they’re reviewing rather than taking the time to build the reasoning behind their purchase.
Black-and-white reasoning
Most of the time, a legitimate review will provide positives and negatives that they noticed about a product or service. In contrast, fake reviewers have a black-and-white approach to everything they review. If a profile contains numerous reviews that are either 100% love or hate, this suggests that they may not be real.
Beware of “customer-jacking”
Finally, the “odd one out” is customer-jacking. This type of review may appear when a rival business has paid for negative reviews on their competitor’s page to direct potential customers to their products instead. Multiple reviewers disliking a product and mentioning the same alternative product or brand may be signs of a fake review.
The Five Benefits of Real Reviews for your Business
Now that we’ve touched on ways to identify fake reviews and why your business should avoid them, it’s time to delve into how you can improve your business using authentic customer reviews.
There are a plethora of ways in which your business can benefit from genuine reviews. These include:
Increased brand awareness
Authentic reviews from satisfied customers can drastically improve brand awareness, helping you attract more potential customers to your business. You can feature these reviews on your website to show trustworthiness or use them to target specific demographics through social media posts highlighting the number of 5-star reviews.
Customer retention
Not only can genuine reviews help you attract new customers, but they can also help maintain relationships with existing customers. Responding to thank a customer for their review or sincerely addressing any constructive criticism can demonstrate that you value their time and input.
Learn more about how to build customer relationships with our guide to customer retention.
Business improvement
Like anything, not every customer will have a perfect experience with your business. Sometimes, a customer may use their review to highlight problems with your product or suggest a future product they would like to see. These reviews are crucial to your business improvement plan, as they can directly show demand and revision areas.
Reputation
Businesses with many reviews from real people appear more trustworthy and legitimate than those with fewer reviews or reviews from fake accounts. Building a healthy bank of reviews can improve your business' reputation with potential customers and businesses you might work with.
Better SEO rankings
As mentioned earlier, positive reviews can help your business perform better in online search rankings. Reviews may unintentionally contain keywords that catch when potential customers are searching for products or services, meaning that your business website appears in their search results. The more reviews your business has, the higher the chances of this happening.
Collecting Reviews with Feefo
Don’t leave your business reviews vulnerable to fakes that could damage your reputation. By collecting customer reviews with Feefo, you can be sure that all of your reviews are 100% genuine — thanks to our verification process that ensures only verified customers can review your products.
We send feedback requests to hundreds of thousands of customers each day. We also help your business target the right demographics through our data capture service — ensuring that you receive relevant information about your customers that can better promote your business to others like them.
So, if your business is ready to take customer reviews to the next level, contact our customer service team today to find out how we can help.
