In a world where access to information can feel endless, online reviews have changed how we shop, dine and make important spending decisions. However, the reliability of information on the web is often questionable. Asnew rules are being proposedto create civil penalties for fake reviews and testimonials, it’s imperative for platforms to take steps to stem such deceptive content and maintain consumer trust in online reviews.
A new survey commissioned by Yelp and conducted byMaterial, polling 2,000 Americans, found that consumers are doing their due diligence before patronizing a business.* Nine out of ten respondents (93%) say they read online reviews to inform their purchasing decisions. The survey, announced today by Yelp, also found that a majority of respondents (76%) said they read more online reviews now than they ever have before and that it’s rare for them to visit an unfamiliar business without checking online reviews first (70%). These findings demonstrate how important it is to mitigate deceptive information — something Yelp has prioritized since its inception by investing significantly in technology and human moderation to protect the quality and integrity of content on the platform. In fact, a newstudypublished in theJournal of Marketing Researchfound that Yelp’s content moderation practices are effective at mitigating misinformation and building consumer trust.
As a part of our commitment to protecting content integrity and preventing bad actors from gaming the system, along with the survey findings, today, we’re释放一个新的索引that regularly lists the latest Compensated Activity Alerts and Suspicious Review Activity Alerts we have placed on Yelp business pages, as well as historical recipients.
Yelp displays the latest Compensated and Suspicious Review Activity Alerts
As the online review landscape has grown, so has the potential for deceptive behavior by bad actors. One of the mechanisms we use to mitigate misinformation is ourConsumer Alerts program．作为这个项目的一部分,我们主动投资igate attempts to manipulate a business’s ratings and reviews, and may place an alert on a business page to warn people when we discover suspicious or misleading review activity. In fact, 85% of survey respondents say they want online review sites to tell them if the sites have reason to believe a business has ever received incentivized reviews.
Today, we’reintroducing a new index on Yelp’s Trust & Safety siteof the latest Compensated Activity Alerts and Suspicious Review Activity Alerts we have placed on business pages. Since 2012, Yelp has placed more than 4,900 Compensated Activity and Suspicious Review Activity Alerts on U.S. business pages.
- Compensated Activity Alertsindicate that we’ve caught someone offering payment in the form of cash, discounts, gift certificates or other incentives in exchange for writing, changing, preventing or removing reviews.
- Suspicious Review Activity Alertswarn that we’ve detected a large number of positive reviews coming from a single IP address, or reviews from users who may be connected to a group that coordinates incentivized reviews.
Yelp strictly prohibits incentivizing or offering payment for reviews, as this behavior misleads consumers, artificially inflates ratings and is unfair to businesses who rightfully earn their great reputations on Yelp. If Yelp discovers a user is writing (or removing) reviews for compensation, our practice is to remove their reviews and close their account.
The Material survey findings show that offering payment for reviews erodes consumer trust as 68% of respondents indicated they would no longer visit a business if they learned a business received incentivized reviews. Now, in addition to displaying these alerts directly on a business’s Yelp page, Yelp is making it easy for consumers and regulators to identify businesses that we’ve detected have participated in suspicious or deceptive review activity with this new index. Yelp is also showing information about historical alerts, ontrust.yelp.com/consumer-alerts/all．
Relatedly, theJournal of Marketing Researchalso evaluated how online review platforms can effectively build trust with consumers, finding that publicly exposing businesses that solicit fake reviews is one of the hardest strategies for review platforms to implement. Only 24% of the 25 review platforms evaluated in the study implement this mechanism, including Yelp.
Consumers don’t trust solicited reviews and don’t want to be asked to leave a review
Consumers feel pressure to positively inflate their rating when asked to leave a review compared to someone who was intrinsically motivated to write a review on their own. In fact, 65% of survey respondents who read reviews admitted they would write a more positive review than originally intended if a business asked them to leave a review, and 61% admitted they would provide a better star rating.
One of the policies that differentiates Yelp from other platforms is that we firmly prohibit solicited reviews, which ourautomated recommendation softwareis engineered to detect. Review solicitation leads to biased reviews and ratings, which are less helpful to consumers and give an unfair advantage to businesses with the time and marketing resources to ask a lot of customers for reviews or pay for reputation management services. While more than half of survey respondents (54%) say they wouldn’t trust reviews of businesses that ask customers to leave a review, 68% of respondents admitted they’ve been asked by a local business to leave them a review in the past.
Consumers prioritize review transparency, and have picked up new ways to verify the reviews they see
Savvy consumers look to trusted sources when it comes to online reviews, with many respondents (64%) that feel online reviews can be as trustworthy and helpful as personal referrals from their own friends and family. Most are looking for signs of trustworthiness like whether a reviewer frequently visits the type of business they’re evaluating (88%) or if the reviewer has written other reliable reviews in the past (78%). Nearly three-fourths of respondents (72%) trust the reviews of a review site’s power users over other reviewers.
People also don’t think star ratings alone tell the whole story. More than 4 in 5 respondents (83%) say they’re more likely to trust a written review over just a star rating with no review text. On Yelp, review text must always accompany a star rating — without it there wouldn’t be enough information to help consumers make a purchasing decision, or feedback to help businesses improve their customer experience. In fact, the average length of recommended reviews contributed to Yelp was 471 characters as of December 31, 2022.
Consumers go to review platforms for more than just ratings and reviews
People tend to rely on review platforms for more than just the star ratings and reviews — instead, they’re often gathering helpful details about the local businesses near them. For example, people say they rely on review platforms to view a menu (55%), confirm operating hours (54%), and check the address (54%), among other things. Only 17% of respondents say they visit review platforms solely for their reviews.
In a crowded online marketplace, how are local businesses winning over potential customers?
Responding to reviews has been a proven way for businesses to earn the trust of current and potential customers. In fact, 86% of respondents say they’re more likely to look past a business’s critical reviews if they demonstrate their commitment to customer service by responding and adequately addressing the issue. Additionally, being an engaged business owner on review platforms helps to increase their review contributions. Most respondents who read reviews (70%) say they’re more likely to write a review for a business if they see the business owner responds to reviews.
For nearly two decades, Yelp has prioritized maintaining the integrity and quality of the content on our platform.Academics,economists,industry experts,the media, andregulatorshave all acknowledged that Yelp is one of the most aggressive and successful at identifying and weeding out unreliable reviews. To learn about all the ways Yelp maintains the integrity and quality of our content, visittrust.yelp.com．
*材料调查2023年。这个调查是部署Material among 2,000 people aged 18+ in the United States. The survey was conducted online during August 2023 and has a margin of error of +/- 2%. Results of any sample are subject to sampling variation. The magnitude of the variation is measurable and is affected by the number of interviews and the level of the percentages expressing the results.
