According to Fakespot, an e-commerce market analysis company, the number of fake reviews in Amazon surged due to the Corona 19 epidemic that occurred in March 2020, reaching 42% of the total.
Although it is a useful system that informs the evaluation of the person who bought the Amazon customer review product, it is difficult to know the true evaluation in Amazon reviews anymore because a number of fake reviews using the recent system reversed are being published, and such fake review techniques are becoming more sophisticated. There is also a request to unfairly create a product evaluation in a post by such as, or to post a positive review as a free product offer or reward.
FakeSpot, which provides a Chrome extension that judges such fake reviews, conducted a survey of the rate of fake reviews. A review of 720 million Amazon reviews published from March to September 2020 found that 42% were less reliable. During the same period in 2019, 36% of the reviews were found to be less reliable, so the rate of 42% was higher. This increase in fake reviews is said to have been seen only during Black Friday or Christmas.
According to Fake Spot, the result of this investigation confirmed a surge in fake reviews in the form of a ban on going out due to the Corona 19 epidemic. The proportion of fake reviews posted on Wal-Mart during the same period in 2020 was almost the same as the same period last year, suggesting that the surge in fake reviews in 2020 may be a phenomenon unique to Amazon. Fake Spot points out that the reason that there were a lot of fake reviews in 2020, especially, was that during the Corona 19 period, demand for disinfectants and masks surged and reviews with low reliability increased.
Like FakeSpot, ReviewMeta, which provides a service that determines fake reviews on Amazon, also sees a surge in unreliable reviews in 2020. However, the Review Meta pointed out that Corona 19 was not the cause. The real cause is that Amazon’s new star-rated tap rating. While the tab evaluation scored an average of 4.3 stars for the hidden evaluation, such as the date the evaluation was sent, the person who sent the evaluation, and the product evaluated by other users who rated the product, the score attached to the tab evaluation averages 4.6 points. Is that there is a difference in ease. For this reason, it is argued that tap evaluation distorts the review value.
In response to the investigation, Amazon is aware of the existence of an attacker who is abusing the rating system and is investing resources to protect the integrity of the review. The tab rating was written so that it could get genuine ratings from the users who purchased the product. It was revealed that it was possible to add a star to a product without writing a review, making it easy to help other users. Related information can be found here .