Why you can't trust Amazon user recommendations
Filed under: Ripoffs and Scams
Here's the problem bedeviling marketers- as print media declines, television viewership fragments,and Internet advertising's impact is diluted by an overabundance of ads, how will customers find the good stuff? How will you and I know we must see Iron Man and, at all costs, avoid Disaster Movie?
The answer could be recommendations by like-minded Internet users. Amazon, for example, gathers user reviews for its items. The site Digg allows participants to vote on interesting stories on the net, pushing the most popular to the top of the list. Goodreads.com allows members to express their opinions about books, so readers can pick the best of the best.
The problem? Behind the scenes, virtually every Internet-based user recommendation avenue is gamed. A quick search on SEO (search engine optimization) will give you a list of companies that will make comments in blogs (WalletPop, for example) and web sites promoting its customer's business, or organize a network of agents to vote stories about its customers to the top of the Digg list, or plant favorable reviews on Amazon, or create site after site praising its customers business in order to raise its Google ranking.
Google is particularly vigilant about fending off attempts to alter its search results, but these SEO companies are constantly looking for new ways to game the system. Digg is also in the fight of its life against companies such as uSocial.net.
The lesson to be learned here? Don't automatically buy the comments and reviews you read on the Internet. For example, one reviewer of Disaster Movie, widely considered the bomb of the year, wrote, "I really liked Disaster Movie and thought it was just as good as Date Movie, Epic Movie, and Meet the Spartans!"
And if you read a WalletPop comment that sounds like a pitch, it probably is. Much as we try, some still leak through. Caveat Emptor, dude.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-03-2008 @ 1:48PM
Terri said...
I'm so happy I am in control of my own mind.
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12-03-2008 @ 3:01PM
Steelman said...
Iron Man was terrible! Save your money.
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12-04-2008 @ 1:59AM
Tim said...
You might want to think about the economics and, um, game-theory of gaming various systems. It's very easy to open an Amazon account, so it's relatively easy to game. But popular items will also get a flood of reviews, so their effect is relatively muted. As for less popular items, does a fanatically positive review on some self-published book convince anyone? I think we've all got pretty good bullshit detectors by now. We may not suspect SEO companies, but there are a lot of authors reviewing their own books, or "log-rolling" with their friends.
When it comes to a site like Goodreads--or my website, LibraryThing--it's worth looking at the difficulties and payoffs still further. With a smaller audience comes less of an incentive. And sites like Goodreads require more work to sign up and review a book, and the people are much more proactive and vigilant about spamming the system. On LibraryThing, for example, members have been very effective at pointing out spammers, because, unlike Amazon, people feel a strong connection to the community and react with hostility to people who corrupt it. And even if some spamming gets through, the context tends to dilute it's impact. On LibraryThing you can always check out what *else* a person has in their library. It's pretty hard to construct a credible, large-scale library and detailed profile. Doing it to spike one review would be a real waste of time.
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