Edmunds took action to restore the integrity of their site.
Maybe dealerrater with stop permitting phony reviews......see what you think....
POSTED HERE: dealerrater
This is the comment posted on
dealerrater:
Half of the positive remarks on here are from employees trying to boost their egos.
Review the positive comments and judge for yourself!
Half of the positive remarks on here are from employees trying to boost their egos.
Review the positive comments and judge for yourself!
Posted here: dealerrater
Public Investigator
Settlement allows Edmunds to crack down on fake car dealer reviews
The car shopping website Edmunds.com says it has reached a settlement with an online reputation management company that Edmunds accused of submitting fake car dealer ratings and reviews on the site, Edmunds announced Wednesday.
Officials from Edmunds said they plan to share the court order with other popular sites, including Yelp, Google+ and Foursquare, where the same company may also have submitted fake reviews.
The settlement comes at a time when consumers increasingly seek out and rely on Internet reviews and other forms of crowd sourcing to find the best businesses.
In a lawsuit a month ago, Edmunds accused Texas-based Humankind Design Ltd. of registering nearly 2,200 fake member accounts on Edmunds' website to post positive but bogus ratings and reviews about 25 dealerships in an attempt to influence consumers' opinions. That was a breach of the membership agreement, Edmunds argued.
Edmunds is one of the top online resources for car prices, dealer reviews, dealer specials and tips. Employees hand screen every review, which is how the alleged fraud was discovered. Stephanie Mar, speaking for Edmunds, said Edmunds can "confidently link" 76 unpublished reviews back to Humankind.
"This is undoubtedly a victory not just for the millions of online users who rely on dealership reviews and ratings from fellow car shoppers, but also for the thousands of honest dealers who embrace authentic customer feedback," Edmunds.com President and Chief Operating Officer Seth Berkowitz said in a statement Wednesday. "We will continue to hand screen every review submitted to our site, and we will not hesitate to push back against anyone who tries to compromise the terms of our user agreements."
Asked for comment, Humankind owner Justin Anderson said in an email Wednesday, "We have not reached a final settlement, so I'm not willing to comment at this time."
In the news release, Edmunds said it's not the only site on which Humankind has been prepared to post fake reviews.
"Humankind's own marketing materials had previously identified 15 review sites on which it was prepared to post reviews similar to those Edmunds.com alleged were fraudulent," Edmunds said in the release.
In a July news release, Edmunds said Humankind's proprietor expressly promoted that he can create fraudulent reviews on ratings websites and knew it may be against those websites' policies.
"Does posting reviews ...violate terms of service...? In general, the review sites state that you must be posting for yourself and not for someone else. So in these cases the answer would be yes," the news release quotes the proprietor as saying.
On its website, Humankind advises businesses to counter negative opinions but stops short of telling people to post positive reviews instead.
"Whenever you notice that someone posted a bad review with lower ratings, you have to contact them and try to convince them to change their opinion," the website states. "Ultimately, just posting some helpful feedback on the site where the review was posted should also improve the situation."
The site does, however, mention "profile creation" as a way to drown out negative reviews. "Both free and paid profile sites can be used to post useful information and link to various relevant sites," the company states. "By posting helpful comments in forums and engaging in discussions, the useful content provided will reflect positively on your company's online reputation."
As part of the settlement, Humankind has agreed not to register users on Edmunds' site, submit reviews or participate in online discussions on the site. Humankind also agreed to provide Edmunds with information on every account Humankind registered and reviews they submitted. Humankind will also pay an undisclosed sum toward Edmunds' legal fees.
The integrity of online reviews is important because of the increasing number of consumers who rely on such reviews to decide where to spend their money.
In a Bright Local survey of consumers this year, 85% said they read online reviews for local businesses either regularly or occasionally in the past year to determine whether it's a good business.
Seventy-three percent said positive customer reviews make them trust a business more, and 65% said they were more likely to use a business that has positive reviews online.
In May, the Eater blog wrote about a business owner soliciting people on Craigslist to post fake Yelp reviews about it. In response, Yelp wrote on its official blog that its employees respond to such ads to identify who's behind the fake posts and that employees posts a consumer alert on the business' listing if there's evidence of fake reviews.
"We caught someone red-handed trying to buy reviews for this business," the alert typically states.
"We weren't fooled but wanted you to know because buying reviews not only hurts consumers, but also honest businesses who play by the rules."
Yelp also uses automated software to employ a "review filter" that examines every review and moves about 20% of the more than 39 million reviews onto a "filtered reviews" page.
"The integrity of Yelp's content is critical to its usefulness," the blog said. "Our ability to help over 100 million people a month connect with great local businesses is achieved by a combination of technological approaches (automated filtering software) and proactive sleuthing designed to smoke out the few bad actors."
Read more from Journal Sentinel: http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/pi/settlement-allows-edmunds-to-crack-down-on-fake-car-dealer-reviews-b9985786z1-221556991.html#ixzz2gtNEdnH7
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