TripAdvisor is now warning users that certain hotels may be gaming the review process.
The following is an excerpt from the San Diego News Network where recently one of their journalists interviewed Steve Kaufer who is the founder and chief executive of TripAdvisor.
I feel it very relevant to the Accommodation sector in Blackpool as there has always been a suspicion that some owners game their own reviews.
It would seem from reading the comments that Trip A now has sophisticated detection methods in place and are not afraid to blacklist a hotel that is proven to try and gain an advantage. They say this is preferable to them removing the establishment from the database as this is the desired intention of some of the owners.
It’s also worth pointing out that some people have the morals of an alley cat and can and will leave a poor review in order to try and destroy a rival business. This recently happened to us after attention was drawn to our ideas about lobbying guests to leave a review on the Stay Blackpool Blog, anyway it resulted in a poor review that amongst other things labelled us homophobic. In addition the poster had lifted a photo from our website and posted with the review presumably to give the article some credibility.
Anyway it was very easy for me to prove to TA that the photo was in fact our property and they were breaching copy write by allowing it to be shown on their website. They quite quickly removed the picture but refused to remove the review until it had been properly checked out. The review was also almost 3 years old and just inside the time frame that is allowed for submissions.
Anyway the long and short of this tale is the review was eventually removed but this meant some deep level IP address checks by myself and marrying up my own website logs to discover the time the particular picture was downloaded. This meant I was able to pin this down to a time and date and more importantly an IP address which resolved to a user which is shall we say was in a town not a million miles away. After presenting the evidence to Trip Advisor by way of a fax machine I was able to have the thing removed.
Steve Kaufer, chief executive officer of TripAdvisor,
So in essence Trip Advisor reviews have been proved can be manipulated for spiteful reasons as well as attempting to drive forward a business’s reputation. If that is the case however such businesses risk everything by an honest review from a real guest.
Clearly in the age of the internet real reviews are going to become prime marketing material, already the Google algorithm uses the number and qualities of reviews to partly decide where to place businesses in the local search results. (these would be the ones located next to the map at the top of the page) . So on that basis it looks like Trip Advisor is here to stay probably along with a number of other players yet to emerge.
Anyway here is the text from the report which appears here.
Steve Kaufer is the founder and chief executive of TripAdvisor — a site where some hotel reviews have been manipulated by hotel operators. I asked Kaufer about the site, the credibility of user-generated reviews, and the future of social media.
Q: When it comes to user-generated hotel and restaurant reviews, I think it’s safe to say TripAdvisor is by far the most dominant site. Can you give me a sense of the size, traffic and overall influence of TripAdvisor?
Kaufer: TripAdvisor has nearly 25 million reviews and opinions on more than 490,000 hotels and attractions, more than 11 million registered members, and operates in 14 countries and 10 different languages. We have more than 25 million monthly visitors to our site, and have acquired 13 other travel brands. In terms of influence, a May 2008 Jupiter consumer travel survey reported that 76 percent of people find reviews from like-minded people most useful.
Q: TripAdvisor is now warning users that certain hotels may be gaming the review process. Can you tell me why you decided to do this, how long you’ve had these warnings, and how many reviews are affected?
Kaufer: We’ve been posting the warnings since 2006. We view our red badge and rating drop as the best punishment for properties trying to manipulate the system. A couple of people have asked why we don’t drop these properties from the site entirely. We think the red badge is a better punishment, and provides more information to travellers so they can make the most educated and informed decisions before they book. We also wouldn’t want hotels with very poor traveller reviews to use such a banning on the site as a loophole to get out. That’s exactly what poorly run properties want — to be taken off TripAdvisor.
Q: One of the things TripAdvisor uses to catch bogus reviews is a computer program. Why can’t the algorithm tag these fake write-ups?
Kaufer: We have three primary methods to insure review integrity. Prior to posting, every review is screened and a team of quality assurance specialists investigates suspicious ones. This group brings a wide range of professional experience, including expertise in credit card fraud, loss prevention and identity theft.
We also use proprietary automated tools to help identify attempts to subvert the system, and our community helps screen our content and report suspicious activity. These systems do catch the vast majority of suspicious reviews.
Q: What would you say to readers of your site who are concerned about the integrity of your hotel and restaurant reviews?
Kaufer: We believe our 23 million reviews and opinions are authentic, unbiased, and from real travellers, which is why we enjoy tremendous user loyalty. The sheer volume of reviews we have for an individual property allows travellers to base their decisions on the opinions of many and provides an additional safeguard. After all, any individual review is just that … a review by one person who may or may not have the same tastes as you, or be in a good or bad mood when they wrote the review. But when looking at the average of hundreds of reviews for a single property, the collective wisdom shines through and presents a complete picture of the property.
Q: Some TripAdvisor critics are quick to add their “I-told-you-sos.” Can you understand where these folks are coming from? Could you help us make some sense of why they’ve been critical of your site?
Kaufer: Some of those critics have a horse in the race. Professional guide books and travel agents are losing audience to TripAdvisor and other UGC sites. Forrester research shows that 68 percent of travellers read reviews from other travellers before they book. The same research shows only 38 percent turn to professionally written content. The average guidebook takes 15 months from manuscript submission to hitting the store shelf. TripAdvisor gets 13 new posts every minute of every day, so it’s the freshest travel information available.
We don’t have anything against professionally written reviews. In fact, we
have links to many professional reviews on TripAdvisor today, as we have
had since we launched the site. We’re happy to have our visitors find all
the available information on the Web to help them make the right travel
decision for them.
Q: How do you use TripAdvisor when you’re on the road? And how do you think people should use the site?
Kaufer: TripAdvisor has a lot of features that are valuable at different stages of the trip. When in the initial planning stages, I’ll use the inspiration section on the home page to help me select a destination. I’ll use our flights product to find the best airfare, and then use our hotel mapping functionality to pick the best hotel near where I want to be.
If I’m travelling on business, I head to the business centre, as that section highlights the hotels that are good for business, as well as offer restaurant suggestions for a business dinner.
When I’m traveling with my kids, I’ll look for top-value hotels which save me some money, and I’ll read the reviews written by folks who travelled with their kids. And
like all of our visitors, when I read the reviews, I take the best and worst reviews with a grain of salt, and focus on what the majority of reviewers have to say.
Q: Is there a way in which people are using TripAdvisor that you think they should not?
Kaufer: From a consumer perspective, there’s not necessarily a wrong way to use TripAdvisor.
Q: Do you have any statistical evidence that a positive review on TripAdvisor leads to more bookings or that a negative review takes away bookings? If so, could you please tell me what it says?
Kaufer: We have partners who feature TripAdvisor reviews on their sites, and claim that their bookings have increased — in one case, doubled — with the inclusion of these reviews. And these include both positive and negative reviews. We work with a lot of properties who have found TripAdvisor widgets and badges to be valuable marketing tools.
Anecdotally, we hear from travellers that negative reviews aren’t nearly as
impactful as how a property handles them. We do a lot of outreach to
business owners and encourage them to use the management response tool
that’s available on our site. We know there are always two sides to every
story, and we encourage property managers to share their side of the story,
or simply apologize if a mistake was made. Anecdotally, we also hear from
property owners that TripAdvisor has helped them grow their business.
With millions of travellers using TripAdvisor daily, it is hard to imagine
that we don’t influence where travellers are choosing to stay. However, it
isn’t something we’ve tried to measure.
Q: With the introduction of video on the new iPhone, we may be poised for a shift from “tell me” to “show me” user-generated reviews. How is TripAdvisor going to position itself in world where information is exchanged in real time, and in a more multimedia way?
Kaufer: We’ve been encouraging travellers to upload photos and video to TripAdvisor for a long time. We’d love to see the use of these tools increase — anything to help travellers make more informed decisions about their trip.
Q: Let me ask about your slogan, which is, “Get the truth. Then go.” It seems to me that the content you’ll find on TripAdvisor is highly subjective, and that your recent warnings are a concession that the reviews are nothing more than one person’s — or company’s — opinion. Do you have any plans to change your slogan, now that you’ve conceded that some of your ratings may have been manipulated?
Kaufer: It’s never been a secret that reviews are subjective, and that they are individuals’ opinions. That’s the power of user-generated content. It’s up to the traveller, with the help of our popularity index and filters, to review the data that’s meaningful for them, and to listen to the wisdom of the crowds.
Further information that has just come to light. It appears Trip Advisor have an expert team trawling their submission pages looking for fake postive reviews. When they find one they place a disclaimer on the page suggesting that the content has been manipluated.
It seems there will no longer any escape for fruadsters….
Example here: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g60982-d596760-Reviews-Hotel_Renew-Honolulu_Oahu_Hawaii.html
Message from TripAdvisor: TripAdvisor has reasonable cause to believe that either this property or individuals associated with the property may have attempted to manipulate our popularity index by interfering with the unbiased nature of our reviews. Please take this into consideration when researching your travel plans.
It’s something that goes with the territory and isn’t particular to TA.
In fact, gaming reviews and comments is something that’s been done for years – just look at the letters page and restaurant pages of local papers.
I’d say that TA actually has an advantage when it comes to this sort of activity. As they said themselves, they’re proactively taking steps, using technology available, to seek out suspect comments. And, as the social networking element of the site develops, I think the reputation of commenters will lend credence to what they have to say, as well as any photos they might want to upload. It’s one of the ways in which Ebay succeeds, through giving people a seller/ buyer rating.
As you may come to find out, the concern won’t necessarily be with sites like TA and duff reviews, but how SEO is used to the detriment of a competitor – that’s when you really need to start being concerned. Fortunately, most Blackpool B&Bers don’t have a clue about this area and how to develop a strategy, so it’s something you hopefully will never experience
Interesting comment NQY and one I investigated quite recently as a result of the negative comment. They say revenge is best served cold.
It is actually quite difficult to tarnish reputations using black hat SEO tactics. After all if it was quite simple everyone would be at it to try and promote their sites in the index by driving everyone else’s down. Google are aware of the possibility of that and will not penalize is such situations.
That said there ware ways and means but they are at the edge of my understanding of the subject at the moment, one such way suggested to me was to spam Matt Cutts personal blog with a few thousand postings using porn anchor texts directed to the offending site. This of course would need to be done from behind proxies for absolute anonymity.
Given Mr Cutts role within google this should achieve the desired effect. So as you can see not impossible but not easy either. 99% of the people in Blackpool won’t understand the terms spam let alone proxies and anchor texts so hopefully no fear of anyone launching such an attack against me or anyone else in the future.
So it looks like the B&B wars if there are to be any
will have to be fought along more traditional lines…..
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/
Yep, user generated comments should always be taken with a big grain of salt. I’m trying not to become totally jaded and disregard them entirely.
Lets face it this sort of manipulation is as old as the hills. Its a necessary evil of the business community at least with the Internet you can actually prove the point with some investigating.
TA is a good resource but like all user generated content treat with sceptical caution. Like wikapedia, the truth is not necessarily on the page.
Kevin
I guess reviews can always be manipulated to certain peoples advantage if they have enough time, money and inclination. Shame for the poor folk who rely on the reviews though.