A Look At The Black Market In Google Reviews

A closer look at the widespread problem that’s plaguing Google’s popular star-rating system — a growing black market in which some companies pay for fake positive reviews, while others are seemingly being extorted by web firms who post negative comments then propose their “review-fixing” services to get them taken down.

Kay Dean, a former fraud investigator with the U.S. department of education who now runs a YouTube channel called Fake Review Watch says.
“The environment is such that cheating, faking reviews is actually rewarded and honest businesses actually suffer tremendously from it,” said Dean. “I would argue millions of consumers are being duped and deceived and honest businesses are being clobbered in the current environment.”

They talk about

• how a business gets a lot of fake negative reviews and then gets approached an obscure online marketing firm with an offer to remove them — for a fee.
• Facebook groups, where people are openly buying and selling fake reviews.
• Fake review industry is able to exist because technology companies like Google aren’t interested in solving the problem.
• and more