Reviews are fundamental in digital marketing management

Product, service, and brand reviews on the internet are an opportunity to start a conversation, not just positive or negative comments.

According to NoFakes, the review verification app, 9 out of 10 consumers read between 1 and 6 reviews before making a purchase. It is estimated that 4 trillion reviews are viewed per year, reflecting consumer buying habits both online and in physical stores. The positive evaluations of others are more important than a great promotion or elaborate advertising plan.

Therefore, having access to the opinions of buyers is a benefit for the brand, providing first-hand information and demonstrating transparency and willingness.

As such a valuable resource, and like everything on the internet, it is important to be able to identify the truthfulness of reviews, as it is estimated that between 16% and 40% of reviews are not authentic.

Identifying Fake Reviews

There are many users who write fake reviews for money, malice, fanaticism, or fun. In recent years, pages that jeopardize the online reputation of brands have begun to proliferate, giving rise to a quite professionalized "illegal market" of fake reviews. The objective is to raise the average ratings of brands and products or to harm the competition.

Real reviews can be found in a variety of forms, tones, and lengths, with humor, violence, fairness, and unusualness. A recent study by Nanyang Technological University suggests that people can generally classify reviews as authentic or fake based on linguistic nuances.

In the experiment, which involved 380 participants, it was determined that the specificity of evaluations is associated with truth, while grandiloquence is associated with falsehood.

Another study by the University of York revealed that those who write fake reviews feel "remorse" and try to