Robert Coles of RockCheetah continues his guest posts over at Tnooz, with yet another great article about Fake Review Optimization.
What's so great about his post? He names names.
No, not hotel names. One of these days, those names will come out. In fact, if TA had wanted to know who's behind the fake reviews that float all over its site, it wouldn't have had to look too far.
All too often, even the most obvious of the fake reviews stay, despite the glare of being pruned and planted, leaving little incentive for ethically challenged owners to stop.
Besides the audacity of fake reviews engineered by small inn owners and innkeepers, many of which are so obvious it's just outright sad, the growing trend of buying and selling fake reviews continues to thrive.
In fact, in many urban areas, it's those bought and paid for reviews that are bumping small inns right off of the playing field.
Instant karma? For some, yes.
For others, it's a game in which the good guys are outmatched by the fraudsters. Call me old-fashioned, but that just doesn't seem like the best way to serve the community of travelers.
What are the online review sites doing about it?
Thriving, too. Deceit be damned.
The thing is, one of these days it will be. Damned that is.
And those names? The inn names?
Oh, they'll all come out. After all, I hear somebody is keeping a list.
And checking it twice.
