I’ve had doubts about restaurant reviews you see on the web such as Google and Yelp, etc,. and came across a new restaurant that was opened about a month ago and found that it already has 479 Google reviews! Huh, so many after only one month?? And with an excellent average overall 4.9/5.0 score, amazing!
Then I read the reviews but concentrating only the very few that scored less than 5/5 and a couple of those reviews noted the restaurant was mostly empty when they were there, so the restaurant wasn’t that busy and the 479 reviews in one month became even more suspicious. Then one reviewer spilled the beans… the restaurant told them if they give a good review on Google (and apparently showed it to them), they’d get a discount on selected drinks. Bingo, that explains it!
This is not the first time I’ve seen this kind of deception. and I have friends that rely on these Google scores religiously when selecting restaurants, but they insist that if there are so many reviews, they must be legit. Well… clearly not in this case! So, let’s be reminded that it’s caveat emptor when relying on those reviews.
Not to mention there are also often many “spam reviews” …
For instance, someone who had an “unhappy” experience tell their friends to spam with 1 star reviews to trash the restaurant …
Yes, there are companies that if you hire them, they do the spamming for you. And then with AI, I can imagine they can write “original” and “authentic” reviews too.
On all of my trips to Vietnam since the pandemic, I have been asked to leave positive Google reviews on many commercial establishments I visited - shops, hotels, restaurants. They often thrust a QR code in front of you, or offer a discount/freebie. One young man was upfront and asked me to mention him by name, because there was a staff competition being run by management and the person getting the most positive mentions would get a bonus. I guess this is the nature of modern day capitalism?!
