In a rare 5-0 vote, the Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with GGL Projects, Inc., which runs the AI-enabled customer review platform Sitejabber. The Sitejabber service star-rates businesses and offers customer reviews. Businesses can create free profile pages on the Sitejabber platform, and also are able to purchase additional services like automatic instant survey review requests, marketing tools, and social media sharing to publicize positive feedback.

One such feature -- Sitejabber’s instant survey service – was aimed at “capturing [a business’s] customers at their happiest, and while they are engaged” (i.e., at point-of-sale). In reality, the FTC alleges Sitejabber used its instant survey results to aggregate and inflate businesses’ ratings and review counts, misrepresenting that such reviews and ratings reflected consumers’ post-fulfillment experiences when they were collected. The complaint alleges that only if a visitor to a business’s Sitejabber profile page hovered over the review count and then scrolled through vague text would they see which reviews were gathered at point of purchase. Another feature -- Sitejabber’s instant feedback product review service – prompted consumers to rate a product at the point of checkout, offering a star rating and text input. According to the FTC, Sitejabber’s inflated reviews of businesses and products also appeared in online search results.

The FTC’s order prohibits Sitejabber from misrepresenting that average customer ratings reflect only the experiences of customers who have had the opportunity to experience the product or that any rating was collected post-fulfillment. The order also prohibits Sitejabber from providing the ability (the “means or instrumentalities”) to anyone else to misrepresent that ratings collected at point-of-purchase were collected from consumers who had receive the product or had the opportunity to experience it.

Unlike recent FTC actions, the case against Sitejabber was approved unanimously in a 5-0 vote. Commissioners Holyoak and Ferguson both wrote separately to support the action taken, especially the complaint’s means and instrumentalities count. According to Commissioner Ferguson, “it appears that Sitejabber’s very purpose in offering the widgets was to assist its clients in deceiving consumers.”

Aubrianna Mierow also contributed to this article.