I admit that when I am looking online for restaurants, consumer products, and places to stay, I generally look at reviews and they influence my decision. However, there have been numerous reports that reviews are often fake and unreliable. That has become so pervasive that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a final rule in August banning fake reviews and providing authority to assess civil fines and penalties against companies that post fake reviews.

This week, the FTC made good on its promise to combat fake reviews by issuing a proposed Order against GGL Projects, Inc., which does business as Sitejabber, alleging that “it collected ratings and reviews for its online business clients from consumers at the time of purchase, before they received or had the chance to experience the products or services they bought.”

According to the FTC’s complaint, consumers were asked to rate their “overall shopping experience so far” and add a message about the shopping experience at the time of purchase, but not after use of the product.

The FTC alleges that Sitejabber “used these point-of-sale ratings and reviews to deceptively inflate the average ratings and review counts of its clients on the company’s review platform, claiming that the ratings ‘indicat[e] that most customers are generally satisfied with their purchases.’” The inflated ratings and counts were then displayed in Google and other search results. It was deemed deceptive because the rating was really about the experience purchasing the product, not a review of the product itself.

The proposed order “prohibits the company from misrepresenting, or assisting anyone else in misrepresenting, that the average customer rating, number of ratings or reviews, or any rating or review of a product, service, or business reflects the views of customers who actually received the product or service purchased or had an opportunity to experience the product or service. It also bars Sitejabber from making or assisting anyone else in making any misrepresentation about any ratings, average ratings, or reviews it collects, moderates, or displays.”

It’s great that the FTC is helping combat fake reviews and misrepresentations, but how do we figure out if a review is real or fake? Here are some helpful tips from the Better Business Bureau:

https://www.bbb.org/all/spot-a-scam/how-to-spot-a-fake-review