Every one of us may look into user reviews before using an app or buying some product since user reviews were beneficial in knowing what to buy. But today it isn’t the case; reviews are biased with a lot of positive and negative ones. There are a lot of spambots that will be disturbing in our blogs, apps and other items by posting fake reviews. We can see a lot of apps on Google Play with tons of 5-star reviews, and all of them basically say “Great app!” or “Really love this app!”, which is without actually talking about the app. There are also a bunch of negative reviews that come with a 1-star rating.
Spambots!
The app may be useful, but people (other than users) after reading these negative reviews may take this in the wrong sense. This means that these reviews can easily influence others. Further, as per some media reports, there is an industry like a cottage for these types of fake review posting. These fake reviews are deployed through algorithms which they have posted starting from Amazon and everywhere to all other places where we can post reviews. Now Google has had enough and has warned those tempted to astroturf its Android Play Store that a crackdown is imminent.
“Our team can do a lot, but we need your help to keep Google Play a safe and trusted place for apps and games,” the blog post reads, before supplying advice for both developers and regular Android users. This was the statement from Google regarding this type of fake reviews. Google also adds that “Developers are encouraged not to buy fake or incentivized reviews, which feels like a sensible place to start if you’re trying to reduce the number of fake or incentivized reviews. More usefully, developers are told not to run campaigns where five-star reviews are rewarded by in-game items or currency”.
What Google does?
Back in December 2018, we got to know that Google has removed millions of fake reviews from the Google Play. Let us also have a look into it i.e., how they have removed that. Google had implemented a system that uses machine learning and with a team of “skilled reviewers” and analysts. With this, Google has lifted millions of bad reviews and ratings and taken down “thousands of bad apps identified due to suspicious reviews and rating activities” in a single week.