Auto Dealer Monthly Magazine is the daily operations publication serving the retail automotive industry. This automotive publication serves dealer principals, officers and general managers with the latest best practices.
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INDU S TRY SPOTLIGHT that Edmunds and Yelp have their reputations on the line, so these lawsuits serve as important reminders to both the reputation companies and dealers. "If they start being known as a playground for fake reviews, people stop visiting the site and advertising spend goes down the drain. It is important for these sites to show they are trying to maintain a degree of integrity that allows for people to still trust them," Sussin says. "However, as Edmunds and Yelp get smarter, so do people soliciting fake reviews." ID'ING A FAKE Te dealer reviews Humankind attempted to post to Edmunds.com were detected by employees before they ever appeared on the site, company ofcials say. Levin explains that the 2,065 accounts allegedly registered by Humankind — each created under fctitious names of females — were sitting inactive on Edmunds' site in order to age, a practice some f rms follow to legitimize the accounts. He adds that the accounts weren't discovered to be fake until Humankind attempted to post the 76 detected reviews. "Te registration doesn't have much impact on us until the person uses the registration to submit content under the name," Levin explains. While Edmunds' reviews are screened individually by stafers, Yelp's employees don't step in unless something is fagged as a violation. Yelp's consumer ratings and reviews are prominently monitored by the company's infamous flters, programmed algorithms which direct a portion of all reviews to a "Filtered" folder that appears in a separate and less visible space on each of Yelp's business pages. According to Yelp's 10-K fling with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the site fltered 24.75 percent, or 8.1 million, of its 36 million cumulative reviews it received in 2012; 22 percent were captured in 2011. Te percentage of Yelp reviews caught by the flter has served as a point of contention for car dealers in recent years. "Our review flter is as much our Achilles heel as it is our heart. Te most helpful information is displayed to consumers, and sometimes perfectly legitimate content can wind up in that flter," Yelp's Lowe admits. 14 Yelp battles fraudulent activity on its site by initiating sting operations. If it sees a business trying to purchase reviews, a consumer alert pops up on the company's page for 90 days. Since October 2012, 150+ companies have been fagged. "Tat's a high cost we have to accept to avoid the infnitely higher cost of having a review website that people can't trust. "By protecting consumers, we're actually protecting small business owners, because if you've got Car Dealer A who's participating in this nefarious behavior, that's not fair to Car Dealer B across the street who's running a great business, providing customers with great service at a good price and giving them an honest deal." Yelp also sets up sting operations in which it responds to ads on classifed sites such as Craiglist. If a business expresses interest in hiring someone to post fake reviews, Yelp team members will fag that business page with what Lowe refers to as a "shame component," a consumer alert popup message that reads: "We caught someone ofering up cash, discounts, gif certifcates or other incentives in exchange for reviews about this business. We wanted you to know because buying reviews not only hurts con- AUTO DE ALE R MONTHLY • SE P TEMBE R 2013 sumers, but also honest businesses who play by the rules. Check out the evidence here." Viewers can then click through to a link that displays a screenshot of the e-mail exchange between the deceptive business and Yelp stafers who initiated the sting. Te alert remains on the business' page for 90 days. PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS Lowe says Yelp only fags businesses for consumer alerts afer it has collected enough hard evidence of any wrongdoing. But for the average onlooker, spotting a fraudulent review isn't so straightforward. Identifying a fake review has become a science for research frms. Eric Anderson, professor of marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, recently investigated consumer reviews of an unnamed apparel retailer. His fndings, along with those of co-author Duncan Simester, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), were shared