Fiendishly cunning algorithm spots fake TripAdvisor reviews
A university research team has developed an extraordinary computer algorithm to spot fake TripAdvisor reviews.
The development follows news that some properties are bribing guests with food and drink discounts to write positive reviews on TripAdvisor.
Posting creative and brilliant reviews on hotel review sites to bolster the standing of seedy or dodgy properties has become a nice little earner for some travellers. A thriving black market has sprung up, with squalid hotels giving discounts to guests who write glowing reviews. Despite such practices being illegal in many countries, an army of people is apparently willing to knock up a dishonest review for as little as AUD10.
The jig may now be up, however. Britain’s Daily Mail reports that researchers from Cornell University in the US have developed a fiendishly cunning algorithm that they claim can spot a fake review 90% of the time. They are still deciding whether to make the algorithm public.
The Cornell team started its research into what is termed “deceptive opinion spam” by asking freelance writers to produce 400 fake reviews of Chicago hotels and post them on review websites.
The research team then mixed the false reviews with 400 real reviews of the same hotels – and challenged three judges to tell the difference. The judges failed.
The researchers dug deeper and found giveaway signs, which they have incorporated into their algorithm. A narrative account of a holiday indicates the review may be fake. Other factors indicating a fake or “shill” review include excessive use of superlatives and lack of detail and description.
Travel review sites do their best to weed out “shill” reviews. Shill is an odd word, which entered the language in the 1920s from uncertain origins. It means “a person who publicises or praises something or someone for reasons of self-interest, personal profit, or friendship or loyalty”. Shills are attracted, for obvious reasons, to review sites.
Even if you eliminate shills, some reviews differ so widely that guests, and many hotel managers, are left scratching their heads (and not necessarily because of bedbugs). Some guests describe hotels as charming, friendly and delightful hideaways while other guests describe the same properties as smelly, vermin-infested hovels to be shunned at all costs.
A Cornell professor who worked on the fake-review-detection algorithm project said humans were used to talking face to face over the past 60,000 years and found it difficult to detect deception online.
TripAdvisor has reportedly blacklisted about 30 properties around the world for suspicious reviews. It may now be able to do something more concrete to weed those reviews out.
Written by : Peter Needham
all very well but how do you stop the said hotels writing good revues about themselves
and secondly “bagging ” competing hotels ? They would not show on the “bofiins” radar !
Okay but does it stop customers, who are refused a discount, from publishing a bad and very untrue review of the
motel?
Another measure to add credence to a brothel. This will not stop people doing a review on another property or their own. It will not legitimise a site brimming with fake reviews. Trip advisor is only a basic giude without any credibility.
This is another step to appease the public itnto thinking that it has some respecability.
I have read some reviews that are nothing short of an ADVERTORIAL!!! Some businesses have an incredible number of reviews and an almost identical business in the same city has almost none – strange EH?
Hi, I work for a wholesaler and part of my job is to inspect hotels in several countries. I find that when I do travel shows or expos and this is when I meet the public face to face and they are the ones who make reference to trip adviser.
It amazes me when they come up and start degrading a hotel because of comments they saw on trip adviser about a hotel which I know and have inspected thoroughly. I have always said to them how can you be sure that the comment wasn’t made by the owner/manager of the hotel down the road. I don’t trust it. Danny
I agree with Patrick. Trip Advisor are attempting to get some credibility. Whilst I despise TA, I’ve found you have to work with them not against them. I had one scathing review ( who never stayed) because I pulled his accommodation prize because of the fould language he used. I suppose telling me to “F*** Off! would have helped sway my opinion. But to their credit TA did remove that review. I have complained to them that a guest or prospective guest can say whatever they like without penalty but when a property manager wants to respond in like manner they can’t, both hands tied behind your back. The vast majority who stay with us give great feedback, but rarely put up a review.
I generally review places I’ve stayed or had a meal at and the algorythm would get me every time as fake…as I do say I REALLY like and I would love to come back and it was a great place etc.etc.