"It’s as common as buying streams in music" : how fake positive restaurant reviews are tracked
Consult the ratings and reviews before consuming, this is what 92% of French people do, according to an Ifop-GuestSuite study published in September 2023. A trend which is not ready to stop since in two years, this figure has increased by 20%. The stakes are so high that some restaurateurs use marketing companies or freelancers to buy fake reviews. The sites concerned are of course those which are popular with the greatest number of people: TripAdvisor, Google Maps and The Fork. Access to the data of these internet giants being quite difficult, the extent of the phenomenon is also complicated to measure. In 2021, the General Directorate for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) estimated that at least 15% of reviews on TripAdvisor were false. And all sectors combined, the French administration revealed that 45% of opinions were false or biased.
Also in 2021, after an investigation by the DGCCRF, the communications company Bistrobis was convicted for publishing false positive reviews on Google and TripAdvisor. She acted on behalf of a dozen Parisian brasseries. She was fined 30,000 euros and the bill could have been much higher. A company that uses this process faces a fine of 300,000 euros and a two-year prison sentence (article L. 132-2 of the Consumer Code). “False reviews concern the entire restaurant industry”, explains Mouloud Saada, marketing consultant and restaurant designer. He confirms that these practices are common: “It’s as common as streaming purchases in music. Sometimes, before a restaurant even opens, you have 100 or 200 positive reviews.” Last June, a restaurant on a private beach in Mandelieu made itself suspect by displaying more than a hundred positive reviews on its opening day.
For Mouloud Saada, solutions exist to stem this phenomenon. “The technical part, with the arrival of AI, is already making a first pass which makes it possible to considerably reduce false reviews.” In 2022, Google implemented a new algorithm and the results are there. In 2023, 170 million misleading reviews were removed, 45% more than the previous year. Google even goes so far as to sue those who make this process their core business. In June 2023, the web giant filed a lawsuit against entrepreneur Ethan QiQi Hu for publishing more than 14,000 illegitimate reviews. In its recent “transparency report”, TripAdvisor also announces that it has broken a record in 2023 in this hunt for fake reviews. Two million misleading reviews have been blocked. The DGCCRF has deployed its own tool, Polygraph, which helps investigators in their pursuit of false reviews.
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