Don't know if this has been posted here already, but here's a link to a Washington Post aritcle about a guy who created a non-existent restaurant. He then was able to manipulate this fake's ratings on TripAdvisor in such a way that it became their top-ranked London restaurant. As always, caveat emptor.
Posted by
Ontario, Canada
5398 posts
Caveat emptor? If the place doesn't exist, no one could buy anything anyway. But an interesting read none the less.
Posted by
Los Angeles
1825 posts
Awesome article. Much of the info on TA is worth what you pay for it. Still a useful resource if you turn up your B.S. filter.
Posted by
Portland, Oregon
5687 posts
The point was that real restaurant ratings can be manipulated too, if a fake one can be.
I don't pay a lot of attention to how a Trip Advisor reviewed place is ranked. I care more about the individual reviews and what reviewers have to say. And I tend to ignore the really glowing reviews as well as the really awful ones. I pay more attention to what people are saying rather than whether thing is "good" or "bad." But I guess some people do look at just the numbers and the rank when browsing the TA reviews casually.
Posted by
Minnesota 🎒
16503 posts
Previous post on this topic:
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/england/cautionary-note-nonexistent-restaurant
Posted by
Los Angeles
1825 posts
I like how Americans review restaurants based on portion size.
Posted by
Wyckoff, NJ, USA
7849 posts
I'd observe that TA has always been much better for hotel reviews than for restaurants. The restaurant review text tends to be a mobile device sentence or two, but hotel reviews have enough details to allow you a better chance to discount an abberant review.
Posted by
Frankfurt, Germany
9200 posts
There are more where that came from.
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Hotel_Review-g6840479-d6776131-Reviews-The_Grand_Budapest_Hotel-The_Republic_of_Zubrowka.html#REVIEWS
Posted by
Edinburgh
2681 posts
lot of weird stuff going on with TA these days,they have also totally changed their posting guidelines.
have a look at this thread and as you will see i have made comment on it.
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowTopic-g1-i12105-k11082727-TA_Barbara_posted_on_UK_forum-TripAdvisor_Support.html
Posted by
Portland, Maine
2916 posts
Like others here, I don't pay too much attention to the rankings, but rather to the comments. For example, if a hotel has a low ranking but a lot of the complaints are about the lack of a hair dryer, I discount that. One problem, though, is if you're talking about a large city with hundreds of restaurants, you'll probably never get beyond the first couple of pages of rankings. But in that case I'd probably look for a different source of info.
Posted by
Lakewood, Colorado
19261 posts
In 2013, I stayed in a spa town in the Black Forest. The hotel was perfect. Good price, absolutely clean, great location, etc.
When I went to give them a good review on TA, I found one very negative review from an American woman with 50 reviews (not her only review).
Fortunately, she described the location as "about 20 minutes from Freiburg. ... located in a small, quiet village just off the Autobahn.". She obviously reviewed a different hotel of the same name, because the town is, according to Google Maps, 1h49 from Freiburg by the fastest route and 40 min from the autobahn.
BTW, I don't think the woman was deliberately posting a fake review. I did find a hotel with a similar name in the location she described, it just wasn't the same one for which she posted a review. And TA doesn't do a very good job of making sure mistakes and fake reviews don't get posted.
Despite several emails to TripAdvisor plus multiple "flags", after four years, the erroneous review is still there.
By the way, I got a package deal from the hotel's own website for about 80% of the price shown on Booking.com.
Posted by
Vernon, Canada
32345 posts
This sounds much the same as the Lie Witness News segments on Jimmy Kimmel, where people are interviewed about a fictitious and absurd event which never took place. People provide comments about the events, as if they had watched them. I've often wondered if these segments were staged? Here's an example - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EctkLeyz8Ks .
Posted by
Frankfurt, Germany
9200 posts
Please. Do none of you ever read the amusing fake reviews on Amazon? People are having fun, something we all need right now.
This is not about someone trying to pull the wool over your eyes, trying to discredit a respectable place from a competitor or trying to get your own business ranked up. It is a bit of fun, nothing more, nothing less.
Trip Advisor is a valuable resource for many people including me. Use it or not, but stop trying to insist that the majority of reviews for all the businesses listed for the entire world are fake.
With that said, go do some shopping for yourself or loved ones, and to know what to buy, this might help you. Make sure you read the over 3,000 reviews.
https://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Three-Wolf-Short-Sleeve/dp/B002HJ377A
Posted by
Portland, Maine
2916 posts
She obviously reviewed a different hotel of the same name
The same thing happened to a small hotel in Bordeaux that I have stayed at several times. It was ranked #2 in Bordeaux for quite awhile, which surprised me because it was a simple, small hotel (although it was a favorite of ours). Then came the terrible review, which dropped the hotel down to the 20's. I eventually was able to figure out where the hotel was (in another part of SW France) by using the posted pictures. It took me several months of posting and trying to contact TA before an employee there saw it, contacted me, and fixed it.