knowledge base

Fake Reviews in Amazon

OP post from reddit thread

	First of all my background - I've been working on Amazon for years and know all the tricks of getting ranked. I do not engage in black hat tactics and I did the review game when it wasnt against TOS. As soon as they changed everything, I did not engage. However because of all my contacts I'm in the know for a lot of things. Getting reviews and the strategies used is one of those things.


	I noticed this brand popping up in searches a while back when it had only 5 reviews. I went into search mode after reading reviews and tried to figure out where this company came from.


	Their website lists no address but says that they adhere to standards in BC, Canada. I searched more and found an office address in Chinatown in Vancouver. I kept searching and found the business is registered to a 'investment group'.


	The suspicious thing was how all the first reviews were worded. People saying it's the best they ever tried and they looked for a long time and found this brand... but if the brand is only on Amazon and they searched... how did they find it? It wasnt ranked organically where you could find it until it had a ton of reviews.


	The reviews are also spaced out perfectly. There's 1-3 reviews a day and all 5 star reviews. I can tell you from working on Amazon for years that different categories have different review rates. For CPG products, the review rate is extremely small. You might get 1 review for every 1000 products sold. So seeing a brand with no history getting so many daily reviews that are all around the same length and push the same BS... these are all paid for reviews.


	Finally, the kicker is that I responded to a handful of these reviews in the comments, only for them all to disappear within a week. Usually when Amazon removes something, they'll send you a notification. There was no notification... and this is how it's done. There's shady Amazon employees that will remove comments and sellers for a fee. I know this because I know someone in China that offers this service. Chances are, these Hong Kong people that own this company also have made the same contacts I have and are using that have them taken down.



	So wait and watch over the next month as the reviews keep piling in, unless of course they find this thread and stop.