[benvanderbeek]

Regarding the unhelpfulness of online reviews, my company has problems with manufacturers/sellers writing 5-star reviews of their own product listings (ASIN's) on Amazon. We've begun (manually) data mining 5-star reviews to identify whether each 5-star-reviewer has any other reviews (or wish list, to indicate the possibility of a real user account), then calculating the % of reviews written by no-history user accounts. Of the ASIN's we've assessed, the gut-level-doesn't-seem-like-heavy-review-fraud listings can be in the 6% range, whereas the looks-like-review-fraud ASIN's are above 20%. We're working with Amazon to identify and penalize these manufacturers/sellers, but internally at Amazon the Seller Performance team is separate from their Community (user review) team, so it presents a challenge. Also hard for them to separate valid complaints from sour grapes complaints.

[tryitnow]

"but internally at Amazon the Seller Performance team is separate from their Community (user review)"

Indeed, my suspicion is that organizational politics have more to do with the lack of a better rating system than any technical limitation.

The approach I use is to read 3 star ratings first before biasing myself with the more extreme ratings. I also check to see what else the reviewer has rated and if there's nothing there then I immediately dismiss the review.