[FilterJoe]

I wish Amazon had a "This looks fake" button above each review. I would click it multiple times per week.

Most fake reviews are easy to spot. The simple test:

Could this review have been written about any other book in this category without changing a word?

I see fake reviews all the time for Kindle books written by indie authors. A mark of quality in a book is when there appear to be no 5 star fake reviews, but several written by real people, even if there are only 3 or 4 reviews.

Some fake reviews are harder to spot, though. For example, I suspect this account, which has been around for many years, is more than one person (perhaps a PR firm) hand writing unique reviews for each one:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A130YN8T37O833

All reviews are either 1 star or 5 star. There is content specific information but all stuff you can get from tech specs or descriptions - no sense the person actually used the product except generic intro paragraphs.

I think there is also fake voting on really good reviews. The review that I felt was the best review I ever wrote was downvoted more than any other review I've written. I don't really know if the downvoting was fake - maybe it wasn't helpful because I delved into too much technical detail:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R14QK0B7HRE5L8

However, most of the glowingly favorable reviews for this book have unanimous thumbs up, and the first 3 are written by "A Customer" which I'm guessing means the account of the reviewer has been terminated.

[ivanr]

I don't think it's that easy. My book on Amazon currently has one 5-star review that's just one word and two 5-star reviews with two words each. I am the author and the publisher, and I know for a fact that these reviews are not fake. But they probably come across as fake. I think that there some people who just want to share their opinion of a book without making an effort to write a good review.

Personally, I'd prefer to have only reviews backed up with an explanation. If a book is good, tell me why. If it isn't good, I'd like to know why you think it isn't. That's the only way to make the next edition better.

[eel]

I have noticed an increase of reviews that typically contain a subject of "<Number> Stars", and either no review body, or a very short review body, such as "good book".

I too hate reviews like that, but I think it's due to Amazon nagging customers to leave reviews for things that are purchased on the Kindle. I am beginning to suspect they have an app or form somewhere where you tap the number of stars and write your review in a text block.

[ianburrell]

The Kindle prompts to "Rate this book" when you reach the end of an e-book. It doesn't give you the option to enter a review, but only select the number of stars.

[brianterrel]

They definitely do! I get follow up e-mails for most of my Amazon purchases which direct me to just such a form.

[bduerst]

Crowdsourcing the spam identification would be a great move.

Unfortunately it would also reveal to customers that there are fake reviews, causing them to lose confidence in and lessen the value of reviews. They may then read reviews and subconsciously be evaluating if the comment is fake, not if the product is a good buy.

If you hid the "Irrelevant Review" button under a dropdown it might work better, since it wouldn't be there as a constant reminder.

[benologist]

They do this - Was this comment helpful? Click no and you can report it along with a brief message. It's either ineffective or doesn't do anything at all, can't tell.

[FilterJoe]

"not helpful" and "looks fake" are not the same. A review can be not helpful for many reasons, including:

* one or more incorrect facts

* goes on and on about one minor point while ignoring major stuff

* too brief

* reveals spoiler without a warning

Etc.

[emodendroket]

Reviews are sorted, by default, by how helpful they are rated.

[wiredfool]

The effectiveness of reviews is predicated on the population of 'helpful' reviewers being greater than the population of spam reviewers after some level of filtering.

It's unclear if a crowdsourced flag would tip the balance of helpful vs spam in any useful way for categories where there's already a unhelpful level of spam.

[Super_Jambo]

You could have a reputation system where vote weight is gained for correct identification of upvoted bogus reviews. Then your spammers are forced to fight each other in order to upvote their own spam. Start everyones voting weight at zero until they've spent $x.

[dasil003]

Would it really reveal the existence of fake reviews? How many people are unaware of them? Sure non tech-savvy people maybe, but those people are aging rapidly. Amazon needs to get ahead of this problem, because if the end result is that their rankings are shit, that will be much much worse for them in the long run.

[castelle]

I worked on the customer review team at Amazon once upon a time. There are definitely fake reviews, and Amazon is well aware of "review rings" where people trade reviews, vote each other's reviews up, etc. Much like Google, they stop some and allow others, because the more feedback you give scammers in general, the better they can adapt.

In short: fake reviews and fake review upvotes very much exist and are WAY more rampant than you'd ever believe. It's an 80/20 or maybe 90/10 problem - most of the review content on Amazon comes from a small percentage of active users, and as soon as you become active on the site you start to get sucked into this sort of thing.

[tsotha]

The problem is your "this looks fake" button would be as easy to game as the current system. People with a financial interest in a book would be marking every negative review as fake.

[Super_Jambo]

As a complete a side do you have any "Focused Value" investing books you would recommend.

I think you were probably being down voted for being overly technical though yes.

[FilterJoe]

Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Philip A. Fisher is the best book I've read about the process of getting to intimately know one specific company. It was written long before the phrase "focus investing" was coined. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger frequently recommend this book.

[xasos]

It's like that on the Android App Store as well - a ton of one-star reviews with no reason.